Page 90 of The Last Promise You Made

When Gia wasn’t pulling guard duty, she worked on her computer in the ranch office, scouring the internet for information on Ravyn and the cartel. Enrique and some of my brother’s deputies picked up the rest of the protective detail, hovering along the perimeters, keeping watch while I worked with Dad, Shawn, and Ramon on the two cabins.

Unaware of the extra guards, Addy seemed to be coming out of her shell a little more each day with our set routine. She opened up the most when Mila was around, but she’d talk in full sentences to me at times, and she slept in her bed and not on the floor or a shelf. And even though I’d replaced her backpack with a bright-purple one, she hadn’t loaded it up with clothes and wasn’t bringing it with her as if she was going to need to run at any second.

Every night, she played games with Gia and me. Laughing more, even teaming up with Gia to make sure I lost, getting a kick out of the pretend tantrum I’d throw when I did. I finally got a glimpse of the humor Ravyn had spoken about in her letter. I got to see her devotion to the woman who’d pulled her out from under a bed as well, because if I ever tried to pick on Gia during the games, Addy wouldn’t let me.

When we walked next to each other, Addy would often tuck her hand in mine, and she hugged me of her own volition every night at bedtime since the backpack disappeared. In those moments, when Addy chose to reach out to me, I felt like I was the smartest, bravest, most loved man on earth. The fact that she trusted me with her words and affection filled spots in my soul I’d never thought would heal. Spots I thought would always be a gaping wound.

And she wasn’t the only one healing me.

Every night, after Addy was tucked into bed, Gia and I found each other, all in the pretense of staying updated on the case. Except, there wasn’t much progress to report. Gia said the task force was frustrated with their inability to break Ravyn’s encryption on the data from the Switch, and they had no clues about the guy who’d broken into my house. The dead guy who they thought killed Ravyn had been seen by Enrique’s gang contacts, talking to a big burly Mexican in Lexington before he’d wound up dead. Enrique was trying to chase that person down, but without driving back and forth five hours round trip to Kentucky, it was hard to work his contacts while staying with us in Willow Creek.

So, while we always started our evening talks with an update about the Lovatos, the truth was we would have sought each other out anyway. We were drawn to one another. Electrical charges seeking an outlet. I hadn’t kissed her since our argument over the DNA test, which meant those charges were growing, festering to an unhealthy level that would end up exploding at the worst moment.

Every night, after talk of the Lovatos wound down, we often shared personal things. Talk about our families and our past. We were both careful never to talk about the future. It was too uncertain.

I learned Gia spoke three languages and had been in more countries than I’d been in states. I learned how her love of spy movies and books like James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Jack Ryan had driven her into her career, and how she’d been determined that there’d be more women filling those roles.

For every truth she gave me, for every window she opened up into her soul, I reciprocated by doing the same. I told her about my time at the University of Knoxville, and even showed her some of my early architectural drawings I kept in an overflowing portfolio. But it wasn’t the buildings that caught her eye. Early in my life, I’d had a love of the fantastical and had drawn scenes from some of the stories my siblings and I had made up about the hollow by the creek being a haven for pirates and fairies. Spurred by the smooth tales Ravyn had crafted from those stories, I’d drawn more. It was those sketches that Gia spent the most time scrutinizing, knowing they gave her more insight into me than the drawings of buildings ever could.

They showed my belief in true love. My belief in fairy tales no grown man should rightly claim.

Tucked in where I’d forgotten them were a few black-and-white drawings of Ravyn. Gia had stared at them for a long time before asking if she could send one to Rory. She thought it might help refine the reconstructed picture Rory had created. I told her she could do whatever she wanted with the sketches, not because I wanted them gone like I would have wanted weeks…hell, days ago…but because I wanted to do anything I could to end the storm waiting in the distance for us.

One night, when we were sitting side by side, without touching, but still sharing little intimacies of our lives, her phone buzzed. Her brother’s name flew across the lock screen before she silenced it.

“Your family really doesn’t know you do this for a living?” I asked.

“My father suspects I’m undercover, and he might have used his position as Vice Chief of the National Guard to ferret out where I work, but my mom and brother know nothing.”

“You said it was so they wouldn’t worry. Is that truly the only reason?”

She shifted, uncomfortable with the question. We both knew I had no right to ask, no right to delve into the depths of her mind, but I needed to know why she lied to those she loved most. Needed almost desperately to understand it so I could believe she wouldn’t do the same to me.

“It’s the easiest answer I can give. Because I really don’t want them to worry. Mom spent so much of her life stressed about Dad being in the line of duty first in the Army, then in the Secret Service, and finally with the National Guard. I saw it eat at her soul a bit. And Holden was single-minded in his determination to join the Secret Service from the time the Twin Towers fell, and he watched our dad protecting President Bush on TV. Holden’s job added worry to her shoulders, and I guess I told myself she didn’t need me giving her even more.”

“What’s the real answer, darlin’?”

She rolled her eyes at the endearment and then sat there for a moment, looking inward, as if trying to find the answer deep inside her. And that, if nothing else, made me believe she wasn’t lying anymore. “The truth is, I liked that this aspect of my life was completely mine. I didn’t have my brilliant, strategist of a father or my perfect, protective brother looking over my shoulder, telling me how to do it better. I don’t know…” She trailed off before picking her thoughts back up a second later. “I liked the super-spy vibe of it. The dual life. One in the light, and one in the dark. It was like living in a James Bond movie. It was exciting.”

I picked up on the past tense even if she didn’t, and I pushed on it, not quite daring to hope that maybe her time here, her time with me was changing how she felt. “Was exciting? It’s not anymore?”

Her gaze settled on my lips for a few heartbeats before journeying back to meet my eyes. “The movie always ends, you know? When it’s over—when my career is really over—I’m afraid I’ll feel empty inside. I’ll be nothing but a shell with nothing to show for my years of service but a pile of memories I can’t share because they’re all deemed top secret.”

The idea of Gia feeling empty—of the bright, fiery woman in front of me being an empty shell—made me want to prove to her just how full her life could be.

Except, what exactly did I think that life would look like?

No matter how she was talking to my soul and making me wonder if I could, in fact, give my heart to another woman, this wasn’t Gia’s world. She was a fish out of water. And if she stayed here, she’d be gasping for breath before too long. There’d be no evil villain for her to catch once the Lovatos were gone.

So, no matter how much I wanted to touch her, embed myself in her, make her mine, I couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t trail after her as I might have if Ravyn had asked me to go with her. Back then, I would have given up everything to keep her and my baby. I would have even given up the ranch and my family. But nothing was that simple anymore. Things like Phil’s death proved how unexpectedly life could change, and I didn’t want to miss the years my parents had left. Even more, I wanted Addy to grow up here, surrounded by love and stability, not tagging along after some secret agent like she’d been forced to tag after Ravyn. I didn’t want her learning to hide and run when she could spread her wings, knowing she had a safe spot to land.

My little girl was now my number one responsibility.

The possibility of having something with Gia couldn’t trump that. Even if it meant once again retreating into the life of bachelorhood Sadie had tried to taunt me out of.

So, every night after we talked, I left Gia at her bedroom door without attempting to kiss her again, without relieving the growing tension that zapped through us. And every morning, when she appeared in my kitchen, ready for the day, sometimes beating me there and starting breakfast, I reminded myself of what she’d said. These moments were just a few scenes in the movie of Gia’s super-spy life, and when it ended, Addy and I would be left to fill the holes her absence created.

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