Page 124 of Wife Number One

That settled something inside me. War’s respect meant something to me. I’d known him a long time. That sort of friendship didn’t come around often, and I’d pushed it once before, when he’d been falling for Bliss and Scythe.

It wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.

I sighed. “I’ve spent my entire life screwing women. More than I should, probably. But…” I stared at the ceiling, not able to look my friend in the eye.

“But you’ve never had a girlfriend.”

I snapped my gaze to him. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said too quickly.

Amusement crept into War’s expression again. “But you want her to be, don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re in here asking me for dating advice?”

I went to argue but then realized he was actually hitting the nail on the head.

Kara didn’t feel like a quick fuck that I sank my dick into and then walked away.

“Fine!” I spat at War. “Tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do if I want to make her my girlfriend.”

War grinned widely and crossed the room to clap me on the shoulder. “Well, first, you let me sing, ‘Kara and Hawk, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—'”

“I just lost all respect for you. You’ve been watching too many of Lexa’s little kid shows.”

War screwed his face up. “Yeah, fair enough. That was a bit much. Okay, back to the actual problem. But you really don’t have one. She obviously likes you. She was barely a shell of a person when she got here, but we’ve all seen the way she is with you. You’re some sort of safe place to her. That’s the hard bit. The easy bit is all you have left.”

“Which is…?” I prompted.

He grinned. “Ask her on a date.”

I stared at him. “What, like I’m fifteen and asking her to go to prom? I don’t date.”

“Yeah, and that’s why you’ve never had a girlfriend. But if you want one, you actually have to be, you know. Nice.”

“I’m nice,” I protested. “I made her come three times last night.”

War rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s very generous of you. I dub you the new saint of cunnilingus. Good for you. But if you want more, fuck, man, just take her out. She’s been stuck in this damn compound for weeks. She’d probably like to go for a meal somewhere. Or to a movie. Or even just for a walk. Take her anywhere other than bed.”

I wanted that. I wanted to take her out to a restaurant. A nice place in Providence somewhere…

Her mumbling Hayden’s name in her sleep speared through my brain, causing an instant headache. Yeah. Great fucking date that would be. I take her out, we sit down at a restaurant, she looks across the road and sees him standing there, outside the place with his name on the damn window.

While I get to sit there like a damn chump while she runs across the road and throws herself at him, even after everything he’d done.

The jealousy was so debilitating I slid into a seat. “She’s still in love with Chaos,” I admitted to War.

He jerked at the revelation, his eyes widening. “What the fuck?”

“She talks about him in her sleep.”

War shook his head slowly. “That’s problematic.”

“Yeah, you don’t say. I have to tell her he’s alive, don’t I? I have to let her decide if it’s him she wants to go back to.”

War’s eyes darkened. “Normally I would be all for giving her choices, but he held her captive. He held five women captive in that room for weeks, and I don’t give a flying fuck if it was because Caleb ordered it. He had a choice. And he fucking chose wrong.”

Anger flushed my skin at just the memory of how we’d found Kara after the weeks she’d spent locked in that house with four other women. She’d been hurt. Weak.

And so damn insistent that Chaos was a good guy, even when we all knew better.

War cleared his throat. “She can’t live here and be involved with him, Hawk. That puts all of us in danger. I looked into that restaurant he’s opened.”

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