Page 37 of The Marine

I wanted to throttle her pretty little neck myself the moment she said that. There is no trying in life. Divorce or otherwise. You either do or you don’t.

It’s not that easy. You don’t understand.

She’s right. I don’t.

But if the guy is still hurting her, where the hell are her friends or lawyers? Or the fucking cops.

This is what I want to look at.

Is she pressing charges?

And has Ryder not noticed anything?

I’m gathering data before I start crushing skulls. But once I do, I’ll have to confess that we know each other.

Maybe.

It’s not something I want to explain.

I lost Briar the day her father died.

I don’t know if she still believes the bullshit her mother said back then. Hell, anyone within a four-hundred-mile radius heard her screaming it from the rooftops. The accusation lost me Briar, and it almost cost me my career.

It took months to clear my name.

A long damn time when you’re being questioned and under suspicion. And while I was never charged, and it wasn’t on my record, when I joined the Marine Corps, I was nervous as fuck that it would cost me.

You see, her father was former army.

His death was in the news and so was my face. The media spent a whole lot of time talking about me while I was a suspect. Then fuck all when I was cleared.

So the recruitment team at the Marine Corps knew all about it. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t on my record.

They had questions.

I had to work through my whole lot of anger at the impact her fucking mom had on my life. And grief at losing the woman I thought was my entire future.

But I never stopped loving her.

Being a US Marine did, however, give me a purpose and the distraction I needed to move on. I had to walk away. Briar didn’t want saving.

She made that very clear during those dark days.

And she might not want saving now.

Not by me.

Thing is, I’m not the young man I once was. I’m a thirty-three-year-old man set up for life—financially and emotionally. I co-own a multimillion-dollar business and have a solid group of friends who would die for me—literally.

I’ve seen the world.

Saved children from life-threatening situations.

I love my mom.

I pay my taxes.

Reluctantly...but I pay the fucking things.

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