Page 16 of Dear John

“I thought you liked that old lady?”

He shot me a glare. “She wasn’t an old lady. She was mature. And yes, I liked her, but I didn’t want to fucking marry her.”

“Then why did you?”

He shrugged helplessly. “Believe it or not, this shit just happens to me.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. You stumble down the aisle, completely at a loss for how to control your own limbs—or your mouth, for that matter. And then, before you know it, you’re sayingI doand walking down the aisle, holding your new wife’s hand.”

He blew out a harsh breath. “Something like that.”

I rolled my eyes and headed back inside. “Don’t let that happen with Riley. I get the feeling she wouldn’t let you off the hook without a thorough ass-kicking.”

“Tell me about it. You should have heard her yelling at me after the accident. She made it sound like I did this to myself. I was trying to save her fucking life!”

I winced, slapping him on the shoulder. “Maybe don’t get hit by a car next time.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll just try to fling us both out of the way. Then we’ll both end up in the fucking hospital, and she can yell at me for not being good enough at my job.”

“Well, you can’t win them all.”

It was onlyfive in the morning when I walked through the doors of OPS. I didn’t want to be here at all. I was supposed to have a day off, but this was too fucking important to wait. And frankly, there was no way I could sit at home with Isla, knowing this was all lingering in the background.

The new building looked fantastic, but it was all lost on me. At one time, I would have teased Cash, asking where my office was going to be or when the new kitchen was being installed. But the faint smile that touched my lips as I thought of that disappeared just as quickly. All of it seemed tainted now with his lies. Fuck, I could have lost everything in my life, and I knew I had a part to play in that. I hadn’t been honest with Isla, and that was on me.

Truthfully, I was being a bit hypocritical, blaming him when I did the same fucking thing to Isla, but that was a moral dilemma for another time. I wasn’t at all surprised to see the light on in Cash’s office. It was like he lived here now. I doubted he even saw Eva very often, if the rumor mill was correct.

Which it usually was.

His gaze met mine as I stepped into the doorway. I saw his hand twitch below his desk as he went for his gun. Thankfully, he didn’t pull it out and shoot me where I stood, though I was beginning to question his ability to differentiate between friend and foe.

He relaxed back in his chair, quirking an eyebrow at me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here this early. Don’t you have today off?”

“It seems someone didn’t want me to get any sleep tonight.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“The senator,” I answered, walking further into the office. It was different than before. His last office had touches of his life—Sally 2 in a cabinet on display. She was nowhere to be seen now. Although, I was pretty sure he was on Sally 3 by now. However, there was one thing that was the same. Betty was still here. The strange part was that she was on the box. She was never out unless shit was about to go down. But as far as I knew, there were no ops right now. Unless this was Cash’s way of saying that the war would never end until he brought justice to Rafe.

His eyes followed mine and he shifted uneasily in his chair. “Did you come to tell me you’re quitting?”

I finally met his eyes and moved behind the leather chair across from him, resting my hand on the back of one. “That depends.”

“On what?”

I had a list a mile long, but that was a discussion for another time. “Did you get anything out of that asshole?”

His jaw tensed. “No.”

Fuck, then the senator was right. “Did you put Fox on it?”

“Like I don’t know how to take care of shit?” he retorted.

I really didn’t want to be here doing this, but the senator’s words rang in my ears. There was a large part of me that wanted to walk away, but my loyalty to Cash was unwavering, it seemed.

“The senator called me this morning with some information pertaining to you and the man you have in the basement.”

“The senator’s information is all bullshit,” he sighed. “It looks like I went to great lengths for nothing.”

---