Page 120 of Outside The Wire

I steppedout of my house and saw his truck idling across the street. It was too fucking early in the morning to deal with Chase or Patrick. As much as I wanted to get this shit with Jade taken care of, I still had a life here and obligations.

Not that Chase cared. He got out of his truck, slamming the door as he strode across the street. “Are you gonna ignore me forever?”

“I have work.”

“Right. At the auto body shop.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Go ahead. Mock me. I don’t give a shit.”

“Because you’re a new man?”

I tossed my shit in the truck and turned to him. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Asher, you’re the last fucking person on the planet who deserves this kind of shit, but Jadeisback and you need to deal with that.”

I glanced away from him, shaking my head. “Where is she?”

“At the hotel.”

“Why didn’t she come?”

“Because she didn’t think you’d want to see her.”

“You mean after she ambushed me last night?” I asked, looking back at him. “That was a pretty shitty move.”

“She didn’t plan that. We tried calling you for weeks. As soon as we found out she was alive, I called you over and over again. But you never picked up the fucking phone. She said she needed to see you, so I said I would drive her out here.”

“How the hell did you even find me?”

His lips twitched in amusement. “Seriously? Rae would be so disappointed in that question.”

“How long has she known?”

“That you were out here or that you were posing as a mechanic?”

What a clusterfuck.

“We went out to dinner last night and the plan was for me to call you today. Then she saw you kissing your girlfriend and she fled for the bathroom, and…shit happened.”

“Shit happened,” I repeated.

“For what it’s worth, your girl seems really great.”

“She is,” I sighed. “But this might have ended it all.”

He had the decency to look remorseful about that. “You can’t put this off, man. Your wife just came back from the dead. You have to see her.”

“Did she tell you how?”

He shook his head with a laugh. “Rafe. Fucking Rafe.”

I slammed my fist against the side of the truck. “Of course, Rafe had something to do with it.”

“Apparently, she had a very low pulse and when we got her to the hospital, they didn’t think she was going to make it. Rafe had her transferred to a long-term care facility for treatment in case she woke up.”

“Then who the fuck did I bury?”

He shrugged. “I have no fucking clue.”

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