Page 92 of Enraged

“I know.”

“Get some rest, Dak. Things will seem clearer when you wake up.”

“When I got off this morning, Lena, I got home and I…I just wanted to talk to you. That’s such a weird feeling to me. Not thatI didn’t always like talkin’ to you, you’ve been one of my best friends for years, but like, I wanted to talk to you.”

She sighed. “Put down the drink and go to sleep, bud.”

The drink? What?

“I’m not drinking anything? You know I don’t drink when I get off shift if there’s been a fatality. That takes it from a social drink to a coping drink in my mind and you know I don’t do that. I won’t ever drink to cope with doing my job.”

She already knows this.

“Okay. Get some rest, anyways. You have to work tonight.”

“Lena, what’s going on?”

“I’m tired. It’s 7AM and I was up until after five. Goodnight.”

What the FUCK?

She has always been grouchy when she wakes up but that seemed to be extreme, even for her.

A thought popped into my head that added to the wonder that already was this shitty ass day.

She’s in bed with Jace.

I sat up in bed, my crazy amping up, deciding on whether or not to drive by their house. If her car was there, she had to be there, and I’d be able to see from the road.

The only thing that stopped me was the day ahead, and the knowledge that I needed to rest to be able to do my job safely.

The community deserves you well rested and capable and your team deserves you well rested and capable. If she’s at his house, she has made her decision and it’s her decision to make.

Jolene

I couldn’t fall back asleep.

The sound of Dakota’s voice as he described that part of the job was haunting me all the way to my core.

He needed a friend, Lena, and you rejected him.

I felt sick to my stomach.

But I don’t understand why he decided to call me…

Jace never discussed this part of the job. He always said he left it at the door. I respected the way he chose to handle it and never pressed him to talk. I knew that Dakota would open up to Cassie, but he’s never called and done it with me.

Part of me contemplated calling him back, to be there, to be his friend… but I decided against it.

I don’t want to be the source of any issue between him and Cassie, especially since she knows what we were up to in the mountains.

The more I thought about the two of them, the more I didn’t understand how mine and Dakota’s friendship would survive it.

If he was able to look past it, that was one thing, but I wouldn’t ever be able to.

I wouldn’t ever want to be around her and she, understandably, wouldn’t want him around me alone. No matter how I envisioned it, I couldn’t see a possible way that our friendshipwould survive all of this, even though he and I hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.

Fed up with my own thoughts, I jumped out of bed and pulled on a pair of leggings.

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