Page 6 of Last Chance Love

“Garrett.”

“Christ above,” he muttered, setting the folder down and opening a nearby drawer. With a heavy sigh, he pulled out a case, taking the glasses from inside and putting them on. “There, are you happy?”

“There’s no point making your eyes worse because your stubborn pride tells you you don’t need glasses.”

“It’s not pride! I just read slower without them.”

“Because you can’t see. Now, if you wouldn’t mind?—”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbled.

Standing in this room, listening to them, I was struck by how close their relationship was. It wasn’t just warmth he showed her or care she showed him. There was respect and some form of love between them.

Mr. Isaiah closed the folder, set it down, and put his glasses into the case again. “Well, alright then. I see we had the right of it, don’t you think?”

The question was directed at Mona with a glance toward me. She gave him a slight nod before sliding onto the edge of the desk. “I know, you told me. Acknowledged.”

“You can’t win ’em all, but it’s good to appreciate a win here and there,” he said with a chuckle.

“Am I going to know what you’re talking about soon?” I asked, heart still thumping hard.

“No,” she said, adjusting her blouse unnecessarily. “But you do get to know that your bet was good. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go into the details, but that is the transcript of Reno’s call from his sister. We’ll, of course, have someone manually go over the call to make sure it's accurate, but we’ve yet to have a catastrophic failure of the computer system so bad it would have ruined the transcript.”

“So…something happened,” I said slowly.

“It’s difficult to judge just how much effect this…call would have had on someone. But suffice to say, it’s safe to judge that it's significant.”

“Sure is,” Mr. Isaiah said, patting the desk thoughtfully. “I’ll agree to that.”

“So, what about Reno?” I asked, knowing full well that having this to back my theory up wasn’t the same as being in the clear.

“That…is going to depend on two things.”

“Okay, what?”

“How you want to handle it and how he handles that.”

That took me by surprise, and I glanced between them. I wasn’t surprised that the two seemed to agree, but that didn’t help.

“I…me? What about me?” I asked. “Wait, I know I’m his mentor, but?—”

“But nothing. As his mentor, you agreed to take care of him. You agreed to guide him. Now, you had the perfect option to rid yourself of a source of trouble, one who could be an even bigger source of trouble. An option I was willing to follow through before your impassioned defense,” she said, looking at me with what I thought might be amusement but didn’t feel amused. Lord have mercy. Times like this made me glad I realized I was into men at a young age.

“I…okay, right,” I said, feeling out of my element. “Fine, yes. What does that mean?”

“It means you’re clearly willing to put yourself on the line to defend Reno. And since you want to defend him, believe in him, then you need to have a plan ready to deal with him.”

“That’s…kind of a tall order,” I said carefully. “I wasn’t expecting to have some sort of punishment ready. That’s never been a mentor’s role.”

“Uh-huh, how often have you punished Elliot for his shenanigans?”

“Okay, well,” I began and then had to laugh. “Fine. He’s definitely been on the receiving end of his fair share of punishments from me. But you try to deal with him every week and see if you don’t do the same.”

“Are you kidding me? I would have him routinely chained to something. Remember when he tarred and feathered me?”

“Well, it was supposed to be me who got that,” I said. I’m sure it had been honey, and I still wasn’t sure where he’d found the feathers. I had to appreciate the ingenuity because even as the intended target, I had not been the receiving one. It left me free to feel some measure of pity for him as Mona quickly hunted him down. I still didn’t know what that conversation had been like, but Elliot had been terrified of her ever since.

“Not the point. You’re capable of handing out punishments,” she said.

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