Page 31 of Saved by Him

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “I didn’t realize you wanted a third child, Jenna.”

She laughed. “Don’t do anything that I’d need to mother you about and I won’t do it. Besides, I think of myself as more like a big sister than a mother.”

I sighed. “I really need to start reminding people that I trained at Quantico.”

“But you didn’t graduate,” Jenna pointed out.

“Thank you for the reminder,” I said dryly. “Yes, I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, but it’s not like I walked into a cartel meeting or something like that. We don’t know that me being taken had anything to do with any case we’ve worked on. All we know for sure is that it had nothing to do with my father.”

“True,” she agreed.

“It doesn’t mean you need to be reckless,” Clay finally spoke up.

I shot him a glance over my shoulder and couldn’t quite curb my sarcasm. “Oh, are you talking to me now?”

A phone rang, and I looked back at Jenna. The expression on her face told me it wasn’t someone she was expecting. She quickly excused herself, leaving Clay and me alone for the first time since the hospital. Hell, the first time I’d even talked to him since then.

“I haven’t…notbeen talking to you.”

“You didn’t bother to call me to see if I’d made it home safe.”

Clay jerked his chin in the direction Jenna had gone. “I knew she’d take care of you. Her and Jalen.”

“It seems like they’re the only ones taking care of me.”

He winced. “I deserve that.”

“Yeah, you do.” I kept my voice even. “What were you thinking, ignoring them like that? You had to know that they’d do something drastic.”

“I was thinking that they’d leave me a message before doing something stupid. All they said was that they thought they might have found you and that they needed to show me something. They didn’t tell me that Jalen was going to put himself into danger.” He might’ve sounded like he was being defensive, but I could see the guilt on his face.

At one point in time, I might’ve thought he’d been punished enough, but he hadn’t just put me in danger. He put the man I loved into danger because he’d been too arrogant to think that they might be able to do something better than he could. He said he wanted me safe, but he’d let his pride get in the way. I was angry at him, but more than that, I was hurt. Our sexual relationship had ended, and I’d thought we’d moved past it. We were friends – family really – but when it had come down to it, he’d ignored a lead because he’d thought he knew better.

“I want us to be a part of each other’s lives,” I said quietly. “I value your friendship and everything you’ve meant to me over the years, but it’s going to take some time for me to not be pissed at you.”

“I really thought I was doing the right thing,” he said.

He finally looked at me, and I let our eyes meet.

“I know,” I said with a sad smile. “And that’s what I need to work through before things can ever be right between us.”

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