Page 86 of Strangers in Love

I didn’t ask him about it, though. If he wanted to talk, he’d talk. If he didn’t, I’d go with that too and mind my own business. Besides, it wasn’t like I had my shit together so much that I’d be able to help him with anything.

Unless he needed something that involved a gun because I was apparently still good at that.

“You’re working with that friend of yours. Cain?” It was more of a statement than a question. “He’s the guy that helped us out when we were looking for Evanne, right?”

“Yeah, he has this team of guys who do security, PI stuff, that sort of thing.”

“Things like rescuing hostages from the Middle East?”

I blinked. “What?”

He shrugged. “It makes sense. You borrow the plane. You know the country. You’re friends with a guy who does stuff like this. Am I wrong?”

I didn’t want to lie to him, and technically, the NDA that we’d signed with Freedom didn’t cover our second trip, but it wasn’t really something I wanted to talk about either. I kept it simple. “You’re not wrong.”

He looked at me for a minute, but when I didn’t say anything else, he changed the subject. Sort of. It was still about me, but at least my job wasn’t the focus. “You find a place yet?”

“No, I figured Rome would kill me if I went to someone else or tried to do it myself, especially since I’m staying at a hotel for now. I’m not looking for something quick. I want somewhere I won’t want to leave again in two years.”

Brody nodded. “Makes sense.”

Just then, Mom called out that dinner was ready, so we all headed into the dining room where our custom-built family table was loaded with everything I’d missed those years in the army. For the next hour or more, I only thought about the food.

Sort of.

I was sitting across from Alec and Lumen, which meant I had a front-row seat every time they exchanged a sappy look or whispered in each other’s ears. I’d seen them together other times, but now it grated on me. Not in a way that I was annoyed at them, but because it made me think about Aline. I’d seen what it’d done to Alec when he and Lumen had been fighting, and it was only now that I could understand it.

I’d fucked up, leaving things the way I had with her. Even if we never saw each other again, I owed her an apology.

But there was something else Alec and Lumen made me realize too.

Despite a clear win with getting the hostages out safe and taking down most of the group responsible, I’d felt restless. Empty. Like something had drained from the satisfaction I should’ve had. I had a job I already liked, with guys I liked, a plan in place for my future, and I’d gotten justice for Leo and the others. Nothing should’ve been missing.

Except there was, and seeing my brother and his girlfriend made it impossible for me to ignore.

I wanted Aline. Not just to fuck. I wanted to see if the connection we had could be something more.

But first, I needed to apologize.

Fifty-Seven

Aline

On the surface,everything about today had been perfect. If I asked my parents, they’d say the same. Freedom, however…I wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. She’d seemed a little off. Like her smiles had been a second too late, or she’d had to pull herself out of her head before she could answer a question.

I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but if she took the question badly, it could’ve ruined the whole day. So I didn’t. Tomorrow, we’d have to talk about what we planned to do next, and if it still seemed like something was bothering her, then I’d ask.

The fact that my parents and Freedom hadn’t hovered all day made me extremely optimistic about what the future could be. Maybe they’d just needed to work through their own fears and concerns themselves, and now things could go back to normal. Or whatever our new normal would be now that Freedom and I weren’t in school anymore.

I had some ideas about how that might look.

Substitute teaching for the spring semester sounded like a good idea to me. I could do it at different schools to find the best fit. When we were kids, our parents had told us that we’d each had a trust to use for college, enough for all the way through a doctorate. They’d expected us to be smart about how we spent the money and warned us that they wouldn’t give us more if we were unwise about it.

We’d both taken it to heart, and so we each had enough of our trusts left to take things slow on the job hunt. If I subbed, I’d get paid, even if it wouldn’t be consistent. I could easily make it through until I found a permanent position wherever I decided to live.

Another possibility would be to actually plan to do a variety of things in the education field. Substituting, but also tutoring, and maybe teaching summer school. I knew how fortunate I’d been to grow up in a well-to-do family, but I’d been taught that money wasn’t the key to happiness. Despite how flighty my family thought I was, I had actually thought through several kinds of budgets, different sorts of scenarios.

I’d made lists too. They’d be shocked to know that. Something so organized and logical. Only now did I wonder how much my parents thought Freedom handled my money too. She didn’t, but every so often, she’d say something that let me know that she didn’t have complete faith in my abilities.

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