Page 12 of One More Chance

She brought her iced coffee and found a shady spot under some trees where there was a memorial bench for a fallen police officer who’d been shot in the line of duty. About as soon as she’d settled onto the bench, Bruce appeared from behind the trees and sat beside her.

“You left the doctor’s office.” She stared across the kids’ playground. The splash pad area was bustling with children in bathing suits and swim shorts, their parents standing watch around the perimeter. She could see all the way to the expansiveparking lot and across it to where there were a few restaurants on the other side of the street.

“I had things to do.” He stretched out his knees, shifting in his seat until he found a comfortable spot.

He’d sat beside her with at least two feet of space between them. So CIA. Clandestine meetings in public. Handoffs and vendettas. “You left the medical center.”

He ignored that. “What did the doctor say about your test results?”

“You don’t want to know that the cops are taking care of those two kids? Maybe I don’t like how it escalated so fast and so violently”—or what she’d done to resolve the situation—“but you did the right thing in protecting them.”

He shrugged, and his craggy face and that few days of gray stubble shifted. “I know I did the right thing. Like how I know that…woman? She probably won’t make it. Very sad. Those kids will be better off without her.”

“If she succumbs to her injuries, it’s going to be me who is held responsible.” Didn’t he realize they’d arrest Kenna for injuring her in a way that led to her death? She wanted to reach over and wring Bruce’s neck, but she’d already used a lot of energy today. There wasn’t much left in the tank.

“Turns out I know a good lawyer.”

Whatever that meant. Kenna let out a long sigh.

“What did the doctor say?”

She explained the short version that she was getting older, probably had anxiety, and was likely overinflating the entire thing, considering the test results only showed elevated calcium. “How can there be nothing wrong with me?”

He shook his head. “Doctors don’t know everything.”

“They did something to me.” Saying it out loud sent a tremor down her spine.

What she wanted to do was curl up in a cold room with hot coffee and cry herself to sleep. But what would that serve? Feeling sorry for herself had never been her thing. Self-pity wasn’t going to help her, but she needed to say something out loud. In a way, it would be like exorcising the thought.

“The minute I get even a hint of happily ever after, it gets taken away.”

“Is it really going to change things between you and Jax?”

“I don’t want to be useless. He deserves the woman he fell in love with.”

“In sickness and in health, remember? It’s a part of life.”

Kenna pressed her lips together and made a face. “I don’t like it.”

He chuckled, shaking the bench. “Good thing there’s nothing wrong with you because you make a terrible patient.”

She gasped. “You take that back!”

He laughed.

She listened to it, enjoying the moment. In the middle of being certain they’d done something to her—because why do nothing when she’d been in their grasp?—she could take a second and appreciate what she had. Kenna had never been the kind of person who was always waiting for a better tomorrow. Now that she had what she hadn’t even admitted she wanted for a long time, and she was finally enjoying her happily ever after…

“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it might’ve happened with that woman.” She winced. “I caved her chest in with just my shoulder. How could I do that?”

He patted her shoulder. Left his hand there and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Doesn’t feel odd to me. Maybe they did surgery on you. Put in metal joints and stuff. Like Wolverine.”

Kenna rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I’d have been walking around the next day. I was achy; I wasn’t superhuman.”

“I guess there’s no point in telling you that you shouldn’t let what you don’t know destroy your happiness.”

“Maybe I need to hear it anyway.” She glanced around, watching other people enjoy a warm day. Even if she was sweating and wanted to get inside to some air-conditioning. Take a nap. Call Jax and tell him about her day. Make dinner so they could eat together when he got home from work. “I have to go to the store.”

“Domesticated Kenna.” Bruce chuckled. “Heaven help us all.”

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