Page 39 of Never Give Up

“Good for her.” I mean the words, I really do.

But the crushing hand around my heart hurts. I get what Jake is telling me.

“I’m going to find who did this, but part of that is making sure you don’t do anything to ruin this case.”

Jake isn’t saying anything that I don’t know, but it forces me to face the fact I can’t help in any significant way.

The frustration bubbles up, threatening to drown me. “I know that, but I need to do something.” I can’t keep it from the other man.

Jake looks at his fingers, pretending to examine his nails. “Well, you’re meeting with Paul tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, I think he’ll give me my badge back.” At least, I hope he will. “Jason said he’s not pressing charges, and his nose isn’t that bad. So, I mean, there’s no reason I won’t be able to go back to work.”

“You attacked him for saying that she’s his wife.” Jake looks at me like I’m being an ass.

I am.

“Completely,” adds Jake while apparently reading my mind, “unprovoked.”

“I know. I know. But I’ll talk to Paul about it tomorrow. Anything I can do for now?” I don’t think there is, but I still have to ask.

“No, nothingIcan do today on it, anyway. I’m waiting for the rest of the labs aside from DNA to come back and they won’t be on my desk until tomorrow when I get back to work.”

What Jake doesn’t say is their entire case hinges on hoping the attacker has a record, or that his DNA is in the system, but then again, he doesn’t have to.

“Good,” I say, knowing what we can do, because I have to do something. “You can help me work on the tree house for the boys later today. I promised I’d have it for them when they get back from my mom’s this weekend.”

I push the attack to the back of my mind and fight the urge to pull my phone out and text Maya. She’s sleeping anyway, I tell myself. But thinking about it makes me feel a little better about the situation. It’s the same thing I’ve done every single time I’ve thought about texting her the past few weeks.

Half the time, I still send the text anyway. But the rest of the time? The rest of the time I rein it in and keep from turning into a stalker myself.

“You buying the beer?” Jake looks at me expectantly, and without waiting for an answer, he says, “Let me get changed and we’ll head over. I can sleep at your place for a bit before we get started.”

He gets up and leaves the room, leaving me there with my thoughts.

Jake is a good guy and I can’t work out why he’s still single. Sure, his ex fucked him over. But that was years ago, before Maya came to work at the department.

What was her name? I scratch my head trying to remember, but it just won’t come to me. She’d just found out she was pregnant which should have been a wonderful announcement from his friend, but Jake showed up at my house in the middle of the night in tears when shit went down.

He hadn’t been planning on proposing or anything, from what he told me, but it still hurt. She admitted to cheating on him, and it wasn’t his.

Jake, blindsided by her betrayal, ended up selling his stuff and moving into this one-bedroom bungalow.

The two of us have had more hours than I can count discussing everything that happened to us, and a lot of what Jake has dissected has been his relationship with what’s her name.

Jake told me he never loved her. He was just using her to make up for something he did. Something he never should have done. And no matter how many drinks we share, he never opens up about it. As far as I know, no one knows who he was trying to replace by sleeping with her in the first place.

But I can understand it because I know that’s what I did with Ashley. Ran away from my past and chose someone I couldn’t have a future with.

Only I’d been worse than Jake.

Because I’d used that to hurt Maya.

And I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself.

If I can’t forgive myself, how the fuck am I supposed to expect Maya to give me a chance?

13

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