4. Chapter 3
To love is to be vulnerable.
“Talk to me,” Tiago murmured next to Bradford, drawing him out of his own stupid thoughts.
“What? You see something?” He shifted his long-range binoculars to the left, wondering if he’d missed an incoming boat. They were about a mile out on the water, using a fishing boat as cover to watch potential smuggling.
This was a relatively easy case for them. They’d been hired by a friend with the DEA to simply watch and report, something out of the ordinary for Redemption Harbor Security. But he was glad for the slower pace because his head was all over the place.
“Yeah, you , not paying attention.”
“Shit, sorry.” He scrubbed a hand over his face as he set his binoculars down on the console. They were in a forty-foot yacht they’d borrowed, so even with the waves lapping against them from nearby boaters and jet skiers, they didn’t feel the impact of any wakes much.
“Not looking for an apology. Just want to talk.” Tiago was back to looking out of his binos, and for that Bradford was grateful .
He didn’t want to look at anyone while he talked. “Just thinking about Hope.”
“I figured. You reach out to her again?”
“Not since the last conversation.” If he could even call it that.
He’d seen her on the news as someone of interest to the FBI, but it turned out it was all a misunderstanding.
Or that was what she’d told him weeks later.
He had a feeling something had gone down with a story she was writing, but whatever it was, she wasn’t talking about it.
Not to him anyway.
She had responded to more texts at least, a big change from the last few years of mostly silence.
“Still can’t believe you guys got married and didn’t tell us,” Tiago said into the stillness between them.
Didn’t matter that there were boaters nearby, right now felt like it was just the two of them out on the water.
“I didn’t know how to tell you guys.” A few months ago their friend Berlin had told all their friends at a party, so the cat was out of the bag so to speak.
Though why anyone would want to put a cat in a bag was beyond him.
“I always knew you were into her.”
“Didn’t really make it a secret.” Hope had been assigned to them when she’d been in Afghanistan, and he and his team had been overly protective of her.
She’d been there to do a job, sure, but it had been clear that she gave a shit about what she was reporting on.
She cared too much sometimes, it seemed.
Just not about him. At least not the way he cared about her. Or maybe she wasn’t capable, he still wasn’t sure.
Tiago snorted and set his binos down to look at him. “You really didn’t. Still…could’ve invited us all to the wedding.”
“It wasn’t like that. It was just a drunken thing in Vegas.” Not exactly true, but he didn’t want to talk about this with one of his best friends. There was a reason he’d never told anyone—and then Berlin and her big mouth had decided to tell the whole crew.
“I’m gonna call bullshit on that, but…you should go see her. She’s stateside now. Has been for a while.”
He knew that. His Redemption Harbor hacker friends Berlin and Hailey had sent him a plethora of information on Hope in the last couple weeks. They were clearly trying to be helpful, but it hurt to read so much about her and know that he’d never have a future with her.
“You need to cut ties, to divorce her. Seriously.” Tiago’s voice was hard now, out of character for the laid-back man who’d had his six more times than he could count.
“I know you were into her years ago, but you deserve a future, B. You deserve to find real happiness and you can’t do it if you’re hanging on to part of your past.”
Bradford blinked at the vehemence in his friend’s voice, then looked away, picked up his own binoculars.
Of course there was a whole lot of nothing going on at the small port.
Normally they didn’t see anything until after sunset, but they were still watching this place in shifts round the clock because that was what they’d been paid to do.
“Thank you for the advice,” he finally said.
Deep down he knew he needed to cut ties like his friend said.
Because yeah, he was hanging on to the past and he couldn’t move forward the way he was.
But this was Hope, and there would never be any way for him to move forward without her.
She was in his blood, a part of him. “She’s the first woman I ever loved,” he added.
To be fair, she was the only woman he’d ever loved.
“Shit,” Tiago murmured. “I didn’t realize that.”
Yep. And that was what made it even harder. He’d fallen so hard and fast, had never seen her coming. She’d knocked him on his ass and he’d never really gotten back up from the impact of her.
When his phone buzzed in his pocket, he pulled it out, frowned at the incoming text from Berlin. He muttered a curse, went to show the screen to Tiago and got another one from Hailey with the same incoming alert so he read that one.
Then he got one from Skye, of all people, with similar information.
Hope’s dad had just died and the funeral was this Saturday. Two days from now.
“Who the hell is texting you so much?” Tiago frowned over at him.
He held out his cell phone and showed him the screen.
Tiago blinked. “Speak of the devil.”
Yep, pretty much. “I need to get someone to cover this shift for me.”
Tiago already had his phone out. “I got that part handled. Just go pack up your shit in the cabin so when it’s time to go, you’re ready.”
Nodding, he headed down into the cabin and did just that. Tiago was right, it was time to figure things out with Hope, to finally sever ties. But he also knew how hard this would be for her with her dad dying.
He wasn’t going to let her go through it alone. Because he knew she wouldn’t call any of her friends, would simply suffer through losing her dad and not tell anyone. She was so damn determined to take on the world alone, but that wasn’t happening.
Not for this.
It was okay to need people and he simply wished she understood that.