Chapter 5
Chapter Five
brYCE
Istomped into my office, throwing the door closed behind me, but the satisfying slam I’d hoped for didn’t come, and I knew damn good and well why.
“We’re not talkin’ about this,” I stated as I rounded my desk and collapsed into my chair.
Sage slammed her hands on her hips and glared down at me. “When will you men learn? That ‘my word is law’ tone you like to use so much doesn’t do shit. If a woman wants answers, she’s gonna nag and bitch and whine until she gets them. And guess what, buddy. I’m gearing up for one hell of a nag.”
Lord deliver me from nosey ass women.
As if Sage wasn’t bad enough all on her own, her man, Xander Caine, a huge, burly son of a bitch, decided to wander in right behind her. “I heard shoutin’ earlier. What’s goin’ on?”
Leaning back in my chair, I linked my fingers and rested my hands on my gut. “What? Didn’t feel like being part of the drama in live time?”
Moving to one of the chairs in front of my desk, he took a seat then grabbed Sage by the waist and pulled her down into his lap. The changes that had taken place in the man over the past couple of months were astounding.
The former Army Ranger had been carrying around demons, living a life of solitude.
To outsiders, he seemed like a miserable bastard, but those of us who knew how it was understood he was struggling with something dark.
I—like the rest of the guys—wanted to help, but he’d never let us close enough to make a damn bit of difference.
Then Sage started at Alpha Omega, and the tiny little spitfire shined light on his cold, dark world.
He could still be a bastard when the mood struck—and it struck a lot—but his woman had a gift for putting the six-and-a-half-foot giant in his place.
He shrugged a massive shoulder and settled in. “When I hear more than one woman yellin’ at a time, I keep my distance until the dust settles.”
I shot him a death glare. “Coward.”
“Not a coward, just smart as hell. Now does someone want to fill me in or what?”
Sage gave me a look that said she wasn’t going to cut me any slack. Damn it. So much for being close friends.
“Turns out, our friend here has been keeping one hell of a secret.”
Xander turned his attention to his woman, curiosity evident. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Apparently, he never thought to tell any of us he’s married.”
He blinked, once, twice. “Sorry. I think I had a mini-stroke there. It sounded like you said Bryce is married.”
“Just met Mrs. Dixon in the flesh not ten minutes ago. She’s super pretty.”
Xander slowly looked back at me with such shock, if he hadn’t already been sitting, I had no doubt the big man could’ve been knocked over by a small breeze. “What the fuck?”
“Told your girl before you came in here that I wasn’t gonna talk about it, and I haven’t changed my mind in the past two minutes. Do me a favor and just leave it, yeah?”
“I don’t think so,” Sage started, but to my surprise, Xander acted before I could do something stupid, like blow up at one of my closest friends.
“That’s enough, shortcake. He said he doesn’t wanna talk about it, so let it go.”
“But—”
“Let it go,” he repeated, his tone hard and unrelenting, serious enough that Sage immediately stopped. But the look on her face showed she wasn’t happy about it.
She dragged her feet as he began to guide her from the office. Before he got her through the doorway, she looked back at me over her shoulder, her features marred with worry. “Bry . . . you’re okay, right?”
I offered her a wink, pasting the mask of unaffected charmer on my face. I’d gotten damn good at wearing it the past several years. “I’m good, gorgeous. Don’t worry about me.”
She didn’t appear to believe me, but let it go anyway, letting Xander lead her out of the office.
I waited approximately ten seconds after they disappeared before getting up and going in search of Hunter. The two of us needed to have words.
I found him a short while later, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“What the fuck did you think you were doin’ earlier, tellin’ everyone about Tessa?” I stopped inches away so we were almost nose to nose. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
“Back off, brother. I was doin’ you a favor.”
“By setting her up to be ambushed? How the hell was that a favor?”
He slammed the coffee mug down on the counter. “You never would’ve made a move and we both know it. You’d have sat on your ass and wasted this opportunity just like you wasted the last ten fuckin’ years.”
“So, what? You decided to air our dirty laundry?” I snarled through clenched teeth. “You know this shit’ll be spread all over town before the day’s out.”
“That was the plan,” he said drily. “Only one who’s ever stood in your way is you. Figured if the town was involved, you’d be forced into action. You wanna be pissed at me for that, go for it, but I made a call and I stand by it.”
I had to shove my hands into my pockets to keep from planting my fist into my oldest friend’s face. “It wasn’t your call to make. I was handling things just fine.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “You were? You mean by doin’ what she asked and leaving her alone after that one attempt you made?”
“Goddamn it, Hunt!”
“You fuckin’ heard her,” he snapped back.
“You heard her, man. I was standing right there. We all saw the misery on her face and the agony etched into yours when she laid all that shit out. I’ve been tellin’ you for years, brother.
Years. You need her. What I didn’t realize until today is that she needs you just as much.
And I don’t want to hear a goddamn thing about you not bein’ good enough or too damaged or some other bullshit excuse. She needs you. So fix this.”
The vein in my temple throbbed as the two of us entered into a stare-off, the silence growing oppressive.
“One day you’ll see I did the right thing, and when that day comes, I’ll be right here to say I told you so.”
With that parting shot, he left me standing alone in the breakroom. His words banged around inside my head until a dull ache built behind my eyes. Needing to escape the shit-storm swirling around inside me, I headed out of the breakroom and turned toward the lobby instead of going back to my desk.
I had a case I’d been working, a wife who suspected her husband of cheating and wanted proof so she could take him to the cleaners in a divorce settlement.
I had two choices. I could either stay at the office to deal with busybodies and dirty looks, or I could tail the dude and snap more pics of the nasty shit he liked to get up to with his side piece during his extended lunch break.
Usually, the thought of following this guy was enough to turn my stomach, but as I walked through the reception area and caught Rox giving me a death glare, I knew I’d done right, choosing the lesser of two evils.
Ignoring the flames shooting from Rox’s eyes, I moved past her, muttering, “Goin’ out on a job if anyone’s looking for me.”
“Mmmhmm,” she mumbled unhappily.
I exited without a backward glance, climbing into my truck and leaning over to make sure the digital camera was still tucked inside the console and the battery was charged, then I hit the road.
I blasted music the first half of the forty-five-minute drive to Richmond, hoping it would help clear my head.
When that didn’t work, I gave up the ghost and decided to torture myself by picturing the shattered expression on Tessa’s face earlier.
It was the least I deserved, considering all I’d put her through.
Hunter was right. I’d walked away from Tessa to punish myself.
But never in a million years had I stopped to consider the repercussions my actions would have on her.
I’d convinced myself she’d be better for it in the long run.
A woman as incredible as she was would move on.
She’d find another man, maybe start a family.
Although the thought of her building a life with someone else burned like acid in my veins, I wanted her to be happy. But I was also a selfish fuck.
I’d known exactly where she was when I’d returned home.
I could have found her and given her a divorce so she could be completely and totally free of me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
That one remaining link was all that held us together, and I couldn’t make myself break it.
She could have another man, they could have kids together, but as long as I had that piece of paper, he couldn’t make her his, not completely, anyway.
Like I said, I was a selfish fuck. Which made me even less deserving of her than I already was.
I rolled to a stop across the street from the diner in a not-so-good part of town and parked. After a quick search of my target’s credit card statements, I’d easily discovered that, even though he was loaded, he was a cheap bastard when it came to his affair.
Not wanting to risk taking his side piece somewhere where a member of his white-collared social circle might catch them, the guy always insisted on meeting up at this hole-in-the-wall eatery before taking her to the same seedy motel where you paid by the hour and renting the same shitty room.
I got a couple shots of them making out in a booth right beside the window and was just about to head over to the motel to plant a few bugs in the room and wait when my cellphone rang.
A quick glance at the display caused me to blow out a sigh before I engaged the call and put the phone to my ear.
“Hey Pop, how’s it goin’?”
“It’d be goin’ a whole hell of a lot better if I’d heard straight from the source that my son’s estranged wife was all of a sudden livin’ in the same town as him. But I guess that kinda news doesn’t warrant a call to your old man, huh?”
I let out a colorful curse. “Christ. Don’t tell me, Hunt called you.”
“That’s neither here nor there. What I want to know is why I didn’t hear about this from you.”