Chapter 37
thirty-seven
. . .
LANE
Sutton’s car wasn’t in the garage when I got home, so she must’ve still been at the ranch. I pulled out my phone and shot her a quick text, asking when she’d be back, but before I could close the door and head inside, she pulled in.
I waited for her to park and get out, then we went inside together.
She was practically vibrating, and I could tell something was on her mind.
“What’s going on?” I asked, stopping her in the middle of the living room, lightly gripping her upper arms and turning her toward me.
For a beat, she didn’t answer, instead gnawing on her bottom lip, eyes looking anywhere but at me. Mine scanned her face, searching for what exactly, I didn’t know.
“I’ve never asked before because I figured it wasn’t any of my business,” she started, “but…I need to know what happened with you and Addie.”
My brows drew together, but the lie fell easily from my mouth. “Nothing happened.”
Immediately, I wanted to take it back. Why the fuck was I lying? Sutton already knew the worst thing I’d ever done. This hardly cracked the top ten of my greatest hits of bad decisions.
Sutton sighed and stepped away from me, walking over to one of the chairs and sitting down, propping her elbows on her knees.
Choosing the chair versus the couch was a tactical choice on her part, ensuring I couldn’t cuddle up next to her.
I hated what the idea that she needed space for this conversation did to me.
“Lane,” she said, her tone imploring. “Something happened. Otherwise, why would she warn me to stay away from you?” She has a point there. “And I can’t help thinking everything that has gone wrong since has her fingerprints all over it.”
“That’s not—” I started but bit off what I’d been about to say when she gave me a stern look.
Besides, this wasn’t the first time someone was coming to me with concerns about Addie. Maybe it was time to get past my biases and start taking the opinions of the people in my life seriously.
“We met on a case,” I started.
Sutton waved me off. “I know about that.”
“How?”
“Aspen and Trey.”
A growl emanated from my chest. My goddamn meddling family.
“So you know her husband was killed in the line of duty, and she also suffered a gunshot wound?” She nodded, and I continued, skipping over the whole backstory. “We got pretty close on that case. We all logged some incredibly long hours, but Addie was relentless.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Sutton mused. “I mean, if Finn hadn’t killed that asshole after he shot you and he got away, I wouldn’t have rested until he was dead or brought to justice.”
“Even then? When we were nothing?”
“We’ve always been something, Lane,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We both just wasted a long time acting like we weren’t.”
Fair enough.
“I’d do the same for you.”
She chuckled lightly. “Baby, you already have.”
I couldn’t help grinning, some of the anxiety loosening from my chest. “True. My point is, when she was laid up in the hospital, I went to see her. And when she was released, I visited her at home. I felt this weird compulsion to check in on her, you know?”
“But…why?”
“When you were assaulted, I couldn’t protect you, and I’d never felt more fucking useless in my entire life.
I’d vowed then and there to never allow that to happen again, and it’s been like a knife to the heart every time since when a woman has died or been harmed on my watch.
I hadn’t protected Addie from that bullet, but I could be a friend.
A constant presence to remind her she wasn’t alone.
Besides, she was…in a really bad place mentally.
I wanted to make sure she didn’t harm herself.
” I dropped onto the couch and mirrored Sutton’s body language, scrubbing a hand over my face.
“Maybe a year after everything had gone down, we…slept together.” I watched Sutton carefully, gauging her reaction.
She didn’t appear upset or shocked. Merely…
resigned. Accepting. As though she’d anticipated this being the case.
“But it only happened once. Afterward, I told her we could only be friends. We both agreed our professional relationship wasn’t worth messing up. ”
“She might have verbally agreed, but clearly she didn’t feel the same way.”
“Maybe not. For a while, though, things were good. We started consulting with each other on cases. Nothing major, just running ideas by each other, talking things through when the details got all twisted up in our minds. I can admit, it was nice to have that—someone who understood. Someone who was in a similar position. And I didn’t feel any pressure with her to be on all the time like I did with my own deputies. ”
“So it became more than a friendship.”
“No. Yes? I don’t fucking know, sunny, I really don’t. But we never crossed that physical line again, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then why’d you ask her to be your date to Crew’s wedding?”
“Because I knew you’d be there. And, okay, I guess I did like her, but…it didn’t hold a candle to how much I love you.”
I’d never admitted that out loud, had never planned to. As far as everyone else was concerned, I’d done it because I’d been trying to move on from Sutton, not get her back.
For years, I’d assumed our story had ended, that the thread of fate that bound us together had been cut and was therefore irreparable. I couldn’t imagine where we’d be if I’d never been shot. Me almost dying reminded us both that the connection between us was still very real and very much alive.
She shook her head, though her lips twitched with a barely restrained smile, like she liked that I’d wanted to make her jealous. “I wanted to fucking kill you both when I saw you together.”
“Exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping for. Well, not the death part. But god, sunny, at that point, I’d spent years shoving down my feelings for you.
And Addie was a good friend. I knew we’d have fun together, and if it pissed you off enough to finally talk to me, all the better.
But maybe I also hoped that if I tried, I’d be able to get over you. ”
“Did you ever get any inkling she was, like, madly in love with you?”
I shook my head. “That’s not what’s happening here, Sutton.”
But it was, wasn’t it? I was denying it because I was terrified of being the reason Sutton was in this position.
“Then what do you think is happening here, Lane?” Sutton pressed.
“Because there’s all this shit swirling around us.
Someone sending us creepy notes, the lingerie, framing me for these break-ins?
Someone was watching me at work. All of this shit is personal, and it’s all designed to drive a wedge between us.
We’ve done a damn good job of not letting it, but if you continue to bury your head in the sand, refusing to even consider that she’s behind this, I don’t know how much longer I can stay here. ”
“So you’re going to leave me,” I said flatly.
“I don’t want to, Lane. But if you can’t at least entertain the idea, if you can’t let Trey and Aspen lay out what they’ve found, or let Trey do some digging…I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep living my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“There’s no way she’s in love with me, sunny.”
“Then you’re even more delusional than I thought.”
I reared back like she’d slapped me. I was a law enforcement officer. If anyone in the world had their eyes wide open to the cruelties and harsh realities of this world, it was me. I wasn’t delusional.
“Or maybe you’re jealous and looking for a problem with her when there isn’t one.”
The moment the words left my mouth, I knew they’d been the wrong thing to say, especially because I knew how far off the mark they were.
“I don’t need to be jealous when I already have you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I didn’t mean that.”
“If you love me, Lane, I need you to start looking at this like a cop instead of a man who caught himself in a sticky situation and wants to brush it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Getting to her feet, she crossed over to me, carding her fingers through my hair. I wrapped my arms around her waist and rested my face against her stomach.
“I’ll call Trey.”
She hummed in approval.
“I’m going to go up to Boise for a while.”
I pulled back and gaped up at her. “What? No. You’re not leaving.”
“I think it’s for the best if I take myself out of the picture for a while.”
“You’re running.”
Sutton cupped my cheeks in her palms, her thumbs rasping over my beard. “I’m not running. I’m giving us space to collect ourselves and approach this logically. I can’t think straight when you’re near, and obviously your judgement is clouded too.”
“Is not,” I protested, albeit weakly.
She chuckled. “If things quiet down while I’m gone, great. If not, well…either way, we’ll have our answer on Addie.”
“It’s not Addie.”
Fucking hell. Why couldn’t I give it up, even now, when the love of my life was about to walk out that door? When I had no idea when—or if—she’d ever come back? And why was I fighting her on this instead of getting on my goddamn knees and begging her not to go?
“It’s not forever,” she said in an attempt to placate me.
I squeezed her tighter. “I don’t want you to go, but…maybe you’re right.”
One of her hands slipped up to my hair again and tugged. “Holy shit. Did the Lane Lawless just admit he was wrong?”
“No. Technically, I admitted you were right. Not the same thing at all.”
With a giggle, she bent and gave me a slow, lingering kiss. “Whatever you say.”
Eventually, I let her go, though I trailed after her like a puppy dog while she packed her things and loaded Boots into his cat carrier.
“I don’t like this,” I said as I helped her carry her things out to her car.
With her bags safely stowed in the hatch and Boots strapped into the front seat, she turned to me, snaking her arms around my waist.
“I don’t either,” she admitted. “But right now…I can’t see another way.”
I nodded in understanding. “Text me when you get there?”
“Of course,” she said, rising onto her tiptoes to kiss me. Anchoring my hand at the back of her head, I took it deeper, plunging my tongue into her mouth and exploring lazily, wanting to brand her taste on my memory.
Wondering if it was the last time I’d have it.
When I pulled back, I rested my forehead against hers. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she replied.
Then she stepped away, and I reluctantly released her, watching as she drove away, not going back inside until her taillights had disappeared around the bend of my driveway.
The last thing I wanted to do was go back into that empty house, now filled with nothing but memories of us. Instead, I armed the house’s security system, got in my truck, and headed for Trey’s.
“You look like shit,” he said when I walked into his kitchen, where he was in the middle of making dinner.
All my older brother ever did was eat, work, and sleep. Every time I came over, he was either here or in his batcave.
“You need to get out more,” I quipped.
He held his hands up. “Not arguing with you there.”
Beelining for his fridge, I grabbed a beer, then walked around and dropped onto a stool. Twisting the cap off, I lifted the bottle to my lips and drank deeply, draining half of it in one go.
“Fuck, I needed that.”
“Rough day?”
“Sutton left,” I admitted.
“Like…for good?”
Hitching a shoulder in an I don’t know gesture, I laid it all out for him. Her questions and concerns about Addie. Her insistence that I was willfully ignorant of the situation and Addie’s likely involvement because I was…what? Harboring feelings for her still? Hardly.
“I do not think of Addie like that,” I told Trey.
“Of course not.”
His tone suggested he thought I was full of shit, and I glared at him. “You don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” he said, his focus sticking to the stove in front of him, where he was sauteing vegetables in garlic and oil.
Something was in the oven too. Salmon, if I had to guess based on the scent wafting through the air.
“It’s that I can’t understand why you’re so adamant Addie has nothing to do with this.
What are you clinging to? Why are you holding Addie on this pedestal?
You got your girl, Lane. Sutton is yours.
But you’re going to fucking lose her if you keep this shit up. ”
I shifted back, the legs of the stool scraping against the floor, my head falling to the countertop with a thunk.
He was right, of course. What was I clinging to?
“Maybe,” I started, my words a bit muffled by the angle of my head, “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?” he asked.
Lifting my head, I said, “Of being wrong. Of having completely misread her and this entire situation.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being wrong, Lane. It happens. Now that you’ve realized it, you can work on fixing it.”
“And how do you suggest I do that? How do we prove…anything? Actually, what are we even trying to prove?”
Trey grinned, like I’d just asked a question only he had the answer for, and he was going to deeply enjoy schooling me. Before he could, though, the oven timer went off, and he withdrew the fish, turned off the burner, and began plating everything.
“First, we eat. And then, we get to work.”