Chapter 30
It felt good to be home. The mission had taken much longer to complete than planned.
There had been several setbacks on the transportation not arriving, breaking down, as well as the target wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
The target had been tipped off of their arrival, and it became a game of cat and mouse for almost three weeks and across several countries.
But now Duane Flagg was in custody, and they had been cleared to come home.
Rob was anxious to see June. He missed her kisses and floral scent. Three weeks without her bright smile had been hell. It was over now. He was home. She might be a little peeved at him for not contacting her over the past three weeks, but he had the perfect excuse.
“Someone looks excited to be home,” Jack ribbed him as they disembarked from the plane. They still had to debrief, but within a few hours, he could see June. He should probably text her to let her know he hadn’t died. Actually, on second thought, a call was better.
“Three weeks away from my girl, yeah.”
“I second that,” Luke said, coming up behind them.
“Me too,” Greg chimed in. “I already texted Zoey. She’s going to meet me at the office in two hours. I hate being away from her so long.”
“Same. Shay should be there around the same time. What about June, will she be there?”
“No, I haven’t spoken to her since before I left.” All the men stopped walking and stared at him in a mixture of shock and horror.
“She knows you left though, right?” Luke asked carefully.
“I mean, I didn’t actually talk to her about it. There wasn’t time, and she was asleep after—” He wasn’t going to tell the guys they’d had sex. It wasn’t any of their business. “So, I grabbed my stuff and came straight here.”
“Have you tried talking to her since you left?”
Rob gulped under all the penetrating gazes. He felt like a bug under a jar being studied. “No, there hasn’t really been time,” Rob defended.
All the guys groaned in unison, and Rob suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Let me get this straight, you slept with her and left without a word for three weeks?” Jack chuckled evilly while shaking his head. “Dude, you’re a dead man.”
“I didn’t say I slept with her,” Rob was quick to defend, but it was useless; the guys already knew.
“You didn’t have to. It was practically written on you when you got on the plane, and you said she was sleeping. It was the middle of the night when I called.”
Damn, leave it his friend to pay attention to detail. “I have a perfectly good excuse for my lack of communication.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” Luke mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back to listen.
“I had a family emergency, and in my haste to get there, I forgot my phone charger.”
“That’s it? Dude, you were Special Forces and that’s the best lie you could come up with? You could have bought a new charger on this fake trip or used someone else’s phone.”
“Fine, while I was on this trip, I was in a car accident and in a coma.”
“Where are your bruises?” Rob turned to Barry who had asked the question. “Shouldn’t there be bruising after a coma-induced car accident?”
Maybe he hadn’t thought his excuse out as well as he’d thought.
“I have a suggestion.”
“What?” Rob looked at Barry eagerly, needing some sage advice.
“Tell her the truth.”
“You know I can’t do that. Secrecy, remember?”
“Shay and Zoey know what we do. How much do you care about June?”
“What kind of question is that?” Nor was it any of their business.
“An honest one. One only you can answer. The way I see it, the only way for June to forgive you is to tell her the truth. The question is, do you care enough to tell her, or let her go because I’m sure at this point, she’s already written you off.”
“Yeah, having sex with a woman and radio silence afterward is a huge no-no. I do that, but women know what to expect from me,” Jack added his own thoughts. “June is a forever kind of girl. Having sex then you disappearing was a dick move.”
“We got called in,” Rob continued to defend, but it was a lame excuse. Once they were overseas though, he’d stayed focused on the mission, wanting to get it over with quickly so he could come home to June. He had just lost track of time and everything but the mission.
He’d been so used to it just being him for most of his life. Again, not an excuse.
“You could have woken her and said there was a work emergency, or left a note or text. There’s a bunch of stuff you could have done differently.”
Shit, he hadn’t thought about that. It had been a dick move.
Rob knew he should have tried reaching out to her.
June wasn’t experienced with men. She would have taken his silence as ‘wham bam, thank you, ma’am’ when nothing could be further from the truth.
He would have to do some serious groveling.
“I fucked up.”
“No shit, you did. So, the question remains, are you going to make up for it?”
It wasn’t a question. Yes, he was. He would tell June the truth about what he did for a living. After that, she would understand why he hadn’t reached out to her.
The only thing he wouldn’t tell her about was looking into her brother, which was still turning into a dead end. Nick hadn’t gotten back to him yet, which was unusual. It didn’t matter anymore though. June’s brother wasn’t important to him; June herself was.