Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Miles
I drag myself from Chloe’s bed minutes before my alarm sounds. God knows, I don’t want to go but I promised her I would leave before Jake woke up. After using her bathroom, I rummage around on the floor, pulling my clothes on as I find them, folding hers and setting them on the edge of her dresser.
There’s no way I can leave without pressing my lips to hers, not after tasting her. Not after sleeping better than I have in far longer than I want to admit. Dropping to my knees at the side of her bed, I push the curly black mop from her face, the silk-like strands sifting through my fingers.
Chloe wrinkles her nose and purses her lips, settling them into a beautiful pout, one that she would wipe away if she were awake. One that would hover there on the edge of her mouth for a heartbeat until she replaced it with a smile.
I lean forward and feather my lips against hers. More than anything, I want to wake her, and yet I don’t. My flight to California leaves at noon, and the pile of work on my desk is higher than I have time to deal with it.
So, I sneak out of Chloe’s bedroom, out of her house, and into the dark, silent morning.
It’s not until I’m sitting behind Maggie’s wheel, my key in the ignition, poised to crank the engine over that I realize there’s no way I can pull this off. Maggie’s been better since Blake gave her a look, but no way in hell is she reliable enough to get me out of here without drawing attention. I release the clutch and put my back into her. Legs pumping, glutes screaming, I push with everything I have until we’re at the end of the block. It might seem like overkill, but when I jump in and crank the engine, the rumble echoes down the quiet street. I was right to take precautions. Hell, I probably would have been better off pushing her the four blocks to my apartment. At least I’d have gotten a workout in.
Thirty minutes later, showered and at my desk, I check into my flight. I should have done it yesterday, but there were more important things to do. Enough time and more than enough energy have gone to Aly. She’s taken far more from me than she had a right to.
I clear my head and focus on what’s right in front of me. There’s no use in getting ahead of myself and borrowing trouble.
“What time did you get in this morning?”
Erin pulls me from the file I’ve been picking apart. The preliminary breakdown I did on Africa, of course, revealed more issues that need to be addressed in order to move forward.
I glance at the top right of my computer screen and rub my fingertips across my eyes, clearing the fog. “Five, I think.” Is that right?
The two hours I’ve spent trying to get ahead this morning have managed to put me further behind with all the shit I’ve uncovered.
“Jesus, Miles, cut yourself some slack. Don’t you leave for San Diego this morning?” The smell of coffee fills the air as Erin tips her travel mug to her lips. “We can move things around, put some other people on this project. You don’t have to do it all.”
But she’s wrong. I do. The compulsion to finish the appraisal, to make sure the assessment is correct and complete—the level of detail exhaustive—is ramped up because of the other fire on my horizon. It’s unacceptable to miss even the smallest detail.
“It’s no problem. I—” My phone screen lights up with a call from California. At this hour, a call from the West Coast can’t be ignored. “Erin, I need to take this.” I stand, swipe my phone from my desk, and answer as I walk to one of the conference rooms, shutting the door behind me. “Hey, Ryan. Did I forget to send you my flight details, or?—”
“No, no. I got them when I dragged my ass out of bed Saturday morning, but we need to push your trip off,” the lawyer says.
Ryan Purdue is the lead on Aly’s defense team. I don’t know how her parents found him or if they just lucked out, but honestly, I don’t think there’s a better guy for this case.
“What? Why?” I rake my fingers through my hair.
“Right? Serious kick in the ass, but prosecution is pushing hard for prison time. They’ve been digging deep, pulling old cases to cite. They want life for her,” he explains. “My guess is, they don’t understand your angle. It’d make things a whole lot easier on them if you weren’t so…” He trails off, struggling to find the right term.
Supportive . Involved . Guilt-ridden . Any of them could apply.
“Jesus Christ, Ryan. I’m the one who should be held responsible. The whole thing is my fucking fault.” The conference rooms at Fire Born are soundproof by design, as the shit we tend to discuss around here is sensitive at the very least, but I suck in a calming breath and drop my volume anyway. “I missed all the signs. They were right there, begging for me to notice and I didn’t. The blood is on my hands.”
Ryan’s strained breathing is just barely perceptible, but as seconds tick by, I can’t help but check the screen of my phone to see if the call dropped.
“You didn’t know, Miles. Aly’s doctor, the nurses, if they had no indication, how can you think you should have seen the breadth of her sickness?”
My teeth grind together, my jaw sawing back and forth. “We were married. I lived with her, saw them every fucking day.” Emotion clogs my throat.
Ryan’s tone softens. In the time we’ve been working together, he’s been almost more of a friend to me than anything. “And why was that? Why were you married to her? Don’t forget the depths of her deception. Don’t forget what Aly did to make that happen. Your support, the way you stand by her, is commendable. It certainly goes above and beyond. But, Miles, after this round of testimony, I think it’s best for you to let it go. Take a step back. You changed your career, moved across the country. It’s time to live your life.”
My shoulders sag under the weight of his words. The truth in them is raw and painful. “Yeah.”
“I’ll call when I have something more concrete, date-wise. I’m sorry.” Ryan blows out a tight breath and ends the call.
I stand still for a minute, for five, maybe ten. Time seems to spill away as I try to reconcile the things Ryan said with the emotions I have shoved deep down inside.
With three soft raps, the door creaks open just wide enough for Erin’s concern to bleed in. “Everything okay?”
I force a tight grin, knowing she’ll see right through it. “Not yet, but it’ll be fine. I, uh… My trip is postponed, so no need to reassign anything. I just need to cancel my flight, and then I’ll jump back in.”
Erin doesn’t step aside as I approach the door. In fact, she slips through the narrow opening and closes the door behind her. “Why don’t you go home? You look exhausted.”
I am emotionally wrecked, but I can’t. “That’s not going to work.” I put my hands up, palms out, as she opens her mouth to protest. “I appreciate it, Erin, and I get what you’re saying, but I can’t just go home and wallow.”
“I’m not saying you should wallow, but?—”
“I know. I know you’re not, but now, more than ever, I need to throw myself into work. Keep my mind on something else.” I shake my head and then meet her concerned gaze. “It would kill me to be idle right now.”
Concern softens into something closer to understanding, and Erin finally nods. “Okay. But promise me you’ll kick out of here early today. Take a nap. Hang out on the beach. Anything. There are much better ways to distract yourself than working a thirteen-hour day on situation analysis.”
I shift under her focused attention, uncomfortable with being on the receiving end of what feels way too much like pity. “We’ll see how far I get.” With that, I stalk back to my desk, pop in my earbuds, and cancel my travel plans.
Erin and Ryan—they were both right. I should have left the office at noon, stolen Chloe and Jake from school, and spent the day out here in the sand. Twenty-twenty hindsight and all that.
“Miles, catch,” Jake yells, heaving the rugby ball.
His lateral toss is improving. Big-time.
I jog a couple steps forward and pass it back to him. “Now, kick it and see if Bronson can field it.” Sand shifts beneath my feet as I walk backward to where Chloe is perched on a blanket. “Are there any cookies left?”
Chloe opens the plastic shell from the grocery store and offers me the last one. “Thanks for this. I don’t know what it was about today, but something just felt off, you know?”
I break the chocolate chip cookie in half and hand Chloe a piece as I plop my ass down next to her.
It’s a small thing, but I love that she reaches past the piece I offer and takes the smaller chunk, mumbling, “Thanks.”
I glance down the beach, checking on Jake’s whereabouts, before relaxing into the hand I have propped behind her back. “I do. I hated thinking that I wouldn’t see you again for a while. It made sneaking out this morning even worse.” I offer a weak smile because I hate sneaking around. I hate anything not fully honest, open, and up-front. Which makes me feel like an even bigger asshole for doing the exact opposite, but I’m not ready. It’s too much. Too raw.
Chloe pops the last bite of cookie into her mouth and eyes me while she chews. Her brows pinch together. “Why wouldn’t you have seen me?” she asks.
And it slams me in the face that I didn’t even tell her I was leaving town.
Not that I planned on sleeping with her last night, but that would have been pretty shitty to slip out from between her sheets and answer her phone call from the other side of the country. No warning. No explanation.
My beard rasps against my palm as I run my hand down my face. “I was supposed to fly out to California today. My trip got postponed at the last minute, so…”
“Oh. I had no idea.”
How would she? I was a schmuck and fucking hid it from her.
“So, you’ll go later? For work stuff?”
My hesitance to respond is just enough that she nods once and turns back to look down the beach to where Jake is tossing the ball with some other kid, Bronson running between them. I should suck it up and tell her. Lay out the reasons behind my stellar hangover at the rugby game. Explain why I couldn’t hang with her and her friends that night. And just tell her about a cross-country trip that I purposely kept from her.
I’m not proud of the choice, but I don’t do any of those things. Instead, I take advantage of the fact that as a former Special Forces wife, she knows there’s shit we don’t talk about. Things we just can’t. I might not be on a SEAL team anymore, but Chloe knows from talking to Erin that we still deal in some hairy shit.
For now, it might be better if she doesn’t know what has me in knots. That I lose sleep at night, thinking about all the ways I’ve failed.