Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
At the mention of Luke, more guilt coils around me. It’s like a vice that won’t stop squeezing.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks after five or so minutes of silent driving.
“Fine,” I grunt.
“How’s the writer’s block?” he asks.
“Better. Getting there.”
“Jax,” he says bluntly. “You know you can talk to me, right?”
He’s right when it comes to most things. If it’s about research for a book or memories from our time in service, I can share anything with this man, but if I told him I’d kissed Luke’s daughter and wanted to kiss her again, do more than kissing…
“Let me guess. It’s about a woman.”
He says this as a joke. Everybody knows I’ve never been much of a dater. As my brothers-in-arms dated, married, and settled down, I became more convinced that side of life would never be for me. I tried in the early days, but nobody ever made me feel anything.
It’s because they weren’t Zoey. I see that now, but I couldn’t know that in advance. Zoey was a little kid the last time I seriously tried dating, and it ended civilly, not with an argument or any drama. It just quietly fizzled out. I couldn’t inflict my coldness on a woman, but I was wrong. I’m not cold. I just never found a woman to burn for.
“Whoa,” Peter says after a pause. “Is it about a woman? I was kidding, but you don’t seem like you’re in a kidding mood.”
Glancing at the GPS, I see we still have twenty minutes for our journey.
“I’ve met somebody,” I say cautiously, knowing I should stop. “But it’s complicated.”
“Is this why you’ve suddenly got writer’s block?”
“Maybe,” I say grimly. “Probably. Hell, definitely.”
“She must be quite a lady if she can distract you from your work.”
“She is. She’s beautiful, Peter. She’s funny. She’s smart. Honestly, she’s the sort of woman I can imagine spending my life with.”
I add the sort of part for his benefit, but there’s no sort of about it. She is the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.
“So what’s the issue? She’s not married, is she?”
“No,” I snap. “I take marriage seriously. Once someone takes those vows, it’s for life, or it should be.”
“So…”
He leaves it hanging as we stop at a red light. A couple walks across the road, hand in hand, the woman smiling up at the man. They don’t have to be ashamed. They don’t have to doubt.
Suddenly, I’m so pissed off at the whole world. At fate, destiny, or whatever, for making me want Zoey, Luke and Mallory’s daughter. For turning me into a traitor. Screw it. I can’t keep holding all this in.
“It’s Zoey,” I say.
Peter stares at me for a long time. I watch the road, but I can feel his eyes.
“Wait,” he says after a pause. “Do you mean Luke’s kid?”
“She’s not a kid anymore.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, Luke’s daughter.”
“Explain,” he snaps. “Jesus, Jax.”
I’ve gone too far to back out. As I drive through the rough neighborhood—the apartment blocks stacked close together, people drinking on the streets—I tell Peter all of it. I don’t hold anything back.
“I know I sound crazy, but I knew I had to have her the second I saw her. I knew she was the woman I’d been waiting for. I knew nobody else would ever compare. I’ve been trying to fight it, but we’ve been texting, and we kissed yesterday.”
Peter sighs. “I don’t know what to say. This is like… Hell, there’s no comparison.”
“I thought you were going to kick my ass.”
“You mean try to kick your ass? I’m not suicidal.”
“I didn’t plan on this. I didn’t choose to feel this way, but I can’t imagine letting her go.”
Not now that I’ve kissed her and seen how captivating she is when she’s trembling in a searing release.
“I don’t think I can talk about this right now,” Peter says. “I’m sorry, but I need time to process it.”
I almost demand an answer immediately to know how he feels, but that would only rush us closer to the inevitable conclusion. He’s going to hate me and tell me he can’t be my friend if I pursue her. Luke’s daughter. What a mess.
“That’s fair,” I grunt. “Let’s focus on our mission.”
I pull up outside the apartment building, Peter watching me while pretending not to. He keeps glancing at me as if he expects me to tell him it’s all a big joke, the unfunniest prank ever. We wait outside the building for somebody to leave and quickly dart inside. The man doesn’t question this. He’s jittery, head down, a junkie if I had to bet on it.
“What’s the plan if he’s home?” Peter asks.
“We put the fear of God in him. We let him know he might think he’s a scary man, but we’ve faced far worse than him. We threaten him to make him stop. He has no right to intimidate and scare my…”