“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I mumble to myself as I pull off the suit, stuffing it into the trunk.
“Tate.” He calls out and slowly I turn around. “Sorry about last week.”
“What about you acting like a child?”
“Yeah, look, let me make it up to you?”
“How?”
“Go out with me again. This time, it can be like a real date. I’ll come and pick you up.”
I don’t answer him, just continue looking at him.
“Look, if after this one you want nothing to do with me, I’ll leave you alone.”
Why do I feel like I’m going to regret this?
“Z.” Someone calls for me in the lounge’s front. Pausing, I look from the girl who is crawling onto my lap and seeing Elias standing in the doorway.
“Officer save-a-life.” I joke him and he tilts his head. I can tell that he has something burning underneath the surface, but I’m not really sure if I want to know. “What are you doing so far from home… and playing a civilian?”
“I need to talk to you.”
It makes me laugh. There’s nothing he could say that would make me have a serious conversation with him right now. We’ve had one understanding over the years, we don’t bring up our past…
“I’m serious, Zane.”
“I don’t know what would cause you to come so far south of the tracks.” The girl giggles in my ear before she nibbles on it.
“It’s Tate.”
Okay, so there’s nothing he could say, except for that.
The girl gasps as I shove her off of me and sit up, resting my elbows on my knees. “What is it?”
“Do you have somewhere we can talk?”
I nod my head before standing. I turn and let him follow me down the hallway towards the office. Stopping in front of the chapel and opening the box.
“What’s this?” He asks.
“Just put your shit inside.” I snap at him, growing impatient with him by the second.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t fucking trust you.”
He laughs. “Fair enough.” But he finally does so, reluctantly, and I lock the box, slipping the key into my pocket and having him follow me into the office.
I sit down in the chair nodding to one of the other ones and he sits.
“What’s going on with her?”
“Um.” He starts, but hesitates. “Can we just agree that the whole ‘don’t kill the messenger thing’ is upheld in this situation?”
“Elias, start talking.”
“I’m worried about her. And I dunno who to talk to. And after last time we talked…”
