Page 43 of Nixon’s Promise

“I don’t understand what you’re asking, Nix. I don’t have a say in this. Does it freak me out thinking about you leaving for however long and not knowing if you’re in danger? Yeah, it kinda does. But this is who you are.”

He studied me for a bit, and by the way he was looking at me, I’d say I failed whatever test he’d given me.

“What do you mean, this is who I am?”

“You’re the kind of man who helps his neighbor with her woes of teenage drama. You saw a kid who was in dire need of some male interaction and guidance and without question you took him under your wing. You saw a broken teenage girl and didn’t hesitate to wade in. You’re a man who runs into a fire when everyone else is running away.

“So, whatever this job Alec offered you? I suspect it will be protecting people. Which is what you were made to do. It isn’t my place to question. If I have the opportunity, my place would be to support that choice and simply miss you and wait for you to come home.”

“My ex-wife left me because of my job,” he told me as if he hadn’t dropped a bomb.

His ex-wife?

Nixon Swagger had been married? Holy shit on a shingle.

“What?”

I had to have heard him wrong. If he’d been married, surely someone around town would’ve known. It would be front-page news for the small weekly Kent County paper. They wouldn’t pass up the story of the century.

“From the beginning, she’d throw a fit when I couldn’t tell her where I was going. I thought it was because she loved me and was worried. Then her fits turned into knock-down drag-outs as the years went by. She’d get in my face and tell me I didn’t trust her, that other wives knew more than she did. Which was absolutely the truth. They did know more, and they did because their husbands knew their wives understood the need for operational security. Not Alison. She wanted to know so she could brag. She loved to play the “my husband’s a Navy SEAL” card. She did it often and it pissed me off. Her final excuse before leaving me was she couldn’t handle the secrets between us.”

My jaw might’ve been on the floor. I wasn’t sure how to process all of what he told me. There was a lot there. None of it good. His ex sounded like a bitch.

“You were married?”

“For two years.”

Wow.

“Sorry, but she sounds like a bitch.”

“She was.” His lips twitched.

“Then why’d you marry her?”

“Honestly?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t marry her because I loved her. I married her because she was loyal and stood by me during a time when I wasn’t sure I’d ever see the good in humanity again. But the woman I dated and the woman I was married to were very different. I slipped my ring on her finger and she changed. Night and day difference.”

I was a little sad that Nixon had married a woman he claimed not to love. But deep down, in a secret place, a sliver of me was happy. It was mean of me to think that, but I couldn’t compete with the ghost of a woman Nixon once loved. Not that I was entirely sure where things were leading between us, but still, no one liked to think the man they had the hots for was in love with another woman.

“I’m glad you had someone to stand by you. But just to say, she left you—that’s not very loyal.”

“Let’s just say I was an asshole and didn’t leave her with much of a choice but to leave.”

Nixon turned and went back to his burgers, leaving me to ponder what he meant about being an asshole. There were many ways a man could express to a woman that a relationship was over, without actually telling her with words. I didn’t think he was the type to cheat, though that was one way to be a supreme dick and convey the end of a marriage.

He pulled his dinner off the grill, told me he’d be right back, and took the platter into the house.

I pushed away the thoughts of bitchy ex-wives and all the ways Nixon could be an asshole to make his wife leave him, and started thinking about how I’d feel if Nixon got called away tomorrow and I didn’t know where he was or how long he’d be gone.

No one would tell me if he was hurt, I’d never know until he came home and told me himself. That made me a little uneasy. And God forbid if something worse happened and he wasn’t coming home, I wouldn’t know that, either. Now that made me downright nauseous.

I’d spent two weeks avoiding him. And in those two weeks I’d realized a few things. And what I’d discovered scared the hell out of me. I’d thought about him every day. I’d wondered what he was doing. If he’d made progress on any of his projects. Was he thinking about me? But most of all, I’d missed him.

That was the part that freaked me out. How was it possible I’d missed him so badly when I’d only known him a short amount of time?