Page 39 of Cash

I didn’t want children, but for some reason right then, I wanted to want them. I wished I was a different kind of man, one who didn’t have a tractor trailer load of abandonment issues.

Before I could stop myself, my mind wandered to Stella. She said she didn’t want kids, but I wondered if she’d ever change her mind. If she’d find a man, fall in love, settle down, and have children. As crazy as it sounded, she’d make a great mother.

The protective lioness. Oh yeah, I could totally picture her stabbing someone in the throat if they stepped out of line with her offspring.

“I’m not sure what’s going on but I haven’t seen you smile in damn near seven months and whatever’s happening with your face right now is pretty scary,” Jonas jibed.

I hadn’t kept track, but I was pretty sure I’d smiled in the last seven months.

Maybe.

Even with Penny now in my life and getting to know her there wasn’t much to smile about. Sometimes it still didn’t feel real. After that first day, we hadn’t talked about the past. Penny was all for starting a brother-sister relationship in the here and now. Some days she felt like a sister, other days, like a new person I was getting to know. There was no familiar pull, no twinge of awareness we shared blood, but there was a hint of protectiveness.

It was an entirely different kind of remorse knowing you gutted a woman entirely undeserved. Then there was this nagging guilt, worse than anything I’d ever felt that she’d run—not only from me but from the mission. I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly I’d hurt her, how much it would take for a woman like Lore to bolt instead of staying and fighting.

Lore didn’t back down.

She gave as good as she got.

But she’d run.

I forced a smile and gave Jonas a weak, “Fuck off.”

“Dude even your comebacks are garbage,” Jonas continued giving me shit.

He wasn’t wrong so I ignored him and changed the topic. “Graham’s done with clean up?”

“He says he is,” Zane returned. “Obviously, he didn’t lay out all the details. And thank fuck because I don’t wanna know. I want no part of that. The only assurance I wanted was the nuclear power plants were secure and he’d locked down the power grids. How he did it, not my problem. The big fat check he gave me cashed so as far as we’re concerned it’s over. He has Maddon’s blueprint, he has all the intel, supposedly he’s got people working through the rest. The only thing I know as fact is this won’t be the last time someone tries to take us down. I wish I could say when that happens it won’t be our problem, but for some reason, it always seems to land in our laps. What I do know, is next time the fee triples. Graham didn’t bat an eye and told me he’d note the increase in my file. Something I asked to see, something he refused.”

Yeah, I’d like to read the file POTUS had on Zane.

“So we’re done?”

“For now.”

A strange unease settled over me.

My brothers were all happily married, and all popping out kids. The good news was, I didn’t have to attend another wedding and the bickering between the men about who was getting married first and dates had ended.

As much as I joined in with Zane and bitched about all the wedding discussions while we were in the middle of shutting down the Chinese and Russians from causing any more damage to the US, I was genuinely pleased for everyone.

I still was, but there was this uncomfortable feeling in my gut. Not jealousy or envy but like something wasn’t right, maybe even missing.

And I had a fucked-up suspicion what or who was missing was Stella.

She was lost to me in a way I could never get back. She’d made that clear when she disconnected her phone. Not even Nebraska could find any of her old aliases and Lore hadn’t been active in any of her old circles since the day she’d left.

Lore’s dead.

I could of course set Kira, Garrett, and Shepherd Drexel on her but that felt like a serious invasion of privacy, and not to mention stalkerish.

On that thought, I needed to get out of this hospital, find the nearest bar, drown my thoughts in a bottle, and find a woman to bury the memory of Stella.

This shit was ridiculous.

I wasn’t this man.

I lived my life free of commitment. I fucked who I wanted when I wanted. I didn’t brood or wallow in stupid shit like memories or feelings.