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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jaxson
I wasn’t thrilled that I’d been keepinghima secret, and now that we’d unleashed the fact Emma had been an off-gridder and was involved in the grim situation at the resort, it was bound to come out.
“Are you just going to ignore me?” Ariella asked. Her tone was sharp. She was undoubtedly pissed at me.
Great. I had several hours left until we got to Breckenridge and home. It wasn’t like I could drop her off and not see her again until work; we lived together.
I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated. Ariella tended to bring me down to my knees. “I’m not ignoring you; I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“That’s an excuse,” Ariella said. She was pissed. I could hear her heavy, labored breathing as she shifted in her seat. She’d never get comfortable at this rate.
“Fine. You want every secret I’ve been keeping?” My voice raised in the confines of the truck. “I heard from one of the guys, and guess who was released from prison, Benjamin Ryan.”
Ariella was dead silent.
“What? Don’t you have something to shout at me for keeping that a secret? He’s out of prison, Ariella. Do you know why?”
I glanced at her to see her eyes wide. Her mouth hung agape. I didn’t let it go. If she wanted to know my secrets, I’d reveal hers, ones she didn’t even know she had in the back of her closet.
“His convictions were overturned, every last one of them,” I said. From the look on her face, she had no idea.
“You mentioned that he might not have been guilty. I just couldn’t believe it was true.” She ran her palms over her pants.
“Well, true or not, he’s been released, and it’s not on a technicality. I don’t know what that means in regard to the C.I.A., whether they set him up or someone else.” The truth was, I hadn’t had time to dig deeper or look into the mess of her past. “He made a statement on television when he was released.”
“He did?” Her voice caught in her throat.
“Said something in the interview about planning on finding you,” I said, a bitter taste filled my mouth. I didn’t want to lose her tohim, her husband, or technically ex-husband. They were divorced, but if it had been based on the fact, she’d believed he’d been guilty, and he wasn’t, where did I stand? What chance did I have against a wealthy man who had won her heart?
She exhaled a loud breath. “Well, if you see him, tell him to stay the hell away from me.”
That took me by surprise. “What?” Was she over him? Did I not need to worry that he’d come and sweep her off her feet? I wasn’t one to get jealous easily, but I also didn’t like to worry that a man with whom she had a history could breeze back into her life.
“He may not be guilty of the financial crimes that he was originally convicted of, but he’s not innocent, Jaxson. Far from it.”
What other crimes had he done that he hadn’t been convicted of?
“Are you going to elaborate?” I asked.
Ariella yawned in the front seat. It was well past two in the morning. I recognized that she was drained. I was too. “Not tonight. I’m tired, Jaxson. Can we just leave it alone for now?”
Exhausted, I drove into the night, not wanting to crash in some shitty motel with bedbugs.
I didn’t want to fight with her. I almost lost her and my daughter today. I rested my hand on her thigh. “I care about you, Freckles.” I wanted her to know how I felt. I didn’t say it often enough, and she deserved to hear it from me.
“I know,” she mumbled. Ariella rested her head against the side window, her eyes shut. Her breathing had lulled after several long seconds.
She mumbled something unintelligible. Had she just saidI love you?
“Freckles?”
She’d fallen asleep.
Mason had once told me that he suspected her marriage might have been a cover, that she’d gone deep as a C.I.A. operative, too deep. If that was true, why had she been watching him, and what made her decide to marry him? If it hadn’t been love, what was the catalyst? There were secrets between us, but I wasn’t willing to give her up, not without a fight.
Truth was that I loved her too. Did I have the courage to tell her?
