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“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“But that’s the way she’ll see it, and then that amazing night in the sack will be nothing but a distant memory.”
I really fucking hated that he was right. “So, what am I supposed to do? Break my promise to Carly?”
“Oh, hell no,” he said forcefully. “Dude, there is nothing worse than breaking a promise to a woman. If she shows up alone to that reunion, those claws are coming out. She will disrespect you to every single person she knows.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because you humiliated her. She had a good thing with you, and then you left her high and dry. I bet she bragged to all her friends about the amazing man she was bringing, and if she shows up alone—” He snorted, shaking his head at me. “You’ll wish you never set eyes on her.”
“But what about Rae? You said if it got back to her, I was fucked.”
“Oh, you are.”
I clenched my fists in frustration. Bowie wasn’t helping me at all. If anything, he was making the situation worse. “Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “I didn’t say I had a solution. I was just telling you you’re well and truly fucked.”
And then he just walked away. After all that crap about me being in a shit ton of trouble, he had nothing to offer me. But he was right about one thing, no matter what I did, I was well and truly fucked.
* * *
By the time lunch rolled around, I was starving. I had a few granola bars in the office, but that didn’t make up for the gnawing hunger in my stomach. And without coffee, I just wasn’t functioning properly. But the diner was out, since I didn’t want to run into Carly, so I headed to the bar.
Since the police were mostly done with their investigation, it was open for business again. I could grab a decent burger and a beer to drown my sorrows. I was pissed at Rae for not taking my calls after our night together. I was pissed at myself for agreeing to take Carly to her reunion and once again being swept up in her drama. But mostly, I was just pissed in general that my life wasn’t going the way I wanted.
I stopped my truck and remembered that night when we were all at the bar. Looking at the parking lot now, you’d never have known there was a shootout just a few weeks ago. Rae rushed out the door without a single care for her own safety. Then again, that’s what she was trained to do. It shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but I couldn’t keep an eye on her. Cash needed my help, so I had to trust she could handle the situation.
Which she did. She always fucking did. Rae was unlike any woman I’d ever met. Danger was just a word to her. She didn’t get scared or freak out. She calmly handled the situation and moved on. That should have brought me a sense of peace, but instead, I found myself wondering if one day it would get her killed.
A tap on my window brought me out of my thoughts. Cash was standing next to my door, looking at me strangely. I opened the door and stepped out, surprised to see him here.
“Hey, you here for lunch?”
“Yeah,” he grinned. “Eva has a craving.”
I snorted. “And you went running.”
“Well, you’ll do that when you find out your wife is pregnant.”
I stopped and stared at him in shock. “No shit?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. We’ve been together a while. It was bound to happen.”
“Yeah, but…wow. Congrats, man.”
“Thanks.” His grin spread from ear to ear.
I chuckled to myself. Man, that was the dream every man had when he came home from service. Well, maybe not every man, but after seeing all we did, the idea of having a family to come home to was more than some of us ever dreamed we’d get.
A lot of men returned too fucked up to really hold down a relationship. Others were like me and rushed into marriage because they were going off to war, which made doing it a second time even harder. The lucky ones like Cash made us all envious.
“You here for lunch?”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling open the door. “I had to get away from Bowie. He was driving me fucking insane.”
“That’s what happens when you work with friends. I thought you were with that diner chick?”
