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“I should lay you out right here and now,” he said.
“Why? I asked. “Everyone is entitled to their own emotions, and if I feel that it’s not working with someone, it’s not working. I’m sorry she got hurt, but she will be okay.”
“Every word out of your mouth makes me want to throw a punch right into your throat,” he snapped at me. “I didn’t expect you of all people to turn out to be the world’s biggest fucking pussy after what you accomplished in your last mission. But here we are, you moping about in your bungalow as if the entire world has come crashing down because a girl dared to do the unthinkable and tell you she cared about you after she found out about something terrible happening in your past.”
“Look, man to man, vet to vet, you know there’s a lot more to the situation than that,” I snapped. “Don’t paint this as me being upset about something trivial and freaking out. You know how it feels to have to relive that shit.”
“She didn’t want you to relive it. She wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I gave a flat reply.
I could tell Neils was about to throw his fist, and I wanted to do the same. If he did, I was ready to meet him with the same energy. Not because I wanted to get into a fight with a man I greatly admired, but because of the anger I felt toward the entire situation.
However, I didn’t want to be the one to throw the first punch.
The fact that I was already the bad guy in this situation was bad enough. I knew if I threw the first punch, it would only lead to me being the one who was wrong, and everyone else was just the poor bystanders hit with my abuse.
“Great,” Neils said to my surprise. “Well, if you’re fine, then I’ll leave you to it, but I’m going to tell you something straight. I thought a lot more of you, and what I think of you comes nowhere near to what that girl over there thinks of you. If you aren’t going to man up and fix this, so be it. But you are going to watch her walk away, and it’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”
He gave me one more look, then he turned and walked away. I stood in the doorway of the bungalow for a moment, contemplating saying something to him, but ultimately changed my mind. This fight wasn’t between the two of us. Shit. I wasn’t even really fighting with Krissy, either. It had been something that went down the spur of the moment, and that was all there was to it.
I understood now that she was upset, and I figured she would be. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that.
I headed inside and closed the door. Kim still hadn’t called, so I figured she must have seen Krissy get back home and decided it was best to leave the situation alone for now. I hoped she stuck with that, though knowing Kim, she would be back at some point to see how I’m doing.
But, after talking to Neils, there’s no way I can get the conversation out of my head. And not just the conversation between him and me. The conversation I had with Krissy the night before when I walked out on her. She hadn’t said much besides that she cared about me and she wanted me to know it.
But I threw it all in her face.
For the first time, I felt like I really was the asshole in this situation, and a twinge of guilt rattled in my chest. It wasn’t fair, the way I had just left like that. And Neils was right. I couldn’t deny the way she looked at me—she clearly loved me.
Throwing all that away wouldn’t just make me an asshole; it would make me an idiot, too.
Love like that didn’t come very often, and having that kind of love with Krissy was a gift.
I didn’t know what to do.
This situation was fucked.
Chapter Thirty-One
Krissy
“No, this is just too much,” I protested.
“Nonsense!” Erin replied as she waved off my concern with a brush of her hand. “It’s not even a thing. I’ve been telling Neils that we should take a vacation for a while now, and what better time to do it than to come up here for a few days? It’s not like it’s any trouble for us. There had to be a reason why all four of us wanted to bring you back, right?”
“But all the hotels on Islamorada are so expensive,” I argued. “You don’t want to throw away that kind of money for no reason. It’s not like I’ve never gone through a breakup before, and you know I have Kim and Andrew here. They’re not going to let me wallow in self-pity.”
“Again, we have the money, and it’s not a big deal for us to get a suite. I would say we should stay with you, but I’m sure by now you’re ready to have your own space again, and more than that, I’m sure you don’t have the room for the four of us in that bungalow.”
Erin laughed, and I agreed.
The two of us were sitting in the café I would soon work at, waiting for Neils to return. He said he was going over to talk to Gavin, and I was dying inside. I didn’t want Gavin to think I’d brought my friends up here to yell at him over the breakup.
It wasn’t at all my intention for anyone to talk to him about it.
But Neils wasn’t one to change his mind after he made it up to do something, so there was very little I could say or do that would get him to stop.
