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I rubbed at the sudden ache in my temples. I’d thought of nothing but this mess I was in for the last twenty-four hours, yet I was no closer to knowing what the hell I wanted or what I should do. For now, I wanted a distraction.
I heaved out a breath and sat straighter, putting my hands in my lap. “Okay. Your turn.”
She sighed, and all the light left her. “Nora’s father might be released from jail in the next couple of months.”
All the air left my lungs.What?She’d never mentioned Nora’s father. I’d assumed he wasn’t in the picture. But jail?
She spent the next twenty minutes filling me in on how he ended up in prison and the circumstances surrounding his arrest, as well as some shocking revelations about her pregnancy. By the end of her explanation, I understood her comment about how sometimes people make bad decisions out of fear.
“I’m not proud of what I did, but I can’t change the past. All I can do is strive to do better now.”
I got that. I wasn’t the type of person to harp on the past. There was always tomorrow, and tomorrows were a promise of a fresh start.
Chapter Thirty
KYLE
I couldn’t focuson a damn thing Nick was saying. All I could think about was Tina and the text she’d sent me moments before I walked into this meeting. This was maybe the third time I’d had to ask Nick to repeat himself. It was something about getting my feet wet. I had come up to NAE Securities headquarters a day early because they had an op starting tomorrow and Nick wanted to get me settled beforehand. He’d just finished giving me a tour, and now he was going over how things would progress in the next few weeks. Not that I was listening to any of it.
“The guys tell me I’m getting old and boring, but eventhey pretend to listen,” he said, leaning back against the wall in the corridor outside his office.
Shit. This was my new boss. The last thing I should be doing was bringing my issues into work with me.
“I’m listening,” I assured him. I would. I’d have to put thoughts of Tina aside and make a good impression.
He cocked a dark brow at me. The man was trained to be a human lie detector, so I probably should cut the crap.
“Sorry.” I shook my head.
“Gotta be honest. If you want to work for me, I’m going to need both your mind and body in New York.” Nick smirked. “And right now, that’s definitely not the case.”
He wasn’t wrong. All I wanted to do was step away and respond to Tina’s text. She asked if we could talk. Hated how we left things, though she was still upset that I hadn’t told her. I couldn’t stop spiraling through all the moments when I could have told her the truth and didn’t. I was an idiot.
“I screwed up big with someone back home.” I mimicked his stance, placing my back against the opposite wall and crossing one ankle over the other.
“Hughes’s wife?” Nick’s eyes pinned me to the wall.
My stomach lurched. Shit. I’d only told Seabass she moved to town. I’d never mentioned dating her or falling in love with her kids or becoming absolutely crazy about her.
“Do you think I don’t do my homework on the guys I’m going to hire?” He shrugged. “I assumed your relationship with her wasn’t serious if you were willing to move, but I’m getting the sense I was wrong.”
I blew out a breath. “I’m not sure she’ll be able to get past the fact that I couldn’t save her husband.” If she could even forgive me for not telling her, the next hurdle would be bigger. Could she really look at me day in and day out without remembering him?
“It’s not your fault. You know that, right?”
I shrugged. It was definitely my fault, but that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Guilt is a weird thing. Especially for guys like us who are held to impossible standards. I lost my best friend on a mission. All the what-ifs ate at me for a long time.”
When Seabass talked me through my initial guilt, he was open about the op that had gone wrong for him and Nick. The circumstances were different, but hearing about what they’d been through helped me keep the feelings locked up and move forward the best I could.
“Ironically,” Nick went on when I still stood there, mute. “It was his family that actually helped me move on.”
I’d forgotten that Nick had married his late best friend’s sister.
“Seabass is all about talking about our feelings.” Nick shook his head. “And he’s not wrong. But I struggled with the words.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. Fuck, did I understand that sentiment. “So how’d you get past it?”
