“I’m going to get these numbers in Candace’s phone and shoot these photos to Asher before I leave,” Smith says.
Adam disappears out of the room and I push to my feet, taking Candace with me. “Walk me out.” I catch her hand and lead her into the kitchen, but once we’re at the garage door, I turn and fold her close. “I won’t be long.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I need to do this.”
She grabs my shirt. “I feel like you’re going to walk out of that door, face your father, and never come back.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Your father fucks with your head. We don’t need that.”
“I told you—”
“I slept alone last night, Rick, when we could have been together. That’s how quick you are to decide that you’re the killer who doesn’t belong in my bed.”
There’s a complicated history there of me wanting her and deciding she was better off without me that words won’t erase. But I try. I have to try. “I already told you, the minute I saw you again, I wasn’t walking away, no matter what kind of selfish bastard that makes me.” I kiss her long and deep. “You won’t be sleeping alone tonight.” I lean in, inhaling her sweet floral scent and then force myself to set her away from me–one of the hardest fucking things I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some really hard fucking things in my life–and I exit to the garage.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Candace
I fight tears when that door shuts behind Rick.
I fight tears because Smith is here and I can’t let them fall. I fight tears because the last time that Rick and his father performed surgery was all about death. It was the night his mother died, only four days after he’d lost a patient on the table. A patient he’d felt his father had caused to die. Rick was gone less than a month later. Rick’s father didn’t control his deployment, but the events of that night, made him welcome it. Rick didn’t admit that to me, but I felt it. I felt it in every pore of my existence. And there’s no way his state of mind, when he left, didn’t affect who he became after he left.
“You okay?”
I turn to find Smith standing in the doorway. “Yes,” I lie. “Did you look at the photos?”
“Not yet. Why don’t you help me?”
“Don’t you need to go search Gabriel’s side chick’s house?”
He arches a brow. “Side Chick?”
“Monica. His campaign manager who I really wish would wrap her legs around him and hold on tight. If she wants to break his back while she’s at it, that would work just fine, but at the very least, hold on, and don’t let go. Keep him away from me.”
He laughs. “It’s almost as if you’re speaking from Savage’s lips. I get glimpses of why you’re so damn good with Rick. I need to wait until later in the evening when the neighborhood goes to sleep.”
The remark about me being so good with Rick cuts. He left me behind. It’s hard to get past that. He didn’t just leave, he stayed away for a very long time. “I’ll make coffee.” I walk to the pot and get busy, the one thing that’s kept me sane over the years.
Once I push the brew button, I turn to find Smith settling at the kitchen table, a MacBook in front of him. “I’ve loaded all the photos for you for easy access,” he says, turning the screen towards an empty seat. “And I’ve got them on my screen as well as sending them to Asher, who is our next best hacker to Blake. He’ll cross-reference keywords he finds to Gabriel and your father.”
I join him and sit down as he opens another MacBook in front of him. “The operation seems quite sophisticated.”
“It is,” he says, glancing at me. “We’re the best of the best. That includes Savage,” he says. “All that big talk and the stupid jokes fade away when you’re depending on him. He comes through. Always.”
“Were you there when he saved Adam?”
“I wasn’t, but I did a mission with him that was rough. That man is a beast of a warrior.”
“It’s in his blood.”
“Don’t read into that. It doesn’t mean he’s walking away from you again. About half of our staff is married.”
Married.
To Rick.
That very idea feels impossible and therefore I don’t comment. I start tabbing through the photos I took again just to be sure there’s nothing important there and it’s not long before we both nurse cups of coffee. “Rain stopped,” Smith says. “Talk about a downpour.”
“It’s supposed to start again,” I say because I looked at my weather app earlier. “I’m sure that doesn’t make the break-in easy.”
“It’s messy, but it also keeps the neighbors inside.” He studies me. “He’s different with you. Softer. It’s good. He needs you.”