How About No (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 3)

But I didn’t stay.

Instead, I walked to the station and turned my ticket book in.

Then I walked right back out because I had a few things that I was being forced to discuss with Raoul. Such as what he knew about the murder of the senator who died some time ago and who had been responsible for it—even though my hunch said that it was closely related to the case that I was currently investigating.

This particular case that I was working on involved a now-dead senator and a few local lawyers who were preying on teenagers and taking photos of their disgusting selves while doing it—literally.

Raoul was a low life who just so happened to need cash from time-to-time when those lawyers needed a little extra hand, and I was trying to get him to offer up his services where he could.

Which led to now, and me driving down in the seediest, shittiest, most cop unfriendly area in the damn city.

I should’ve changed out of my uniform, and I definitely should’ve switched to my bike.

But people would’ve known who I was just as easily on my bike, in my regular clothes, as they would have if I was in my uniform and driving my cruiser.

Sighing at the looks I was getting from the men and women that were gathered out on their porches, I kept driving until I got to the secluded spot that even I hadn’t realized was there until Raoul told me about it and pulled over.

There I waited.Chapter 3I think I’ve seized the wrong fucking day.

-Landry’s secret thoughts

Landry

I felt sick to my stomach, as I always did when I saw Wade.

Though today’s stomachache was tenfold seeing as when I saw Wade, I had also seen my sister—who had known I was there when she’d gone out of her way to call out to Wade.

I hated her.

God, how I hated her.

I’d like nothing more than to wish her disappearance from this planet.

Was it not good enough that she’d taken my childhood? Did she also have to take what little happiness I had found in adulthood, too?

Hell, she already had stolen my husband—even if she hadn’t done it in the normal way by sleeping with him.

Honestly, I thought that might’ve been easier, had that happened.

At least then I wouldn’t have to feel like an awful person for leaving him.

Though my reasons were justified—at least to me—they weren’t to him.

Over the three weeks before my procedure, I’d spoken until I was blue in the face about not wanting to do it, about how I’d done it so many times before. All the while, he held strong.

He urged me to do it anyway. Just one more time.

Except, I knew it wouldn’t be one more time. It was never one more time.

I remembered Wade’s face as he looked at me for the first time after our divorce as if I’d betrayed him.

But he didn’t understand—and honestly, I don’t think he wanted to understand.

He always saw the good in people, and probably always would.

I slammed the door to my house—the one Wade ordered me to keep—and wished I’d never agreed to it.

He hadn’t wanted anything. Not a single thing.

Not the house we’d bought together, not the new car. Not the business we’d started or the money we’d managed to save over the time we were married.

Not a single thing but his clothes and his bike—which I couldn’t drive anyway, otherwise I was sure that he’d try to get me to take that, too.

Hell, he’d almost made me keep the dog, too.

And that one I had put my foot down on.

I would not take his dog.

I refused.

As much as I loved Butters, I would not take him away from the man who had been his human for five years before I’d come along.

Nope. No. Nuh-uh.

And when Butters had died just a short six weeks after we’d finalized our divorce, things had been pretty bad for a short time.

I’d gone to check on Wade multiple times, only to stop myself well before making it to his street.

He didn’t need me making things worse.

Hell, neither did I.

Each time I saw him, it only made me feel worse for leaving.

But, when I’d left home at the age of eighteen, I’d made a promise with myself.

I knew that if I didn’t start putting me first, I wouldn’t be on this Earth much longer.

I knew that I was going to fall apart just like I had at the age of seventeen.

I’d break hard, too, just like I had then.

Shortly after my seventeenth birthday, when I didn’t get a car like my sister had gotten on her seventeenth birthday, I realized that I never was meant to be anything but a means to an end for my family.

Hell, I would’ve been happy with a damn cupcake with a candle in it at that point.