Her face was awash with confused sadness, but she put on a firm smile. “You take care, too.”
And that was that.
She left Raleigh and so did I, and here I sit now with Hunter in my kitchen, baring my soul about this woman that I can’t get out of my mind.
“So, that’s how it ended, and now it’s driving me crazy,” I mutter. “I feel like there’s unfinished business or something. It’s hard to describe.”
“So get on a plane and go see her,” Hunter says with a proud smile on his face, like he just solved the problem of world peace or something.
Oh, poor schmuck. If it were only that easy.
“And do what?” I exclaim as I slam my bottle down on the table. A splash of beer and foam shoots out the top. “What exactly would I be going there for? To fuck her? To start a relationship? Christ, Hunter… you know a long-distance relationship couldn’t work. She’s not leaving the FBI to move here, and I’m sure as hell not leaving my home. So why would I go see her?”
Hunter looks amused over my outburst. He merely tilts his beer back and takes four long swallows to finish it off. Standing from my table, he stares down at me. “You go and see her because you can’t stop thinking about her. What other reason do you need?”
I snort in frustration. “But we could never have—”
“Oh, stop with the fucking excuses,” Hunter says as he leans over me and pokes me in the chest. “Just go see her… fuck her. Start there and decide where to go after that. Maybe that’s all you need… a closure fuck.”
Yeah… I so don’t need a closure fuck. I know, without a doubt, that if I fuck Andrea, things are going to get way more complicated and sticky. She and I were intimately acquainted orally, and the things that we did to each other usually come later in a relationship. The mere fact that she had no problem latching onto my dick with that mouth, and I was starved to eat her out, tells me that we had forged some type of connection prior to that all occurring. That meant to me that fucking her was not going to cure the problem—it was going to increase it.
“Sound like a plan?” Hunter asks as he turns away from me and sets the empty bottle down in my recycle bin.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say distractedly, but deep down in my heart, I know I’m not going to pursue her. Just like time healed the wounds of her parents’ death, and just as I told her that time was the wisest counselor of all, I decided to let things be and hoped that as the days wore on, her memory would just fade away from me, and I could move on with my life in peace.
Chapter 14
Andrea
Two days later…
Oh, this was such a bad idea.
Bad, bad idea.
I glance down at my watch for the fourth time in about four minutes, and admit to myself that every minute that goes by, worry and self-doubt are taking over my psyche.
I tap my foot against the wood flooring of Wyatt’s front porch, thankful he has two comfortable wicker chairs with plush cushions decorated in blue and yellow stripes. My ass has been parked in one of them for the last hour and a half.
I’m sitting on Wyatt’s front porch because I had made the split-second decision yesterday to fly to North Carolina so I could see him. This came on the heels of me deciding to take a vacation.
When I had flown back to Pittsburgh last week, I was back at work the following day, much to my SAC’s surprise. He tried to talk me into taking some time off, as he had read my report and knew just what I had been through during this operation. I declined, telling him that I wanted to get back into the thick of things.
He didn’t argue and much to my surprised delight, even amended his written recommendation to my application at the BRIU, updating them with everything I did on this operation. I couldn’t help but get my hopes renewed all over again that I might get accepted into that division of the FBI.
I went straight back to work because I needed to keep my mind busy. Busy with important stuff like catching criminals and doing federal background checks. As always, some of it scintillating and some of it downright boring.
Regardless, being back to work didn’t help occupy my mind at all. Several times throughout the day, my mind would drift off and I would think about Wyatt. I’d think mostly about what he did to me in the locker room the evening before I left Raleigh, but that would lead me to think about him saying it was a mistake, and him declining to take it further. Honestly, it was a bit of a blow to my self-esteem, which had already been knocked down a few pegs when David broke off our engagement. I got down and low, wondering what was wrong with me. Why did men kept leaving me?
I had a pity party one night with two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, drank four beers, then made the mistake of calling my brother Kyle and unloading on him.
In typical Kyle fashion, he told me I was a dumbass. I had told him all about the operation, and while I did not tell him specifically that there was anything sexual between Wyatt and me, I did tell him that I had some feelings involved that felt unresolved.
The most important thing he reminded me of is that I am one badass chick and that I was not one to piss and moan over my fate. He reminded me that yes… while it was sad that David broke off our engagement, I had actually bounced back pretty well. He reminded me that I helped to take down a sex-slave ring. He reminded me that once, while I was in the FBI Academy, I took one of my sparring partners down to the mat, and he outweighed me by almost eighty pounds.