Page 12 of Caught By the Chief of Staff

“In case we ever ran into you,” I explain.

“Were you ever going to try to find me?” he asks quietly. I watch him carefully before deciding he deserves the truth, even if it ruins any hope I might have had for a copacetic situation.

“No.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Idon’t want to talk about that,” I say, batting the thought away. “It’s in the past.”

“It doesn’t feel like the past.”

“Just let it go,” I quietly plead.

Rick watches me. He’s deciding something but I don’t know what. His face is so carefully blank. “All right,” he says. “For now.”

“Thank you.” I breathe a small sigh of relief.

“I want to meet her,” he says firmly after a moment.

“She wants to meet you too.” That seems to take him off guard.

“She knows about me?”

“She does,” I answer him honestly. I feel my heart soften just a bit toward him. Somewhere deep down is my sweet sailor. “I never kept you from her.”

“Only her from me?” he asks, his voice hard again. “I want to be in her life.”

“We want you to be in her life too.” And it’s the truth he can never know about. I had always wanted them to be together. I never wanted things to play out the way that they had, but I can’t go back. I can’t second guess the decisions I have made to protect my family now. I can only continue to put one foot in front of the other.

“I just don’t understand why,” he tries again, and I have to put a stop to it before I start crying in the middle of his office and admit everything that ever happened.

“I won’t ask you for money,” I state, changing the subject again. “I only ask that you don’t make life-altering decisions about her life without me.”

“You mean like you did?”

I let out a frustrated breath. “I had my reasons.”

“But you won’t share them?” he asks again. Rick clearly missed his true calling as a hostage negotiator. Or a terrorist interrogator.

“No, I won’t.”

He looks away at something out one of the windows for a minute as he mulls over something in his mind. I’m sure it has to do with me and our daughter and what we’re going to have to do to move forward from here. When he turns his head back to face me, I know he has made some decisions.

“I’d like to take you both out to dinner,” he says, making me gasp. I’m surprised he would include me in his plans. “She doesn’t know me yet, and I want you both to be sure she is safe with me.”

“I appreciate that.”

“How does she feel about pizza?” he asks, making me smile.

“She’s eight and lives in Jersey,” I tell him.

“So, in other words, she takes her pie as seriously as her mother always did.” He smirks at me. It was a running joke between us that I was particular about my pizza.

“I still am,” I say, smiling.

“I guess not everything changes,” he replies, effectively wiping the smile from my face.

“No,” I whisper.