Page 4 of Rescuing Micah (Prey Security: Cyber Team #3)
Now, looking back, with the benefit of age and wisdom, he wondered whether what Teresa had done was just part of experimenting and being a kid. After all, she hadn't been a legal adult at the time, and that time of your life was supposed to be about finding out who you were.
Had he been too harsh, cutting her off without a word?
Ending it was the right thing to do, after all, she’d cheated on him even if she was just experimenting, but he hadn't gone about it in a very mature way. Hadn't even had a confrontation with her.
Embarrassed and devastated, he just got back in his car and drove back to his college. Then he’d blocked her number, blocked her on all social media, and even refused to open the letter she’d sent him about a month later.
He still had that letter. Unopened. Tucked away in the bottom of his underwear drawer back home.
Opening it had never been his intention, and he wasn't sure why he’d kept it, maybe in the hopes that it was the apology he knew she owed him, but now he was wondering whether maybe when he got home, he should pull it out and see what she’d written to him.
It wouldn't change anything, but it would be nice to know she regretted cheating on him.
Or maybe it would change something?
Right now, he wasn't sure.
Everything he’d just read about the girl he used to love with every fiber of his being said she’d turned out to be the woman he knew she would be.
Teresa had taken on a lot of responsibility from the time she was nine years old.
Despite not even being in double digits yet, with her father gone and her mother the sole provider for their little family of four, a lot of the responsibilities of caring for the apartment they lived in and her brothers had fallen on her.
Her youngest brother had suffered a stroke shortly after birth and had been left with some permanent disabilities.
Caring for him was a big ask, but Teresa had tackled it the same way she approached everything else in life.
With compassionate determination. She was a hard worker, organized, and juggled handling school, housework, and her brothers with the skills of someone much older than her tender years.
While her middle brother, two years younger than Teresa, grew angrier with having to help out, his grades slipped, and he started to get in trouble. She worked harder to pick up the slack and show him that he was important, too, just like their little brother was.
Not that it had helped.
By the time he met Teresa when he was sixteen and she was fourteen, her then twelve-year-old brother was progressing up the criminal food chain. Moving on from stealing from local convenience stores to knocking down elderly women and stealing their purses.
In fact, it was because of those crimes that they’d met.
His father was a cop who had arrested Teresa’s brother while they were out having a father-son day.
Micah had still been with his father when Teresa brought her youngest brother to the police station to find out what was going on and wait for their mom to show up.
The beautiful, strong, intelligent girl had immediately caught his eye, and when her mom had finally arrived to take over, he’d struck up a conversation with her.
Despite their ages, it had been love at first sight as far as he was concerned, and that love had only grown over the three years they dated.
Which was why it had come as such a blow when he drove home to surprise her that Friday night and instead found her on the couch in her family’s living room, naked, with four other guys.
It was such an un-Teresa-like thing to do.
But maybe the stress of having so much on her plate finally caught up with her, and she just buckled beneath it.
Who could blame her?
She was seventeen years old, a senior in high school, but instead of hanging out with her friends she studied, worked a part-time job, did the majority of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, cared for her thirteen-year-old disabled brother, and tried to watch over her juvenile delinquent fifteen-year-old brother.
Even adults could crash and burn with that kind of stress on their shoulders.
Had he been too harsh on her?
While he’d tried to ease a little of her burdens, helping out wherever he could, he’d still had school and his own job as well. Maybe he hadn't been a good enough boyfriend, maybe she’d needed more from him than he’d been prepared to give, and that’s why she’d done it.
Back then, he’d spent a lot of time analyzing their relationship. Wondering where it had gone wrong. Trying to decide if some of the blame could be placed on his shoulders. But he’d decided that it couldn’t. He’d been a kid, too, and while he could have helped out more, he had tried to do his best.
They weren't kids anymore, though. And everything he’d just spent the night reading up about Teresa told him that she was exactly the kind of intelligent, hard-working, compassionate woman he’d always thought she would be.
What if that night was just a one-off? A way for her to blow off steam?
If the girl he’d once known was now the woman he’d always expected, did that change anything?
Teresa had graduated at the top of her class in both high school and at college. She worked for the world’s best private security company. She didn't just pay all her own bills but contributed enough that her mom only had to work one part-time job and covered all her disabled brother’s expenses.
She was everything he’d always wanted, everything that had slipped through his fingers, and he didn't know how to feel about it.
They couldn’t go back, that was for sure.
Even if he could give her a second chance, his trust in her had been damaged, possibly beyond repair.
Just because she’d been young didn't excuse her cheating on him, she’d known right from wrong, and if she’d needed to blow off steam or he wasn't giving her something she needed, she should have communicated that with him.
But …
Damn.
He didn't know the end to that sentence.
It wasn't like Teresa had been falling all over herself to apologize last night. She’d been cold and dismissive, pretending she didn't even know who he was. If there was going to be any real forgiveness on his part, she needed to own up to her mistakes and sincerely apologize.
After that …
He wasn't sure.
All he knew was that, other than that one night, Teresa had been the perfect girlfriend and now she was the perfect woman. For the moment, it didn't have to mean anything more than that.
Last night, she’d turned up at Prey right as he’d been leaving after Nathaniel and Ava got a call that one of their teammates was in trouble. Teresa worked for Prey as part of the Cyber Team, if her college degree was any indication. That meant she was the teammate in trouble.
Shoving away from the small table, Micah grabbed his keys, cell phone, and headed out the door. Regardless of their past, if Teresa was in danger, he was going to be there.