Page 67 of Tripped By Love

My failures to Petty Officer Warren.

My failures to Maliyah.

But I refused to let myself fail Cassidy, too. Not when it came to Hardy.

The thing was, telling her what I’d just learned was going to take the soft smile she’d just given me and tear it away. It would put her right back in the sadness, frustration, and helplessness she’d felt while watching Chevelle get swabbed.

My feet stopped. She ran into me, stumbling a little. My arms tightened about her.

“What?” she asked, reading the change in me when I’d always been damn good at hiding my emotions from everyone.

“He’s married,” I said the words quietly, as if the softer I said them, the less they’d hurt.

“What? Who?” she asked, and then the realization hit her. “Clayton?”

I nodded, and her jaw dropped along with the arm that had been holding a basket of berries while we danced. It tumbled to the ground, and I held her steady with one hand while I leaned down to pick it up.

“That asshole!” Her voice was guttural and pained. “He came here saying he wanted me back…and he’s fucking married?”

She turned and stormed toward the back door. I shoved the berries onto the counter and caught her. “Angel, where are you going?”

“You know where. To give him a piece of my mind,” she said, defiance and fury raging in her eyes.

“To what end?” I said as fear for her climbed through me. What would happen if she confronted him like this? Would he strike her? Hurt her? My stomach lurched.

“Why is he here?” she demanded. “What could he possibly want with Chevelle? If he’s married, why doesn’t he just have his own child?”

“I don’t know. Not yet.” But there was a promise in my voice and in my soul that I would keep.

Cassidy pounded a fist on my chest, letting her fury and frustration from the day fly through her. “He can’t have my son!”

I wrapped her up tight in my embrace as tears slid down her smooth cheeks again. I hated it. Hated that he had the power to make her feel this way. I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her as tightly as I could, until the air left us both, and we momentarily felt like one instead of two.

“You know what I hate?” she asked in a shaky voice as her tears slowed.

I shook my head, unable to speak yet because of the waves of emotion that filled me.

“I hate that the person I let myself be when I was with him led him to believe he could just show up and I’d go running into his arms. That I’d be weak enough to take him back.”

The thought of her in his arms did horrible things to me, filling me with dread and animosity and nausea.

“You’ve never been weak, Angel. If he chose to see you that way, that’s on him.”

We stood holding each other for a long time before she asked, “Is that where he got his money? From the wife?”

I looked down at her. “What do you mean?”

“His fancy suit and expensive watch. He could never afford that when we were…together. Harvard can’t pay that much more than he was getting here, right?”

The information Trevor had read from our local guys in Boston returned to me. “From what I understand, he had to sign a prenup. He gets nothing if they divorce, but if there are children, he gets money to maintain the children’s lifestyle. And if she dies, he can manage her trust on behalf of the kids.”

She snorted. “She better watch her back.” I didn’t laugh as she’d expected me to, and she added on, “Wait, you don’t think he’d actually do something like that, do you?”

“I’ve seen people do more for less,” I told her the truth.

“More than killing?”

“What happened to Petty Officer Warren?having to live with it the rest of her life?that’s like hell every day. Killing someone would almost be considered kindness compared to that.”

We hadn’t talked about what had happened in the Fleet Marine Force since the day I’d spilled my guts to her. Speaking about it now, when I brought Warren up as little as I brought up my parents, felt both painful and cathartic.

She pulled herself from my embrace, and I reluctantly let her go. She turned back to the mess of berries, bending to collect more of the ones I hadn’t recovered.

She glanced at me with a frown. “I’m more confused than ever with what he really wants.”

I hated the suspicion that jumped into my head. A suspicion I wasn’t sure I could prove without breaking a few laws and violating some HIPAA privacy rules. But I would get to the bottom of this for her. There was no way I was letting Clayton Hardy take Chevelle from us. My throat closed at my mental slip. Fromher. He wouldn’t take Chevelle away from her.