Page 124 of Love, Luck & Clusterf*ck

He tilted his head back and exhaled loudly. Then I saw his body relax. I had hope that it was sinking in. I just wanted this to be truly over for all of us.

“Yeah, okay,” he finally said. “I’ll fucking miss you, baby, but I get it. I fucked up too badly.”

“We were never right for each other. One of us was bound to fuck up too badly at some time or another. You just beat me to it.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

I eyed over the ink covering his arms and was hit with a crazy idea. But maybe not so crazy after all, since it felt so right. It got me excited enough to bounce off the walls.

“Who’s your tattoo guy?”

My phone had me sprinting down the stairs to the coffee table.Please be Stephen. I slipped and smacked my hip against the corner of the wall as I came down. Fuck! That hurt. I made sure the bandage was still intact, then picked it up just as it stopped ringing. It was my mom. I’d call back in a bit.

I plopped down on the couch, wishing I knew what was going on. I couldn’t believe how much I missed him. I mean, come on. I had that right, didn’t I? It was already five in the evening on Sunday. The weekend was almost over, and he’d been gone nearly thirty-six hours. What the hell?

I placed my hand on my side and smiled. I couldn’t wait until he got home so I could show him my new tat. I couldn’t wait until he got home, period.

When I’d asked Dre who his artist was, he didn’t just tell me. He went one better. He met me at the shop early this morning and setme up, even got me a good deal. He called it his parting gift to me. Things couldn’t have felt more resolved between us. And while he did ask one last time if I was sure we’d never start up again, he really did seem to get it when I confirmed no. My past was finalized, leaving me to focus on the present and future. It was a great place to be.

I scrolled through my texts, making sure I hadn’t missed any. Like I hadn’t done that a gazillion times already. There were only the two from the night before, and one of them was mine.

Hey, how’s it going? I had a very unexpected (but good) day and a lot changed for me. I’ll explain it all when we talk. Hopefully soon.

Then an hour later, his text arrived from an unknown number:

It’s Stephen. Phone’s dead and using someone else’s. Don’t reply. Stuck in war room with no ETR. Talk as soon as I can.

I tapped the phone on my chin. His text was curt, but I guess that made sense since he wasn’t using his own cell. I didn’t even know what he meant. What the hell was a war room?

The ring startled me and I jolted back. Adam?

“Hello.”

“Hi, Perry. I don’t suppose I could bribe you into working a few extra hours tomorrow? I’ve been making the rounds and not having much luck. They put me in charge of calling the operators and it sucks.”

“Yeah, all right. I guess that wouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Awesome. I owe you. I can stop making these fucking calls now.”

“No problem. You could’ve just got a hold of me first, you know.”

“I’ll remember that next time. I was hitting up the people that annoy the crap out of me first. Why make the people I like suffer?”

I laughed. “Oh hey, do you know anything about that major outage they had yesterday morning?”

“Just that it was a nasty CPU failure. I don’t have the details because I wasn’t part of the resolution. Why do you ask?”

Resolution?“It’s fixed now?”

“Since about six this morning. Why’re you so curious?”

Nausea rolled over me.Almost twelve hours ago?Was he hurt? Car accident? “Can you please not ask why I want to know, but can you tell me if Stephen was one of the ones working on this?”

“I’d assume so, considering the issue. You know, I saw him today.”

“What?” I hoped it hadn’t come out as a scream.

“Yeah, a few hours ago at Ground Creek.”

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