Page 13 of Fighting For You
“You can’t do that. That’s breaking a code between?—”
“There’s no code that says I lie for you when you’re hurting people.” And he’d just admitted to cheating multiple times, so that wasn’t even touching his infidelity.
He snorts. “This is about Jessie.”
This jackass had no idea. “No. It’s about you thinking you can take what you want, even when someone tells you not to. We do actually have rules about that, and I’m reporting it. It’s up to you how you want to explain yourself.”
He let loose another round of foul language and sneered at me. “You’re pathetic.”
All the anger rose in me then and I pulled him to me by the bloodied front of his shirt. I had six inches and probably forty pounds on him, but I didn’t need my size to intimidate. He was trash, and he needed to understand what I would do. That I wouldn’t let him hurt anyone again.
“Pathetic is cheating on your fiancée. Pathetic is hearing the word no and thinking it means anything else. Pathetic is thinking I don’t have enough backbone to end you because you couldn’t even point to North with the help of a compass. You’redone, Spangler. Get your affairs in order.”
I released him and he stumbled back, then launched a bunch of insults I didn’t stick around to hear. Three days later, we were back at the unit and I reported him.
In the past, something like this might not’ve been a career-ending issue. There’d been a nasty history of people covering up for each other. But they’d worked on cleaning house. Leadership had agreed if they were going to give so much power and access and funding to the unit, they had to make sure the men and women who were a part of it had a moral compass. So these “little incidents” that used to get brushed under the rug as boys being boys, or whatever other bullshit, were now intolerable. By the end of the day, KurtSpangler had shocked everyone by announcing he’d be moving off the teams and into the school house while transitioning to retirement.
The only person not shocked? Yours truly.
The person most taken aback? Heartbreakingly, it was his fiancée.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jess
The waiter cleared our appetizer plates as we sat in silence.
I fumed.
The waiter brought our entrees.
I fumed some more. And then nearly groaned aloud at the first bite of my steak because it was so gloriously delicious, it almost made up for having to sit across from a man I loathed.
No one could say I hadn’t made a valiant effort tonight. I was absolved of any guilt when it came to this dinner or anything else. Plus, who said married couples were always happy? What if this was my caustic husband’s last-ditch effort to salvage a marriage that’d been doomed from the start? Couples fought. Relationships failed. Marriages imploded.
Ask me how I know.Though at least I hadn’t actually married Kurt before he’d lost it and left both the unit and me—when he’d refused to accept my help or my love for him, and he’d pushed me and everyone else we knew away.
And left me just like everyone else did.
Nope! Not a helpful thought. Not something we should whine about, and when we start thinking of ourselves in first-person plural… we can confirm working with Beast is taking its toll.
The man sitting across from me had played a prime role in all of it. I did my best not to actively remember the conversation where Kurt revealed how Beast had lit my entire life on fire, but it intruded on my thoughts now, the memory cutting through me like a slap.
I saw myself five years ago, standing there in the North Carolina heat as Kurt turned away from me.
“Why are you leaving me? This has nothing to do with our relationship. You’re retiring, that’s great. I’ll be out in another few years and in the meantime, you can?—”
“You don’t get it, Jessie. I can’t stay in a place where my best friend—formerbest friend—betrayed me. Where he told the command lies about me and theybelievedhim.”
He looked so broken. Not the confident, swaggering man who’d slowly broken down my walls and won me over.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why he’d do that, but it doesn’t meanwecan’t stay together. I believe you. It’s messed up, but you’re not getting kicked out. You can still retire, even if it’s sooner than you’d planned, and we?—”
“No, dammit, Jessie. He’ll stop at nothing to take everything away from me. He took my career because he can’t bend, can’t be creative, can’t imagine doing something a little unconventional, and now he’s gunning for you. He’lltry to tell you lies about me, and my one request here is that you don’t believe him. Don’t let him tarnish the memory of what we had.”
Thememory.
I snapped back into the present moment, appetite lost.
