Page 114 of Sergeant O'
My phone lit up from the coffee table. Another notification from the Haven Springs page. I didn’t have to open it to guess what it was. Same damn video. Same people who couldn’t mind their own business. Same comments that cut too close to the truth.
I told myself not to look.
Then I did anyway.
There it was again. Sylvia standing too close, the reporter’s voice clear as day:“Are you two back together?”Sylvia’s smug smile. My silence.
The comments below were worse.
“Guess the hot nurse was just a fling.”
“Back with his ex already.”
“Poor girl. Should’ve known better.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly through my nose.
Jade had seen this. Of course she had.
No wonder she didn’t want to hear what I had to say.
I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault—that I was just trying to protect her—but that didn’t stick. I’d told her we needed to cool things off, to make it look like we were nothing, and then I’d handed the town exactly what it needed to believe it.
The ache in my leg flared as I shifted, but I didn’t bother moving. I just sat there, staring at the frozen frame on my phone screen—the moment I kept quiet while Sylvia smiled—and let the truth settle in: I’d done this to her.
Sylvia had left me for someone who looked better on paper, and I’d been trying ever since to make sure no one could do it again.
Pulling back from Jade, keeping things quiet—yeah, that had been easier. Safer. For me, not her.
It was about me.
A bitter laugh slipped out. “Nice work, O’Shaughnessy.”
The phone slid from my hand and hit the floor with a dull thud. I didn’t pick it up.
There wasn’t anything left to say. Not to her. Not to anyone.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Jade
I didn’t sleep. I don’t even remember trying.
My eyes burned, and my head throbbed from crying, but I still reached for my phone when the alarm went off.
Work.
Right.
I stared at the screen until the shift reminder stopped flashing. My thumb hovered over the call button before I finally pressed it.
“Hey, it’s Jade,” I said when Allie, the charge nurse, picked up. “I’m not feeling great tonight; I’m not going to make it in.”
A pause. Then she softly replied, “Okay. Feel better.”
I hung up before she could ask what was wrong.
The phone landed somewhere near my pillow. Penny Lane crawled up beside me and settled against my ribs, her purr rumbling through the blanket. I rested a hand on her fur and tried to breathe around the tightness in my chest.
