Page 17 of Sinful Promise
I could lie to him.
I could tell him to fuck off and mind his own damn business.
But I won’t, because I love and respect him too much.
Instead, I choose the closest version of the truth I can share. “She likes to get a sense for who may’ve hurt her victims. Contrary to Doctor Torres’ opinion, she does feel these. You know that. She runs the case through her mind just as easily as she runs the body through her autopsy room. And often, she develops a hunch about who might’ve done the crime. She likes to see if she’s right.”
“So she’s doing the job of M.E.anddetective?” he grimaces. “You’re saying she’s better than both of us combined?”
“Pretty much.” I move onto the step outside and head down, as the George Stanley transport van pulls up to the curb, and the woman who drives it bounds out to fetch her stretcher. “But we already knew she was kinda special. It’s why I married her.”
Nodding, he follows me onto the sidewalk and studies his hands, like he’s not quite sure what to do with them. He massages his palm with the opposite thumb and frowns down at the concrete beneath our feet.
He’s nervous, when he so rarely is. Thoughtful. And I’m just guilty enough of a crime to start to wonder if he’s pinned me for it already.
“What?”
“I wanna ask you something.” Slowly, he brings his intense stare up and punches me square in the face with it. “And you’re gonna get pissy, because you do every single time this comes up.”
Oh fuck.My head turns woozy as I swallow down my nerves, and my heart sprints in my chest.If Fletch knows what we did, do I admit to it? Or deny our involvement? Do I get Minka the fuck out of the city, and potentially, the country?
I look along the street, then up to the house, where I can see techs wander through. “What do you want to ask me, Fletcher?”
“If Delicious did something really bad…” His honeycomb eyes flicker between mine. “Something really,reallybad that can never be undone…”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Like… if she cheated on you. Could you forgive her?”
“What?” My breath rushes out on an exhale that leaves me weak. “What are you—”
“I was married too, Arch. To the woman I thought was my everything. I even went and had a baby girl with her, because that’s how solid I thought we were. I thought we were forever. And when I look at you and Delicious, I see that same kind of permanence, so I just…”
His eyes flutter closed as anguish breaks his heart.
“Jada’s coming home from rehab. She has a sickness, an addiction, that makes her actions not always her own fault.”
Not prison. Not running away. Just… Jada.
“Fletch—”
“She cheated on me. Like… a fuckin’lot. She had men in our apartment while my daughter slept in the next room. She sold her body for her next fuckin’ hit. But…” His eyes open to reveal a deep ache. “If she was my forever, and if I loved her the way you love Minka, shouldn’t I forgive her?”
Relief washes through my blood until my knees damn near knock together. But I take a step forward and pull my best friend in for a hug.
“I don’t think you need to be her husband again to forgive her.” I slap him on the back—one, two, three solid thumps—before I pull away and clap his cheek. “You can still love her, because she was once very special to you. And you can co-parent with her, because that’s what’s best for Moo. You can become Jada’s very best friend; we both know she’s gonna need someone solid once she’s out.”
“Arch—”
“But forgiving her and marrying her are not the same things. And you don’t have to do the second to achieve the first.”
“She wants us to be together,” he croaks. “She wants to be a family again.”
“And I want to bubble-wrap my wife, stuff her in a closet, and let no one else interact with her ever again. But, ya know,” I laugh. “It’s not gonna happen.”
He chokes out a soft chuckle and drops his head again.
While I’ve been dealing with the death of my father, and the murder of a pedophile, I’ve skipped over the fact that my best friend’s ex-wife is creating more trauma in his life. She’s coming home soon, and he has no clue what the fuck to do about it.
