She nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“Great.” I waved to her and left for the day. I didn’t need to pick Aiden up since it was a Friday, and I let him go to a friend’s house after school. I would pick him up after dinner. His friend’s parents all but begged me to let him have dinner over there.
I pushed out a sigh. Aiden had grown since we’d moved to Harlington. This move started to look like the best thing for my son. He gained several friends in his fifth-grade class, a father figure in Ace, and he hadn’t had a nightmare in months.
I called Ace’s cell phone on my way home but didn’t get an answer. He was probably on his way home from base.
My suspicions were confirmed when I reached the house and found his truck parked in the driveway. A piece of me felt nervous but almost lighter since I decided to tell him what was going on with Vincent Reyes.
“Ace?” I called when I entered the house and hung up my keys on the wall mount by the door.
He didn’t answer, but I heard stirring in the kitchen. I followed the sound and found him seated at the far end of the table, facing the entryway, as if he was waiting for me.
“Hey.” I entered the kitchen. “How long have you been home?”
He lifted his head, and his eyes met mine. Immediately, I knew something was off. The look in his eyes was cold. It hearkened back to months ago when I first returned to town. The angry and closed- off way he would look at me.
“What’s wrong?”
Because it was evident from the stiff way he held his position at the end of the table, something was the matter.
“I got some news today.” He slowly came to his feet. He still wore his ABUs.
“What kind of news?” I asked.
“The good kind.”
I slumped my shoulders. “Oh, then why are you being cryptic? What was it?”
His jaw ticked. His expression didn’t slacken, and I knew that couldn’t be the end of the story.
“Then I got more news. From Micah.”
I tilted my head to the side.
“I had him monitoring your financial accounts,” he continued.
“You what?” I blurted out.
He didn’t even look a tiny bit ashamed.
“You heard me. Is there anything you want to tell me?”
I folded my arms across my chest and narrowed my eyes on him. “Yeah, like, that is a complete invasion of my privacy.”
He rolled his eyes. “Save the holier than thou act, Savannah. You withdrew over fifty thousand dollars from your retirement account, and it wasn’t to open another one. You’re planning on skipping town again, aren’t you? That’s why you hesitated when I asked you to forget about signing the divorce papers. Because you want the money from your grandmother’s estate so you can leave, free and clear this time,” he accused with venom in his voice.
I hated the betrayal I heard in his tone. It was the visceral kind, the type of anger that only came from pain.
“You have it all wrong.”
“Which part?” he demanded. “The part about you taking your entire life savings out, or the part about you using the money to ditch me without a word again?”
He didn’t give me time to answer either question.
“Because that was the plan, right? Maybe you thought I wouldn’t sign the papers, so why not take what money you had and leave me again without so much as fuck you.” He seethed.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I yelled, pissed off at him and the situation.
