“I’ll always love you,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “If you can love anything, maybe you do love me. But the feeling is not mutual.”
“You have my number,” she said as she made her way down the hallway.
“Lose mine!” I called after her.
I stepped back inside my office and closed the door. I ran my hands through my hair, my mind racing in a million different directions.
I picked up the phone and clicked SEND. As soon as I heard it pick up, I began talking. “Ryan? It’s Cane. Is she all right?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Are you taking her back to her house?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Go straight there, and I’ll be there shortly.”
THIRTY-NINE
Cane
“I didn’t fucking know!”I bellowed, causing Jada to recoil. I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry for yelling. But just listen to me.”
Jada was sitting in the chair by the window. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and it killed me to see her like that. “It’s just too much, Cane. This is all just too damn much.”
I took a step toward her, and she held up a hand. “Just … don’t. I can’t process anything else today, okay?”
“Baby, I am sorry for all of this. I literally walked into the office this morning, and she was there. I had no idea.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “I believe you. I just … I can’t.” She laughed a small laugh that only made me feel worse. “I just can’t deal with anything else right now.”
I watched her sitting there with her face streaked, her hair pulled partly down from her ponytail. The orange dress she had worn earlier just for my benefit lay in a heap on the floor.
I felt like a complete fucking ass.
“Can I hold you? Please?”
She snorted. “I have to finish packing. I need to leave for the airport in an hour.” She looked down at herself. “And I need to get cleaned up. I’m a mess.”
“You’re just overwhelmed. Everything will be okay, baby. Let us find Simon, and you can come back.”
Her bottom lip quivered, and a sick feeling took over my stomach. “What are you thinking?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Nothing,” she said, looking away.
“You’re lying to me.”
“You can spot one of your own kind.”
“Jada. Don’t go there.”
“Why, Cane? You don’t like being put on the spot? You don’t like it when I call you out on lying to me for weeks now? Even when my life might have been at stake? Or the fact that I walk in today and see Ashley in your office? You don’t want that open for discussion?”
I tried to stay calm and in control of my body, but it was spinning out of control too quickly. “Dammit, Jada! It’s not like that!”
She leaned forward, her eyes angrier than I had ever seen them. “Here’s what it’s like, Cane. I’ve been feeling you pull away and have been scared to fucking death that it was going to end like it did with Decker. But you convinced me otherwise, and I believed you. And now I have to go out of town because someone may want to kill me, yet I have to leave you here when he might be trying to kill you, too. How am I supposed to manage that, Cane? How am I supposed to live while worrying that something is going to happen to you?”
