Page 158 of The Wright Man

"Just stay on the phone, okay? Don't hang up. I'm coming."

She didn't say anything else. Just cried. Like letting me hear it was the only way she could survive it.

I didn't even know where the fuck I was going yet, but it didn't matter. I'd find her. I had to find her.

What the hell happened in the hours since I saw her? Since she ran from me like I was fire?

Where the fuck did she go?

Did she tell him? Did he touch her?

I felt the pressure in my chest twist into something darker. Hotter.

I didn't know what happened yet.

But I would.

My jaw clenched so tight it popped.

If he did anything to her in the time since she left that gym...

I didn't care how long I'd been out of the Corps.

I'd make that motherfucker wish I never came home.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Angelica

Two Hours Earlier

The drive from my house to Annapolis wasn't nearly long enough.

Even with the stop-and-go traffic, construction detours, and a playlist I forgot to update playing the same five songs on repeat, it wasn't enough time to fully prepare for what I was walking into.

I didn't know what version of my husband I'd be facing tonight.

Angry Gavin. Victim Gavin. Manipulative Gavin. Heartbroken Gavin—though that one felt like a reach. Maybe a combo platter. The man had more moods than sense, and I hadn't heard a single word from him since he walked out this morning without so much as a goodbye.

No text. No call. No checking to see if I was alive.

Not that I expected anything different. I hadn't called him either.

The silence between us had grown so dense it had its own atmosphere. It wrapped around me like wet wool for the first part of the drive, suffocating and itchy, but the longer I was on the road, the more it started to burn away.

Like fog lifting after a storm.

I spent the first ten minutes spiraling again—replaying the kiss, the look on Maleek's face, the sound of his voice when he called for me. I let my guilt gnaw at me until it couldn't chew anymore. Then I sat with it.

And then I let it go.

The truth was simple. I was going to own my mistake. Every bit of it. Not just the kiss, but the years of silence and avoidance and pretending this marriage was salvageable when it hadn't been whole in a long damn time.

I was going to tell Gavin about himself.

And then I was going to end it.

That was the plan.