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Figuring she’ll hire a private investigator, which is probably our best bet considering the cops will probably be less than helpful, I do the only thing I can do.
“Of course,” I assure her.
The way she slumps back into her chair with relief has me moving toward her and wrapping my arms around her in a hug this time. I might have issues with my sister, and I do, but that doesn’t mean I want her to be in danger or to be hurt.
I’m not a fucking monster.
Do I think she’s probably shacked up somewhere with a guy? Yup. Is she probably high off her ass? Yup, that too.
Still, I’ll help my aunt in any way she needs me to. She’s always been there for me, and I’ll be damned if I don’t return the favor.
Maybe, if nothing else, this little quest to help Aunt Dot find Jen will serve as a distraction from Kade.
A girl can only dream.
CHAPTER 4
KADE “DRILLER”
Fucking hell. The last three months have been a living hell in ways it never had been before when I’ve been stuck out on the rig. I know why, too.
Emery.
The only thing I’ve had to keep me warm at night, to keep me from diving off that damn platform and taking my chances on getting back to shore, have been my memories of the night we spent together. They weren’t nearly enough.
I wish shit had gone down differently; I really do. Because the regret is the other edge of the sword that cuts me right along with the memories of passion and connection that I have with my woman.
It’s the memories of what happened in the early morning, before light had really started to filter through the windows of my woman’s far too small and run-down apartment have been haunting me just as much as the feeling of being buried deep inside of my woman. I wish I could do it all over again. I wish I had been thinking at all.
When my phone started ringing, I was going to ignore it. Fuck, I did ignore it the first time the ringing began. But then it started right back up again. Dread started to weigh heavily in my gut, and I knew I needed to find out who the fuck was calling me so early.
At first, I had convinced myself that it had to be Mom, which worried me because she wouldn’t have called me that early, especially when we had plans before I went back out onto the rig, unless there was an emergency. The thought that something might have happened to my sisters is what had me finally jackknifing out of the bed.
But it wasn’t Mom.
It was my boss and my gut tightened right along with the rest of the muscles in my body. With a single glance at the caller ID, I felt strung way too fucking tight.
Finding out that there had been an accident on the rig and that one of the guys was injured had me moving without even fucking thinking. You get close to the guys you spend so much time with, especially when you have to rely on each other to work hard and be smart about it because shit can go sideways out there with a single step. Then you’re fucked without the resources you’re used to on land.
It might be a lucrative job, but it’s dangerous as fuck. All of us have had to deal with scrapes, sprains, and minor burns from time to time, but to get a call from my boss meant shit went sideways in a way that wasn’t so simple to deal with.
Being called back to the rig early clouded my mind and I didn’t even think about leaving a note or my number for Emery. Oh, I remembered when I had a chance to stop and think, but by then I was already being transported out to the rig. By then it was far too fucking late.
In that moment, as realization set it, the only thing I could do was hang my head. I didn’t even know which tattoo shop she worked at because while we talked about a lot of things, including her art, she hadn’t mentioned which shop. It gutted me to realize that I had no way to reach out to her for the next few months.
Dealing with that regret, living with it like a ghost looking over my shoulder and making cold settle around me, wasn’t easy. Fuck. I spent time wondering why time machines hadn’t been invented yet because I would have gladly paid any amount of money to be able to go back in time and do shit differently.
I would have gotten her number first before ever sinking inside of her tight, wet pussy. I would have left her a note or, better yet, I would have woken her up and explained what the fuck was going on.
My heart aches whenever I think about how she might think it was just a one-night stand and that the connection between us wasn’t real. I can only hope that what we shared that night was enough to see us through my fuck-up. But I’m not sure if hoping is only setting me up for more disappointment or not.
There are only two positives that I can find from how everything went down. Frist, I got a nice little bonus for getting called back out to the rig early. Secondly, I threw myself into drawing whenever I had any downtime.
I’ll admit, I had been losing some of my muse with every stint out on the rig. It was like I could see the shattered pieces of the future I was looking forward to when I was younger, and slivers were being lost every time I went back out there to work. I was sure I’d never be able to collect those fragments again and I had made my peace with it—even it was reluctantly.
But meeting Emery combined with the knowledge of my sisters being on the precipice of adulthood, had a fire igniting in my gut again. I’ll admit, I did more sketches of Emery than anything else. Fuck, I have an entire pad full of them.
My mind would drift, and I’d find myself wondering what she was doing in that moment. Whatever I saw, whatever I imagined, I would draw.
