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“How’s the writer’s block?” he asks.
“Better. Getting there.”
“Jax,” he says bluntly. “You know you can talk to me, right?”
He’s right when it comes to most things. If it’s about research for a book or memories from our time in service, I can share anything with this man, but if I told him I’d kissed Luke’s daughter and wanted to kiss her again, domorethan kissing…
“Let me guess. It’s about a woman.”
He says this as a joke. Everybody knows I’ve never been much of a dater. As my brothers-in-arms dated, married, and settled down, I became more convinced that side of life would never be for me. I tried in the early days, but nobody ever made me feel anything.
It’s because they weren’t Zoey. I see that now, but I couldn’t know that in advance. Zoey was a little kid the last time I seriously tried dating, and it ended civilly, not with an argument or any drama. It just quietly fizzled out. I couldn’t inflict my coldness on a woman, but I was wrong. I’m not cold. I just never found a woman to burn for.
“Whoa,” Peter says after a pause. “Isit about a woman? I was kidding, but you don’t seem like you’re in a kidding mood.”
Glancing at the GPS, I see we still have twenty minutes for our journey.
“I’ve met somebody,” I say cautiously, knowing I should stop. “But it’s complicated.”
“Isthiswhy you’ve suddenly got writer’s block?”
“Maybe,” I say grimly. “Probably. Hell, definitely.”
“She must be quite a lady if she can distract you from your work.”
“She is. She’s beautiful, Peter. She’s funny. She’s smart. Honestly, she’s the sort of woman I can imagine spending my life with.”
I add thesort ofpart for his benefit, but there’s nosort ofabout it. Sheisthe woman I’mgoingto spend the rest of my life with.
“So what’s the issue? She’s not married, is she?”
“No,” I snap. “I take marriage seriously. Once someone takes those vows, it’s for life, or it should be.”
“So…”
He leaves it hanging as we stop at a red light. A couple walks across the road, hand in hand, the woman smiling up at the man. They don’t have to be ashamed. They don’t have to doubt.
Suddenly, I’m so pissed off at the whole world. At fate, destiny, or whatever, for making me want Zoey, Luke and Mallory’s daughter. For turning me into a traitor. Screw it. I can’t keep holding all this in.
“It’s Zoey,” I say.
Peter stares at me for a long time. I watch the road, but I can feel his eyes.
“Wait,” he says after a pause. “Do you mean Luke’s kid?”
“She’s not a kid anymore.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, Luke’s daughter.”
“Explain,” he snaps. “Jesus, Jax.”
I’ve gone too far to back out. As I drive through the rough neighborhood—the apartment blocks stacked close together, people drinking on the streets—I tell Peter all of it. I don’t hold anything back.
“I know I sound crazy, but I knew I had to have her the second I saw her. I knew she was the woman I’d been waiting for. I knew nobody else would ever compare. I’ve been trying to fight it, but we’ve been texting, and we kissed yesterday.”
Peter sighs. “I don’t know what to say. This is like… Hell, there’s no comparison.”
