Page 97 of Hurry Up And Wait

“Because he would put a whole army on the house?”

“And then some. Besides, he’s really stressed with work right now. The last thing I want to do is give him another distraction.”

She shot me a grin. “You never told me how last night was.”

“He didn’t come.”

She snorted. “Well, that means you’re not doing your job.”

“No, I mean, he didn’t come home.”

Her jaw gaped. “You mean I left the house for nothing?”

“Trust me, I wasn’t too happy about it either.” I sighed heavily, not wanting to talk about it, but needing to figure out if I was being too weird about the whole thing. “He didn’t want to talk to me about the job.”

“Well, that’s normal, right? It’s a protection job, which means he probably can’t talk about it.”

“I guess, but…he said something about me not trusting him. I don’t know,” I shook my head. “It felt like he was hiding something from me.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Do you trust him?”

“Of course,” I huffed. “Why wouldn’t I?”

I didn’t want to think about what her silence meant, but as I pulled down the driveway of OPS, I knew she wasn’t through talking about this. As soon as I put the car in park, she put her hand on mine, stopping me from getting out.

“I think you need to listen to your gut. If something’s off with him, trust your instincts. You waited too long with Shawn. It would be a shame to waste time on someone who’s not being one hundred percent honest with you.”

“Kavanaugh is not Shawn.”

“No, but you guys got together awfully fast after not seeing each other for years. How well do you really know him?”

And that was the problem. I didn’t know him at all. Our years apart had put so much distance between us that the man he was today was a mystery. Looking back on the past few weeks, it was fraught with danger, worry, and sex. We hadn’t really talked about anything other than my relationship with Shawn. And that made things very one-sided, which was never a good thing.

“I’ll talk to him about it when he comes home next.”

She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Good. Then let’s talk to this hunk and get me a date!”

Her enthusiasm was a little too much so early in the morning, but I followed her to the garage and prepared myself for whatever happened next. But when we opened the door and walked through, nothing could prepare me for what I saw.

“Yeah, we’re heading out tomorrow night.”

“Alright, I’ll have it done for you then.” Duke looked up at us, smiling congenially, but it wasn’t him I was looking at.

Red turned to face me, a grin appearing on his face for a brief moment before he understood why I was staring at him slack-jawed. “Hey, Isla.”

“Is Kavanaugh with you?”

“Kavanaugh?” Riley asked. “No, we’re here to see this hottie mechanic.”

“What hottie mechanic?” Duke asked.

“Uh…he didn’t come home,” Red answered, his eyes flicking behind me.

I turned around and saw Eli yanking open the door. He was here too. Confusion swirled inside me as I put the pieces together. “He’s not here, but you are.”

“Obviously,” Riley snorted. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, where’s the mechanic?”

“Who?” Duke asked.