The rest of Slate’s team had made it to the bottom of the stairs and were on their way out the front door, their weapons drawn and ready to fire on anyone who might be waiting for them to exit.
But before Slate took even one step down the stairs, his world exploded, and the entire building collapsed around him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It hadn’t even been a full week since Slate had left, but to Ashlyn, it felt like a year. She was looking forward to the sleepover tomorrow, as she desperately needed to talk about how she was feeling with her friends.
She wasn’t sure she could handle this. She’d thought she could. Thought Slate’s job wouldn’t be a big deal. He’d go off to save the world and she’d carry on like usual while he was away. But she wasn’t dealing well with knowing he was in danger. She had no idea how the others managed to keep their shit together. Ashlyn was failing at this whole girlfriend thing, and she hated that she was so weak.
She wasn’t the one in danger, Slate was. So why was she so on edge? And everyone she came into contact with seemed to feed off her negative energy. She got into a shouting match with a man at the grocery store because he had forty-nine items in the express lane, instead of twelve or less, like the sign stated. She flipped off a woman on the interstate who’d cut in front of her, and Ashlyn was always levelheaded behind the wheel.
The last straw was when she’d visited James. He’d seemed upset, but when he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, Ashlyn had simply given up, turned around and left. Hadn’t tried harder to convince him to talk to her, had just left his house without saying much more than, “See you next week.”
It wasn’t like her. Ashlyn felt horrible for how she’d treated him, and she knew she had to get a handle on her emotions.
She’d just gotten home after work and was standing in front of her microwave, waiting for her frozen meal to be done, when her phone rang. Ashlyn practically leaped on her phone, hoping to see Slate’s name on the screen.
She nearly screamed in joy when she saw it was him.
“Slate!” she exclaimed when she answered.
“Hey, babe.” He sounded exhausted.
“Are you back?”
“Almost.”
“Are you okay?” Ashlyn asked. “You sound weird.”
“Just gonna be blunt. I got hurt. But I’m okay.”
“Hurt? How? Where?”
“Nothing major. Got my marbles knocked loose in my head. Didn’t get out of a building before it was blown up around me.”
Ashlyn could tell he was trying to make a joke, but she wasn’t finding any of his words amusing. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, made an error in judgement. I basically rode the stairs falling down beneath me, except my helmet came off and I hit my head on something. The guys dug me out and got me back to base. When I woke up, I had a hell of a headache.”
Ashlyn couldn’t breathe. When he woke up? That meant he’d been knocked unconscious. “But you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Got a concussion. Docs wanted to fly me to Germany, but there was nowhere I wanted to recover more than my own place. So they let me come home.”
Ashlyn didn’t know how the military worked, but she had a feeling it wasn’t quite as easy to refuse treatment when you were a Navy SEAL as it was when you were a civilian. But at the moment, she was more concerned with how Slate was doing than how he’d convinced a doctor to let him fly home with a concussion.
Ashlyn started to move toward her bedroom. When she got home, she’d immediately changed into a T-shirt of Slate’s that she’d been sleeping in, which was all she currently wore.
“I’m gonna change so I can meet you at your house,” she told him.
“No.”
The single word froze Ashlyn in her tracks in the middle of her hallway. “What?”
“I’m exhausted, babe. And Mustang is gonna stay with me. I’ll call you when I get up tomorrow morning.”
If Mustang was going to be at Slate’s house, that meant Elodie would probably be there too. Slate was all right with his friend and his wife being there…but not her? That hurt more than she thought it would.
In fact, the pain she felt at that moment was so sharp, so deep, she actually brought a hand up to her chest to try to contain it.
“I can look after you,” she said, in a voice that was weaker than she wanted it to be. “Wake you up every hour or so, that’s what you do for someone who has a concussion, right?”
“Mustang’s got this,” he told her. “We’re pretty used to looking after each other when we get banged up. I called because I figured you’d hear from the others that we were back. Didn’t want you to worry about me.”
Not worry about him. Right.
“Okay,” she said after a moment or two. What else could she say? She could beg him to let her come over, but that felt…desperate. And if he didn’t want to see her, then she wasn’t going to force herself on him.
“Gotta go. Mustang’s giving me the evil eye. Mr. Doctor has been a pain in my ass with all his ‘don’t do this,’ and ‘you can’t do that.’ I’ll talk to you tomorrow, babe. It’s good to be home.”
“Yeah. Okay. Glad you’re all right.”
“Later.”
“Bye.”
As soon as she clicked off the phone, Ashlyn’s shaky legs gave out and she sank to the floor in her hallway. Then she dropped to her side, where she curled into a little ball.
Slate had been hurt on a mission—and he didn’t want her to take care of him.
Like a bolt of lightning crashing through the roof of her apartment, Ashlyn realized that she loved him.
She hadn’t meant for it to happen. He’d just snuck under her radar. She’d wanted this to be a casual thing…and it was anything but casual for her.
But apparently, he was perfectly happy with the status quo.
If he loved her, even just a little, wouldn’t he be eager to see her? Wouldn’t he want her at his side when he was recuperating? Understand that she needed to be with him, to see for herself that he was okay?
And Ashlyn couldn’t even be mad at Slate. He’d done exactly as she asked…kept things easy and casual. Friends with benefits. Wasn’t that what she’d said she wanted?
Whimpering, she curled into herself tighter. She was an idiot. So stupid. She should’ve known she couldn’t do casual. She never had in the past. Had always jumped into relationships head first. But no rejection had ever hurt this badly before.
How long she lay in the middle of her hallway, Ashlyn didn’t know. Eventually, she got herself up and went into her bedroom. She knew she should go throw away the frozen meal she’d nuked, but she’d deal with it tomorrow. All she wanted to do right now was sleep. She couldn’t even cry any more.
She knew what she had to do now. She needed to slowly pull back from her relationship with Slate. Needed to protect what was left of her broken heart. And she’d do what she could to stay friends with him, even though it would hurt like hell.
For tonight, though, she’d mourn the loss of what they’d never have.