A Fighting Chance Read online

  “Alright, calm down. When’s the last time you saw her?” I ask, as I start my truck and head to their house.

  “This morning. I kissed her goodbye then went to work. When I came home, she wasn’t here. That’s odd, because she’s usually home before me. I called her cell but it goes straight to voicemail. Her car is in the garage and some of her clothes are missing. There are several suitcases missing too. Where the fuck would she go? You have to find her man!” he yells.

  “Alright, just hang tight, I’m already on my way,” I assure him. I call Levi on my way and make sure he knows he has Chloe detail again today.

  I get to their house within ten minutes. Adrian opens the door looking as white as a sheet. I take a look around and don’t notice anything out of place. I take out my laptop and do a quick search to see if there is any recent bank or credit card usage. While I’m doing that, Adrian calls Shay’s boss, Stewart, to see if maybe he sent her out of town to a business meeting, and maybe she just didn’t have time to call him and tell him. It sounds like Adrian had to leave him a message. Fuck! If Chloe ever did that to me, I’d tan her ass good! Shit, what am I saying? She doesn’t have to answer to me anymore. Adrian gets off the phone just as I get a ping on her credit card.

  “I found something,” I tell him. He quickly rushes over, hungry for any word on where she could be.

  “What, what did you find?” he asks.

  “There is a credit card record of her purchasing a nonstop flight to Hawaii, it lands in a few hours,” I tell him.

  “Why the fuck is she going to Hawaii? I’m going to blow up Stewart’s phone until he answers me, the little prick,” Adrian says and dials his cell again. He still doesn’t answer, so he tries yet again. This time he gets an answer. They have a heated conversation, and then the call is over.

  “That’s all you can tell me about where she is?” he asks looking at me.

  “That’s all she’s used her credit card today for. I can keep monitoring them and tell you when she makes another purchase.”

  “No, get on the phone or click away on your laptop and purchase two tickets to Hawaii. We’re catching the next available flight out. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

  “What do you mean two tickets and we’re catching the next available fight? I’m not going to Hawaii with you,” I tell him. I’m not letting Chloe out of my sight until I know she’s moved on and is going to be alright.

  “Uh, yes, you are! I need your help and your tracking skills. You have to come with me. Please, I’m begging you! I did you a favor and I’ve kept my mouth shut about why you broke up with Chloe. Please, you have to help me.”

  “Fuck, alright. But, I can’t stay that long. I have open cases that I’m working on,” I tell him, although the only case I have is making sure Chloe is alright. I’m not taking any new cases, and all my other cases have been diverted to Chase and Levi when they’re not watching Chloe.

  “No, I promise one, two days tops. I just need time to find her and set her ass straight once and for all. I have a pretty good idea why she left.”

  Adrian quickly packs a small bag, and then we drive back to my house so I can pack a bag. I call Levi and tell him he needs to stick to Chloe like fucking white on rice while I’m gone, and I want hourly reports. Adrian is beside himself with worry over Shay, and he’s lucky I love Asher like he’s my own brother to put up with his shit. For no one else would I sit in an airport over night and wait for an early ass flight other than the Wellingtons. Adrian has kept my secret why I had to break up with Chloe, so I feel I owe Adrian too.

  When we land in Hawaii, I check my laptop and find another credit card charge for a hotel room. Adrian and I head straight there. We head to the front desk to ask for Shay Bradshaw’s room number. The man checks his computer and gives us a dirty look.

  “I’m sorry sir, but there are specific instructions that Ms. Bradshaw not be disturbed. I’m sorry, I cannot give you her room number,” he informs Adrian.

  “The fuck you won’t,” he says to him adamantly. “You’ll tell me right now or I will go hallway by hallway, floor by floor, shouting her name until I find her.”

  “Sir, if you do that, I will have to call the authorities,” he says condescendingly.

  He turns around and starts shouting Shay’s name. I don’t think he cares one bit if he were to get arrested. Shay means too much to him to let that stop him.

  “FBI, you’ll need to tell me what room Ms. Bradshaw is in right now,” I say and flash him my badge.

  “Uh, certainly sir, why didn’t you just say that to begin with? She’s in room 604.”

  We head to the elevator and Adrian says to me, “I didn’t know you were FBI, I thought you were a PI?”

  “I’m not FBI, I figured if I just flashed my PI badge it would scare the little fucker enough to tell me what we want to know. They never question me or want to see my badge up close.”

  We take the elevator to the sixth floor and Adrian knocks on Shay’s door. She doesn’t answer so he knocks a little louder.

  “Just leave it on the floor, I’ll get it in a few minutes,” she says.

  He knocks again and we wait.

  “Just leave it on the floor, I’ll get it,” she repeats a little louder.

  He knocks again and we wait. Hopefully she’ll get mad and open the door. We step to the side so she can’t see us out of the peep hole. His plan works, she opens the door and says, “Look, I’ve left specific instructions to just leave it on the floor, your tip will be left on the receipt.”

  He steps into view, grabs her around the waist and pulls her body to his with a thud. She doesn’t realize it’s Adrian and starts to scream. He puts his hand over her mouth. Her eyes go wide with shock when she realizes it’s him, and he’s flown twenty-seven hundred miles to find her.

  “I’ll just leave the two of you to talk, I’ll be down at the beach,” I tell them, wink at Shay, then close the door.

  I head down to the beach, rent an overpriced chair and park my ass in it. As I argue with myself and think of all the reasons I should and shouldn’t have Chloe in my life, I fall asleep. I’m rudely woken up by someone kicking my chair. I quickly get to my feet and say, “What the fuck, man!”

  I’m about ready to pound the rude ass fucker who’s disturbing me into the ground when Adrian says, “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to come and find you and tell you that Shay and I worked everything out, and we would like to take you to dinner tonight as a thank you. We booked our return flight for the morning. And by the looks of it, you’re lucky we came down here when we did. I think you’re going to be hurting in a few hours. You forgot the sunscreen.”

  “Fuck,” I say and check my arm. I peel up my sleeve and see bright ass white against a serious red burn.

  They get me a room for the night and we make plans to meet up for dinner in the hotel. I’m glad they worked out their issues. I’m glad to get back home where I can keep my eye on Chloe. What if I made a mistake? What if there is a way to still be with her and keep her safe. What the hell am I talking about? There isn’t. She’ll be better off not having me in her life.

  Chapter 3

  Chloe

  My heart sunk when Savvy said not to move. What the hell is she going to do? She walks down to the end of the bar and goes through the swinging doors to the back room. She comes back followed by another woman who starts refilling beer mugs. Savvy walks around the outside of the bar, over to my stool and grabs my arm. She pulls me off my stool then leads me back through the swinging doors into a break room.

  “Sit,” she says. What am I a dog? Curiosity gets the better of me and really, what do I have to lose? I sit in the chair and wait for her to say something. She bites her bottom lip as she paces around the circular table like a shark.

  “Are you OK?” I ask her.

  “Hold on, I’m thinking,” she replies. Well alrighty then, my life couldn’t get any stranger, so let’s just wait and see what the cra
zy girl has to say.

  “I’m trying to decide if I should go with the sister’s code or the bro code?” she says.

  “The what?” I ask seriously confused now.

  “You know the sister’s code, chicks before dicks, or the bro code, bro’s before hoe’s,” she says seriously, still circling the table. Has she lost her mind? What the hell is this woman on? Maybe I should check her pupils.

  “You’re a chick, not a bro,” I remind her.

  “Right. Then chick code it is. Slick called me a little bit ago, checking to see if you were in the bar, he asked me to keep an eye on you,” she says.

  “Max called you, here, tonight, to check up on me?”

  “No, who the fuck is Max? I said Slick. You’re not too bright for being a doc…oh, no way. Slick’s real name is Max? That’s fucking perfect!” she says squealing like a little girl on Christmas morning. She stops pacing and parks her ass in the seat across from me.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I beg. I’m mad as hell Max broke my heart, but I’d never want to mess with his street credibility. That’s his job, his livelihood.

  “Oh, don’t worry, honey. I’ll just keep that in my back pocket. It may come in handy some day. So, what are you doing here anyway?” she asks.

  What do I have to lose? I don’t have many friends besides the Wellingtons, so I tell her my life story. I finish by saying, “I just have no clue why Max broke up with me. We were doing great, and then he just showed up on my door step and broke up with me.”

  “That’s some heavy shit right there that you’ve had to deal with. I’m sorry honey, truly I am. Well, you just earned yourself an ally. You just leave it to me. I’ll find out what Mr. Slick is up to. He thinks I’m keeping an eye on you, well I’m the one keeping an eye on him.”

  I stayed in the bar drinking club sodas until two in the morning. Savvy walked me to my car to make sure I was safe, and then I drove home. I slipped in the condo unnoticed. I haven’t slept in almost two days. I’m exhausted and barley able to function. Here I am again, alone and in my dark bedroom, where everything seeps up from hell and enters my conscious thoughts. I fall into a restless sleep where haunting eyes and pools of blood cloud my dreams. The bigger heartbreak, the loss of Max consumes even those dark memories and shreds my heart into a million pieces, until I’m left with the hollow feeling of emptiness. That man broke my spirit, but Max, he broke my heart. The void that Max filled with love, fills with dread and loneliness. I’ll never find someone else who can understand me completely and accept me for what life has forced me to become.

  I wake drenched in sweat again. At least I was able to get a few hours of sleep. I have another shift at the hospital followed by family dinner with the Wellingtons. Just as I’m getting out of the shower, I get a text from an unknown number. It’s from Savvy, asking me to come by the bar tonight. I don’t know how she got my number, but I’m grateful she did. I love Ava, I really do, but this family also has a loyalty to Max. I don’t want Max to know just how much he broke me. The fact of it is he broke me just as much, if not more, than my kidnapper ever did.

  The one good thing I have left in my life is my work. As grueling and exhausting as my shifts are, I thrive off of them. After work, I head over to the Wellingtons. I really don’t want to be here. I don’t know if I can handle all the happiness and good fortune this family has. It’s not like they throw it in your face or anything, but these people just ooze with love and respect for each other. Right now, it just makes me sick. Even Ava, I can’t stand to be around. She’s been working so hard at work to become the youngest partner in her firm. And it looks like she may just get it, too. It seems like everything this family wants is handed to them on a silver platter.

  During dinner, I just push around the food on my plate, lost in my haze of self-pity. I haven’t had an appetite since Max broke up with me. After dinner, I just need to step away from everyone inside and get a breath of fresh air. I know I’m being selfish, but I just can’t be happy for anyone right now. Over dinner, Shay and Adrian announced that they will be looking into adoption, and I think that’s great, really I do. Just mentally and physically, I can’t seem to be happy at all. I take a seat on the steps outside and bury my face in my lap.

  “Mind if I sit down and join you?” Adrian asks. Shit that scared me. I didn’t even hear him come out here.

  “No, not at all. I’m so happy for you and Shay. You two have so many good things going on in your lives right now. Congratulations on the decision to adopt. You guys will be married soon, and I’m sure it won’t take long at all to adopt. I’m really happy for you,” I say, but honestly I really don’t mean a single word I just said.

  “Thank you. That’s not what I came out here to talk to you about though. Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, you can ask me anything.”

  “I…I didn’t ask Max to be a part of the wedding party, because I didn’t want to make things awkward between the two of you. But, I wanted to ask you if it would be alright if I still invited him to the wedding. He’s a really big part of this family, and I didn’t want to deny him this part of our lives,” he says.

  At the mention of Max’s name, I break out into tears. I can’t seem to grab a hold of a happy thought to stop them, but damn the tears come in droves just at the mention of his name.

  “I’m so selfish. Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even piece it together that Max wasn’t in the wedding. Of course he can come to your wedding. If you want him to still be in the wedding party, that’s fine with me too. Please don’t exclude him on my account.” Now I’m having second thoughts about even being in their wedding. I didn’t take the time to think that Max has every right to be there just as I do. I can’t be in the same room with him though, I just can’t. My heart can’t take seeing what I love and not being able to have it.

  “No, no, don’t get me wrong. He’s not going to be in the wedding. I just wanted to make sure it was alright that he attends the wedding as a guest.”

  “Absolutely, oh, I feel terrible about this now. There’s no reason we can’t be in the same room with each other. Oh no. What about family dinners? I never even stopped to think about how us breaking up would affect the rest of the family. He deserves to be at family dinners, too. He is such an important part of this family. He rescued Amelia. You know what, I should stop coming to dinners. He should be here, not me.” Although I lied about the two of us being able to be in the same room together part, I wasn’t lying about the fact that Max should be with this family, not me.

  “You can stop right there. No one said anything like that. You are just as much a part of this family as he is. Don’t start feeling guilty. He’s the one who broke up with you.”

  Oh God, I feel the knife twisting and turning, and I feel the grief bubbling up from the pit of my stomach. I don’t think I’m going to be able to hold it in.

  “I know, what about you two alternating Sundays? You can come one Sunday, and then Max can come the Sunday after that, kind of like child custody,” he says delivering the final twist.

  That was it. There was no more trying to control it. I tried to think of the babies in the nursery to sooth my aching heart, but it didn’t work. I let go of the pent up emotion I’ve been holding in for the past few days. I had no control of the sounds or sobs that escaped my lips or my soul.

  “What did you say to her, you big hairy ape?” Ava asks coming out to the porch.

  “What? I don’t know, we were just talking, I didn’t say anything bad. I was just trying to comfort her about Max,” he says.

  “You were talking to her about Max? What are you, an idiot? Get out of my way,” she says and pushes him off the step.

  “Now look what you did, you dill wagon,” Asher says and slaps him upside the head.

  “I didn’t say anything!” he insists.

  Ava ended up taking me home. It wasn’t Adrian’s fault. There’s just too much going on, and I can’t deal with it all. I lock
ed myself in my room for a few hours, and then after I knew Ava was asleep, I snuck out and went to Deuce’s. I take a seat at the bar and before I could even take my purse off my shoulder, Savvy slips a club soda in front of me.

  “You look like shit, what happened?” she asks. Leave it to Savvy to be blunt and say it like she sees it.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say and just like the lonely men sitting next to me, I stare into the depths of my glass hoping to see a reason, a purpose to go on.

  Max

  When Levi called and told me that Chloe had a breakdown on the steps at the Wellington house, my heart sank. She’s not taking this breakup well at all. I honestly knew that she wouldn’t, but this really doesn’t look good. She’s been through too much. She’s had to deal with way too much and to add me breaking up with her may just push her over the edge. I give Levi the rest of the night off, and I park my Explorer outside her condo. When I see her leave at midnight, I knew this was much worse than I thought. I followed her to Deuce’s and waited across the street. I’m fucking pissed that she’s coming to a place like this. At two in the morning, her and Savvy finally walk out of the bar. I watch Savvy put her in her car and my blood boils. She’s been drinking for two hours, and Savvy’s letting her get behind the wheel of her fucking car to drive home. What the fuck is she thinking?

  I call Chase and order him to my location, and then to follow Chloe home. I need to know that she made it home safe. I’d do it myself, but Savvy and I need to have a few words. Chase is only a few miles away and tails Chloe home. I get out of my truck and storm in the bar.

  “Sorry, we’re closed sugar,” she says, not even looking to see who’s just come into the bar.

  “What the fuck were you thinking letting her drive home? She’s been here for two fucking hours drinking. Are you out of your fucking mind?” I yell at her.