Intriguing as I found the idea of Cade in a white cowboy hat and assless chaps, I hurried on with my story. “Pre-dry spell, I dated a handful of guys throughout my early twenties, none of whom lasted more than a few months, none of whom were anything more than semi-regular sex and even-less-regular date night companions at dinner or a movie.” I sucked in a breath. “Which brings us all the way back to my high school years. Seeing as I was homeschooled and spent most of my time surrounded by adults, options were pretty limited. Do you need to hear about the pimple-faced boy who popped my cherry or is that enough?”
Cade stared at me for a long beat, then leaned in and kissed me — a gentle, whisper-soft kiss the likes of which he’d never given me before. His voice was equally gentle. “It’s enough, Imogen.”
I nodded, too worked up to even kiss him back properly. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Angry, annoyed, and — oddly enough — relieved. Sure, telling him about myself was terrifying. But it was also liberating in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
I wassoout of my depth with this guy.
“What about you?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s your dating history? Now that we’re laying it all out there…”
He didn’t hesitate to share. “I got married right after graduation to my high school sweetheart. Corinne. Things were good for a while. Good became a memory as soon as I left the academy and got my first beat in a rough part of Baltimore. My ex… She isn’t a bad person, but she…” He searched for the right words, brow furrowed. “Corinne is a kindergarten teacher. Her parents were hippies. She’s all about sunshine and rainbows and silver linings. A perpetual optimist.”
Married.
He’d been married.
To a kindergarten teacher named Corinne.
I waited for him to go on, listening so intently I wasn’t even breathing.
“That’s a great quality in a woman, I’m not suggesting otherwise,” Cade went on. “But she couldn’t hear about my day, the shit I saw on the streets. The darkness of it. She couldn’t stand having a gun in the house. She would burst into tears if she thought too long about me having to actually shoot it at a criminal.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t talk about a big chunk of my life. Couldn’t ever bring it home to her, unload it when I needed to share.”
I kept still as a stone, studying his face in the dark.
“We tried for a while. Longer than we should have, probably. But who wants to get divorced at twenty-two? I stared taking classes on the side to get my criminal justice degree, while working full time. Never home — and when I was, it wasn’t great.” He sighed. “Corrine knew from the start that I was headed down the track to become a detective as soon as I’d put in enough time on the force. But when I actually started taking steps toward that goal… it was more than she could handle. Way more. Eventually, the bad days started to outweigh the good.”
He said this like it was simple though I was sure, at the time, it was anything but.
My stomach twisted into a knot of sympathy. Poor Cade. Finding the career he loved — but losing the woman he loved because of it. A sad turn of fate.
“One night, we finally talked it through.” His lips twitched. “It took about twenty minutes to realize we were headed down two vastly different roads, and running on an empty tank full of nothing but memories from the good old days. The truth was, I couldn’t go back to being the guy she fell for at sixteen — and even if I could, I didn’t want to. It was better to let her go, so she could find someone that could make her happy. Better to make the cut before we did each other lasting damage or brought kids into the mix.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.
His eyes had gone distant as he spoke, but they slid back to focus on me. “Don’t be. It was for the best. She’s happily married now. Has been for almost six years. Hell, I went to the wedding. She sends me pictures of their twins in the mail at Christmas.”
I blinked. “Oh.”
His grin twitched wider. “Yeah.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Are you happier now?”
The grin slid away, replaced by a serious expression. There was a look in his eyes I couldn’t quite decipher as they moved back and forth across my features. The silence stretched on for so long, I didn’t think he was going to answer me. When he finally spoke, it was in a halting whisper.
“I’ve got just about everything I’ve ever wanted within reach.” His arms tightened around me. “So yeah. I guess you could say I’m pretty fucking happy these days.”
The lump was back in my throat, bigger than ever.
Cade, as if sensing I was incapable of speech, decided to change the subject. “While we’re sharing… Can I ask you about something?”
I nodded.
“Earlier, when you were talking about your parents…”
I fought the urge to tense.