Chapter 107: Inseparable

Nash

As much as I wanted to turn my Jeep north and head straight for the border, I was forced to take the Southern route. There were things I needed to do before I considered taking a road trip that would take me over the border. I needed to make certain arrangements to ensure that my security company continued to run smoothly in my absence. I needed to collect my passports. I needed to get my head on straight.

My head hadn’t been on straight since Daphne marched her pretty little ass into my life.

I dialed Josiah, but got his voice mail. “Hey man, it’s Nash. Listen, I just had a chat with your friends up here in New York. You could have warned me a little better, you know. I heard that the bear shifter is on the loose again. I don’t know if that has any impact on you and your pack, but I thought you ought to know. And uh, I don’t know if you can get a message to the Redhawk alphas, but they should know, too.” I cut the call and tossed my phone on the passenger seat.

What I really needed to do was get a message through to Daphne. Or did I? Maybe I was just looking for another excuse to see her, to talk to her, to touch her.

Seven hours of night driving, and one speeding ticket later, I pulled back into my own driveway, in front of the unassuming little house and garage. My shoulders were stiff and sore, and my eyes felt dry and gritty from staring into too many oncoming headlights. My house, which had been a safe cover for the last few years, looked as empty and soulless as I felt.

The hot shower was calling me like a siren, as was my mattress, but I avoided both of them. Instead, I went into the closet and lifted the floor panels that concealed the document safe I had installed in the floor. I dialed in the combination, and applied my thumb print to the digital lock to make the door pop open.

The closet light didn’t reach the hole, so I turned on my cellphone flashlight to illuminate the documents within. I had a stack of passports, three of them American, one from Ireland, one from Greece, and one from South Africa. There were matching driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and social security cards tucked in among other important documents.

Nathan Straight didn’t have official paperwork, he was a ghost. He had served his purpose at the university, and I had already discarded him.

I picked up my original passport, the real one. Nashville Harold Turner. “Thanks, Ma,” I said, with a familiar cringe as I checked the passport and then tucked it into my back pocket. I rifled through the papers and picked out a credit card issued to Nashville. I lifted the pile to make sure there wasn’t anything else I needed, and my fingers brushed a bit of cold metal and soft cloth.

A Medal of Honor lay at the bottom of the safe. Funny enough, they had awarded it posthumously and presented it to my mother when they thought I was dead in Afghanistan. My poor mother had sat through my funeral, and accepted a flag from my military brothers. When I had turned up at her door a year and half later, very much alive, she had thrown the medal at me.

I stuffed the papers back over the medal I didn’t deserve and slammed the safe shut.

There were things I didn’t talk about, things I didn’t think about. Dying in Afghanistan was one of them.

I went out to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, out of habit. But it was still every bit as empty as the last time I had checked. I slammed it shut and pulled a glass from the cupboard. I turned on the faucet and filled the glass to the rim with cold, chlorinated, fluoridated city water. I drank it down and then placed the glass back in the sink.

I leaned both my palms against the edge of the sink and bowed my head, letting my chin drop to my chest.

Daphne had clearly moved on. And why shouldn’t she? I had disappeared from her life, with every intention of remaining nothing more than a bad memory. I should be happy that she was able to shake off her brief encounter with Nathan Straight and find love and comfort in the arms of another man. Because, if I really cared about her, I would want her to be happy and free, right?

Her bright blue eyes danced in my vision, her easy smile, her quick wit, and sharp tongue. Daphne deserved all the happiness, and it stung like hell to know that I would never be the man who could give it to her. If I had any decency at all, I would leave her alone, let her forget about me entirely, let her live her life.

Unfortunately, I was about a quart low on decency.

I pushed away from the sink and pulled my duffel bag out from under my bed. It was always packed with a few changes of clothes, my gun, my hunting knife, and the electronics I needed to run my business from anywhere in the world. I could link up via satellite in the jungles of Vietnam, or the desert wastelands of South Sudan.

Or the suburbs of Quebec, Canada.

As I dropped the bag on the bed, I caught a whiff of my own under-arms. I really did need a damn shower before I showed up at the gates of the Royal Werewolf Pack.

I started sending texts to my team on my way to the bathroom. They were fairly used to me disappearing into parts unknown with little-to-no warning. I had a good crew of men and women who knew how to run the business in my absence.

Guilt and doubt niggled at me as I stepped under the shower spray, but I refused to acknowledge the feelings. I just needed to see her. I needed to see with my own eyes that she was safe, that she was content. I needed to see that she was in love with the werewolf king. If she loved him, really loved him, then I could walk away, once and for all.

That's what I told myself.