Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
“Griff is so good with Aaron,” my mom says out of the blue, as if she’d just taken a little trip through my internal thoughts. I startle and send her an incredulous look, but she ignores me, having pulled the garlic bread out of the oven. “Aaron’s getting really attached to him.”
“So am I,” I murmur, my lips quirking up.
She pulls out a serrated bread knife. Using a tea towel to hold over the hot bread, she starts to cut slices. “What’s he going to do, do you think?” she asks.
I pick up the sliced radishes, then distribute them over the top of the salad. Nabbing a few paper towels from the dowel in front of me, I wipe my hands dry. “I don’t know. He has to report back to D.C. next week.”
My mom turns my way. “Will he be medically cleared by then?”
I shrug. “I suppose.”
If the way he performed in my bed last night is any indication, he’s fit for duty. Sure, he still has a stitched-up wound under his collarbone, but he more than made up for that slight limitation in other ways. I had to bury my face in a pillow to keep from screaming out and alerting my mom and son that Griff is most definitely on the mend.
“Well, it will be nice to figure out what your new normal is going to be,” she says.
Yes, it would. I’ll be starting back to work tomorrow, which is a good thing. While it’s been nice hanging with my mom and Griff for a few days and spending the extra time with Aaron when he’s home from school, I do miss my crew at Jameson and the work we do.
Now if we can just figure out exactly what our future holds, Griff and I would be able to settle into that new normal my mom mentioned.
It’s not that we haven’t talked about our future together… because we have.
A lot, actually.
First, we’ve affirmed how much we love each other and are meant for each other. Those words come frequently and with such ease it really does feel a bit like we’ve settled into our destiny. In fact, we’ve got a trip planned early next month to travel to New York, so Aaron and I can meet Griff’s parents.
We’ve also talked about career dreams and aspirations. Griff asked me point blank if I’d ever leave Jameson—given how his job is based out of Washington, D.C.—and I had to be honest with him. It was as shocking to me as I’m sure it was to him when I told him I would leave Jameson if it was the only way we could be together.
Of course, Griff has come to know me well. He realizes how much I love my work with Kynan and his crew, so while it would have been very easy for Griff to take that admission from me and haul me off to D.C., he instead kept poking at other possibilities.
He asked if I could continue with Jameson from another location. I can, of course. I could also do a commute back and forth if necessary.
On the flip side, we spent a lot of time talking about Griff’s love of the FBI. It’s what he’s wanted to do since he was a little boy, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay in cybercrime. He’d transitioned there from white collar, but he also had an interest in counterterrorism. While he technically didn’t get to bring Bogachev through the system to a conviction, he’ll go down as the one who stopped his reign of crime.
And just last night, Kynan straight out asked me via text if I thought Griff would be interested in coming to work for Jameson. I brought up the idea to him as we lay in bed together, and he wasn’t crazy about the idea. Not because he disliked anyone here. On the contrary, he has mad respect for everyone—particularly Kynan, who saved us—but merely because he loves being an FBI agent. Again, he’s fulfilling a childhood dream.
So yeah…plenty of talking, but no real idea what we’re going to do as a couple for our future.
There’s no rush, and we’ll get there eventually. It’s enough to know we’re committed to a life together going forward.
Right now, we’ll be happy just reveling in being normal for a change with this nastiness firmly behind us.
Of course, Bogachev’s death made national news—not because his cybercrimes were all that interesting to the public, but because he set off a bomb in New York to try to foil an FBI raid. At least that’s how it was reported to the media outlets.
The power and pull Kynan continues to exhibit amuses me. There was absolutely no mention of him, me, or Jameson being involved. It was reported Bogachev was killed by an FBI agent during a hostage rescue. There were no mention of leaks from the local police or of poor Ken Battersham, who has an incredibly long recovery ahead of him. The story presented was nowhere near the truth of what actually happened, but that’s how we prefer it. It’s even possible Kynan called in a token favor from as high up as the president of the United States, because his authority goes that high up in the ranks.