Expired Getaway (Last Chance County #7) - Lisa Phillips Page 0,22

knees to his sergeant. “Sydney’s mother.”

“You said she died.”

“That’s what I was told.” He relayed everything that’d happened. His awkward attempt to get her to stay with him at the hospital so they could talk.

He’d wound up hurting her. Then she’d run away from him. As though it was better for him to think she was dead. Or for Sydney to believe that.

He’d told his daughter the truth. In an age-appropriate way, of course. As soon as she started asking questions, he’d let her know that her mother was in heaven. An angel. Even though he’d been a believer at the time and knew Bridget wasn’t necessarily up there. They’d never discussed faith like that. Their relationship had been an inferno, burning out as fast as it had ignited. A few passion-filled nights he knew as a dangerous mistake.

Then one day, she was gone.

“I thought I got the best part of her.” He took a breath. “That God had given me yet another gift I didn’t deserve. I’ve spent six years giving Sydney everything she needed. Making the world a safer place for her every time I put on this uniform.”

All this time.

Aiden pushed out of his seat to pace across the breakroom. “That lady sat across from me with Sydney in a baby carrier and told me that Bridget had died in childbirth. And now I find out she’s alive? She doesn’t ask how I am. She says nothing about Sydney.”

He turned back to Basuto. Ire burned hot in his stomach. “She was probably going to just leave without saying anything. Not a single word about how I hit her with my car, or about her father. Or that guy who fled the scene. Her father is dead. Does she know that? Did she even wait around to find out what happened to her dad? Maybe she’s the one who shot him. She could’ve come back to town just to do it, and now she’s on the lam.”

Bridget couldn’t possibly act more selfish than this. Only concerned about her need to run away. Not about him, or the daughter he was raising. What kind of mother was she?

“Who does that?”

Basuto walked to the coffee pot and set a pod in to brew one cup. “Women…” He shook his head with a deep exhale. “Who knows why they walk away? One day you think everything’s fine. The next? Her stuff is gone, she leaves her ring on the nightstand, and all you have are questions.”

As soon as the light flashed, Basuto removed the cup and slid it over. He inserted another pod, put a mug under the spout, and pressed the button to make another cup.

“Nothing you can do but wonder…for years…what happened. What you did. What she thought was a problem so unfixable there was nothing to do but leave. Quit. Flee. Whatever you want to call it, she’s gone and you have nothing. Least of all an explanation.”

Aiden stared at his profile. “Sounds like personal experience.”

“This woman meant something to you?”

“She’s Sydney’s mother.” How could she not mean something to him when she’d given him their daughter? Life certainly hadn’t been perfect…or easy. But it had been beautiful. Painfully beautiful.

“Not to your daughter. To you.”

Basuto didn’t have kids. Aiden wasn’t going to explain that sometimes that was the same thing. “Bridget and I?” He didn’t know how to explain it. “No one said, ‘I love you.’ It wasn’t like it was serious. We were right out of high school. Mostly it was fun, or so I thought. Turned out we were just self-destructing and making Sydney at the time.” He had to shrug. “I guess.”

Aiden hardly liked to say it out loud. Let alone for a man he respected to know what he’d done in the past. God had said that all of it was washed away. In response, Aiden wanted to live his life as though what He’d said was true. That he could do the right thing now, and every day he could choose to act as though he was free of guilt and shame, even when it didn’t feel like it.

Basuto slapped a hand down on his shoulder. “Sounds like you got the best part of the deal.”

“I just wish I knew why.” Why she left Last Chance. Why that woman had shown up to tell him she was dead. What kind of person did that? “I just don’t get it.”

He’d been working to do the right thing for years, while she did whatever she