Whiskey River, Drown my Soul

Chapter Fourteen

Luke enjoyed having supper with Marie. He definitely got the vibe that she was interested in him, and he wasn't sure what to do about that. He really did pride himself on professionalism and logical thinking, so, logically, it made no sense to get involved with her. It could put their current mission at risk with more feelings involved. He already had Rev's emotions for Paige to contend with. Plus, there was no chance at continuing a relationship when he left to head north.

When she dropped him off, she had casually lingered with that interesting smile of hers. Lips closed, edges turned up. Like the cat that ate the canary. She simply looked at him and didn't say a word, so he thanked her and said one of them would get ahold of her tomorrow, or today, rather.

"All right then", she had replied and he climbed out of her car. He shook his head to clear his mind, took a shower, and went right to sleep.

As soon as he woke, he opened his laptop and started in on forging a state of Texas bartender license for Allison Walker.

When it was done, he showed his badge at the front desk to gain access to a printer. He slipped the copy underneath their door, put his laptop away, and went downstairs for the hotel breakfast.

He hadn't seen or heard movement from next door yet, so he started searching for Deek, using connections to Stubs/Hernan Rodriguez as a starting point.

He found nothing that would make sense for that name. He was guessing it was part of a last or first name, but nothing clicked, so he continued digging into the reports he had gotten back on Levi Wallace.

...........................................................................

I woke to Rev's face staring at me.

"Hello, gorgeous", he said with a smile.

I immediately smiled back. I loved hearing him say that.

"Hey, handsome", I replied, and snuggled closer.

Rev reached up and lightly ran his fingertips up and down the side of my neck.

We lay like that for quite some time before I blurted out something that had been kicking around in my head.

"What if I was wrong?", I asked.

"About what, sweetheart?", he asked calmly.

"About us. What if I made the wrong choice to stay with Brad? That day in the kitchen, after I talked to Mike about career options, I really would have taken off with you but later I changed my mind to Brad. When I told you I would leave with you, I had gone with a gut instinct. Later my heart changed my mind. What if my gut was correct and my heart was wrong? What if you were who I was actually supposed to be with all this time?"

Rev stopped stroking my neck and laid his palm against my face instead. His eyes teared up a little.

"If you remember correctly, love, I told you no. I said to stay where you had stability because I had to get Jay, and because I had so much left to do. I couldn't support you and your career in the way Brad did. If I would have stopped working to do so...".

"You would have ended up resenting me", I sighed.

"You can't do this, love. We made the decisions we made which led to this point. I have to believe our decisions were the best ones at the time for many reasons".

"But we're working together now. We're together and we're doing missions. We could have been doing this all that time".

He gave me a sad little smile.

"No, sweetheart, we couldn't have, could we?", he said gently. "It took you years to gain the physical skills needed to do this. You've always had an instinct for undercover, but you didn't know how to fight, yeah? You do now. Plus, you would have missed out on your singing career. That was a goal you had to accomplish. There's no way I would have let you give it up for me".