Page 17 of Betrayed

She opened the message.

Been thinking about you. We should meet up.

What? Who was this from? It didn’t matter, she wasn’t going to meet up with anyone. She deleted the text.

Probably should have blocked the number too, but she didn’t think of that until the message was gone.

She shoved her phone back into her pocket and went to find Ty, since it was their turn to clean the fire truck.

Out in the truck bay, Ty filled the buckets while AJ grabbed the sponges and tossed one to Ty. She took a bucket of sudsy water, set it beside the truck, and started scrubbing.

Ty stood there watching her.

“What?”

“You doing okay?”

The wall holding her up crumbled, and she slumped against the truck. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. Not after that save the other day.”

“It’s not even that. It’s Logan. Not only did we have that nasty exchange at the pool, but yesterday we ran into each other at the grocery store.”

“Talk to me, AJ.”

She couldn’t help but notice Ty called almost everyone else by their last names, but not her …

“What’s to say, Ty? He hates me, and I hate that. I want to fix things, but he won’t even let me apologize.”

Ty dipped his sponge into his bucket. “Seems like it’s going to take an act of God on his heart to make a change.”

She snorted and climbed to the top of the truck. “Why can’t he be a decent human being? It doesn’t matter if I’m nice or not. Anymore, he’s just a jerk.” She grunted and set to scrubbing the top of the engine.

The harder she scrubbed the more her frustrations took on a physical manifestation. She hated herself for how she’d wronged Logan. She hated herself for not confronting the ways he’d wronged her. She hated herself for not loving him like Jesus would.

That’s what she needed to do. Love him. But how could she when he did nothing but push her away?

Tears blurred her eyes, but she scrubbed her way toward the back of the truck.

Her heal hit part of the truck, and she lost her balance. She yelled but couldn’t catch herself. She slammed her back on the truck and went off the side.

When she hit the ground, the world went black.