Very sorry guys. I was relaxing today and reading, and just kind of lost track of time. I didn’t even eat dinner yet, LOL, and it’s just past 7 PM EST here. I do feel bad about noping out of both updates for King’s Command this weekend, so I’ll try to make up for it at some point this week with an update.

I basically ignored EVERYTHING this weekend, including prepping for the upcoming week — I didn’t even do my lesson plans which are due on Thursdays. I feel better for relaxing after the horrible day I had on Friday and all of the last week, but that just means I have a lot to do tomorrow since we’re supposed to be back in my building on Tuesday, so my schedule changes. I have to prep dinner, do laundry, prep posts and lesson plans — Of course, we’re supposed to have a terrible ice storm so let’s see if we’re even back. 2021, man.

And because I do feel so bad about this, I’m going to post an excerpt from Fool Me Twice tonight — a Liason scene that’s from Chapter 16 but doesn’t give a way too much. It takes place maybe two weeks after Jason returns. Enjoy!

Floating Rib: Parking Lot

They’d renamed the bar six months before Jason had been shot and shoved into the frigid waters of the harbor, but somehow he’d let himself forget that fact. Even so, the interior had always looked the same, and Jason just wanted to go inside and lose himself the way he’d used to—

But someone had redecorated it, and the dingy color and broken down furniture had been replaced by newer and brighter colors. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Jake’s.

Nothing was the way it was supposed to be, and Jason just stared at the building for a long time, feeling more lost than he had a right to be. It was just a bar. Just a place.

But it had always been his safe place. The one spot in the entire world he could count on—

His phone rang again, and Jason looked down at it, expecting to see Michael, Sonny, or Carly’s name flash across the screen. Spinelli had given up almost an hour ago, but the other three had called every few minutes.

He didn’t know what to say to any of them. How to handle it. How to process what had happened or why it had hit him so hard—he’d never liked AJ, that was no secret. Why did it twist something inside of him so hard to learn that AJ had been alive all that time, that he’d returned to rebuild his life—

That Sonny had killed him, and Carly had helped to cover it up?

But the call wasn’t from Sonny, Carly, or Michael. It was Elizabeth. Thinking it was about Jake—if he could see his son, maybe—

“Elizabeth?”

“Hey. Are you busy right now?”

Jason looked at the sign over the bar, then shook his head. “No. I’m not.”

“Great. Can you meet me at the corner of Van Ness and Arnold? There’s something I need to do, and I could use your help.”

Relieved at the distraction, Jason agreed, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He hung up the phone, then got back into the SUV.

When he arrived at the street corner Elizabeth had given him, he pulled up behind her car, then stepped out to find her leaning against a chain-link fence. “Hey. What’s up? Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. She gestured towards the building behind the fence—the building he hadn’t noticed before now. And the parking lot out front. Jason took in the lines of motorcycles, swallowing hard.

She’d brought him to a motorcycle dealership.

“Elizabeth—”

“It’s been a long time since we went nowhere fast,” she told him, “and I had a really bad day. I thought maybe you might need a ride, too.”

0