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And I didn’t ever want to return.
twenty-six
. . .
Ruby
“Isit possible that you’re nicer than you pretend to be?” River asked, as he pulled into the parking lot at the pound.
“No. It’s not possible,” I said dryly.
He turned off the car and shifted to face me. “You’ve volunteered at Fresh Start every day for weeks, you visit my grandmother at the nursing home all the time, and now you’ve dragged me to the pound to get a dog for your childhood nemesis.”
I rolled my eyes dramatically. “First off, I smoked all the ladies at gin rummy, so it was hardly a hardship. Fresh Start is like my mother ship. I’ve always fit in with troubled souls, so I feel comfortable there. And lastly, calling Midge Longhorn my childhood nemesis is a bit dramatic, no?”
His lips turned up in the corners. There were moments with River when I tried hard to memorize every detail of his handsome face. I’d never felt so much joy at seeing someone smile as I did him. Like I’d earned something the rest of the world didn’t get to experience. He smiled a lot with me. And I liked it.
“It was the one time in over two decades that you’d cried. Are you claiming you like her now?” He smirked. “You going soft on me, Queenie?”
“Don’t misread empathy for being soft. I know what it’s like to want something so badly it hurts.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.
“Yeah?” he asked, reaching for my hand and intertwining our fingers. This was our thing now. We were sappy bastards ever since the Fourth of July three weeks ago. He’d kissed me in front of our friends and then announced that I was leaving soon, and it was temporary, so they should get used to it for a few weeks. And no one seemed slightly surprised by the act. “What do you want so badly that it hurts?”
The first thing that popped into my mind was River.
Wild River.
The man who made me feel comfortable in my own skin. The man who made me laugh and even made me cry during sex multiple times. He was perfectly unattainable. The worst kind of torture, yet I just kept falling deeper.
I was no longer harnessed to any sort of safe space. I was just falling a little more every day, knowing how much it was going to hurt when it ended.
I’d never let myself do that before.
I’d never let myself feel this much.
I knew better, yet here I was.
You.
“Bullet, remember?” I smirked.
“But you’re here getting the woman who stole Bullet a dog. And why the fuck isn’t Midge here? Why is this our problem?”
“Hey, lose the attitude, dude. I agreed to let you kiss me in public. You owe me.”
He laughed, and it echoed around the cab. “I owe you, huh? How about I pay you right now?”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I can pull you into the back seat, lift that little skirt you’ve got on, and let you ride me until you come so hard you forget where we are.”
Did it just get hot in here?
“You’ve got a filthy mouth, River Pierce, but that’s a hard no right now. Midge is meeting us here, and I am not about to risk her catching me having sex in the back seat with my non-boyfriend. Let’s get in there and have you intimidate the shit out of Doug Callan. If Midge leaves with a dog, you just might get lucky tonight.”
He got lucky every night. I was kind of a sure thing when it came to River. But it was still fun to tease him.
“You know, when I went to law school, I never imagined I’d be intimidating some old dude just to get the woman I’m not dating a dog for her nemesis.”
