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Noah backed the truck out of its parking space before shifting into drive and easing out of the parking area. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t look back. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of regret in his expression or his attitude. But she felt the regret. She felt it filling him, eating at him.
That was his father and she knew Nathan had always hoped that the day would come that he and his parent could find common ground.
“Why did you stay here after your husband died?” he finally asked her as he turned onto the main road and headed back toward the house. “You could have moved. Gone anywhere.”
She shrugged. “My husband was here.”
“Your husband was dead,” he bit out. “You hold on to him like a talisman, Sabella. As though he still exists, and he doesn’t.”
She shook her head. “He did. And as long as I was here, with the things he loved, then I still held a part of him.” She stared back at him, feeling the pain that welled between them now.
“Do you think this is what he would have wanted for you?” he argued furiously. “To stay here grieving for him? To put up with the petty damned bullshit I’ve seen you put up with from these damned people? Did he love you that little?”
“How he loved me is beside the point,” she told him. “I loved him that much. And why do you care, Noah?”
His hands clenched on the steering wheel. “Then you were a fool,” he finally snarled. “Or too damned young to know any better. How old were you when he died? Twenty? He married a fucking baby.”
She was quiet for long seconds. She watched the night go by and grew angrier by the second.
“I spent nineteen months living the nightmare of every way my husband could have died,” she finally stated coldly. “I was twenty when he left on that last mission. Almost six years ago. I would wake up in so much pain I swore I’d been beaten. I woke up screaming, praying, I watched him die so many ways I could barely function.” She had seen his hell, and she knew that now. “Don’t tell me what a fool I was, Noah. I loved him. That isn’t up for debate, and it’s most certainly not up for discussion. You might sleep in his bed sometimes, or drive his truck and fuck his wife, but you don’t carry the papers that could give you the right to attempt to have an opinion on it.”
She was goading him and she knew it.
He shot her a glare from the corner of his eyes. “What the hell does that mean?”
“No marriage license, Noah. You’re not my husband, my father, or my brother. You have no right to that opinion.”
“I’m your lover,” he growled furiously. “That gives me the right. And I’m sick of hearing about Nathan. Sick to my back teeth of having him shoved down my throat.”
“In my eyes, you don’t have that right,” she informed him. “And my eyes are the ones that count. And by the way, you just passed the house.”
“I know I just passed the damned house.” His fingers were wrapped tight around the steering wheel. “I meant to pass the house.”
She shot him a wary look. “That’s good to know.”
He turned his head, glared at her, then turned back to the road. “You have a habit of being mildly sarcastic, Sabella.”
And she hadn’t before, she knew that. Sabella managed to restrain her smile.
“Just mildly? Damn, and here I was trying for completely sarcastic. I must need to practice.”
His expression was set in tight, furious lines as he stared broodingly at the road stretching out before them.
“Bastards,” he finally cursed. “They treat you like a simpleton and it pisses me off.”
She laughed at that. “My husband thought I was a sweet little thing. The classic dumb blonde. He was tall and muscular, and he loved it when I was helpless.”
It was the truth and he didn’t like it. He hated it. It showed him a side of the man he had been that he simply didn’t like. He’d wanted Sabella dependent on him. He’d never realized how much it was the opposite. He’d been dependent on her. Depended on her to bring the laughter and the warmth back to him when he returned from a mission. Depended on her laughter and her love to keep him human.
“And you tolerated that?” he asked her.
“I loved being helpless for him. Then. I’ve grown up, Noah. I’m not a doll. I’m not dumb. And I can survive without a big strong man to lean on. I’ve proved it. To myself and to anyone else who thought I was no more than the dumb blonde I let them see. Hell, I was eighteen when I married Nathan. Twenty when he was lost on that last mission. I loved him with all my soul, but I’m a woman now and games aren’t a part of who or what I am. And you may as well get used to it, because I won’t play the simpleton for you.”
“Your husband didn’t deserve you.” His jaw was so tight it looked ready to crack.
“He deserved all of me,” she said softly. “The fact that he didn’t have it was my own fault. That and my youth. But we would have grown into each other, I believe. We would have learned all those things neither of us had shown the other at that point.”
She watched curiously as he made a turn onto a dirt road rather than continuing to Odessa as she thought he was doing. The truck lights speared into the darkness, picking up the pine and piñon, lighting their way as he cut into a small canyon, turned the truck around, and cut the lights.
