I follow.
The hallway is dim, lit only by a pink neon light buzzing on the wall. Lila pulls me through a door markedStaff Onlyinto a storage room barely big enough for the two of us. We’re surrounded by shelves of bottles and cleaning supplies and a single bare bulb she pulls the chain on, throwing everything amber.
“Sit,” she says, pointing at a crate.
I sit.
She comes to stand between my knees and digs into her purse. Of course she has a first aid kit in there. It’s a small one, neat and organized, stocked with gauze and alcohol wipes and a couple of bandages.
She works carefully, with that small line between her brows that means she’s concentrating, and I watch her face while Boone Hutchins’s voice rings in my ears.
Slade Rhodes, married? I give it a year. Less.
He doesn’t know anything. He’s a drunk idiot in a dive bar and he doesn’t know anything about me or my wife or what’shappening between us. He was swinging blind and he got lucky and I know that.
But the clock is still running. I’m still going to leave for Denver and Lila will be in Marble Falls, and our deal will be done.
“When I said I wanted to see a bar fight,” Lila says, interrupting my dark thoughts, “I didn’t mean you had tostartone.”
“Didn’t start it,” I grunt. “But I would have finished it, if you’d let me.”
“And then what, face a lawsuit?”
I shake my head. “Ain’t how things work around here. A man doesn’t go running to the courts every time he gets a boo-boo. Not even a soft-bellied good ole boy like Hutchins.”
The alcohol wipe stings against the cut above my eyebrow and I don’t flinch. But the disgust surges up inside me remembering his words.
Trading in wives.
Like she’s something disposable. Like what’s between us is something you can just throw away.
But isn’t that what I’ll be doing? Throwing all this away?
My gaze tracks across Lila’s face. The tender, worried look in her eyes.
I’d bet every dollar I have that Boone Hutchins has never had anyone look at him the way my wife is looking at me right now. And he never will.
I almost feel sorry for him.
And then I’m real fucking glad that asshole will never know tenderness like this. It’d be pearls before swine.
Lila is very quiet as she cleans up my cut.
“You don’t believe that shit he said, do you?” I ask, suddenly anxious.
Does she really think I’d cheat on her? I’ve seen her jealous before and I don’t want her spending one second ofsleep worrying about what I’m doing in another city.She has no idea that she’s it for me. That somewhere between a country road and a pink bunny costume and a three-legged dog, she became the only woman I want for the rest of my life.
“Of course not,” she says.
“You won’t have anything to worry about when I’m in Denver,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says simply. “We’ll be divorced by then.”
Those words hit me harder than any sucker punch to the jaw.
I don’t want a divorce. Not now, not in nine months, not ever.
My hands land on her hips as she stands between my legs. I just want to touch her. Reassure myself that she’s not going anywhere. That she’s mine.
