Page 28 of Chasing the Other Woman

My breath catches.

Just five minutes ago, I saw a photo of this man with a woman tending his wounds like she was the one he wanted there with him.

And hadn’t he told me just that? That he wanted her in the truck with him instead of me?

Another text comes through.

Brooks:

I found something. I need to talk to you about it. I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.

I lose track of how long I stare at the words.

“Sam?”

I look up at Petra. She cautiously looks down at the phone. Her eyebrow quirks.

“I don’t know what’s changed,” I say.

“Do you want to answer?”

This time, it’s not a text. The phone rings. Brooks’s photo fills my screen, full-on grinning. I’d taken the photo of him right after we’d come back from a chase. His hair was wet, plastered to his forehead, and I’d sworn he was the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on.

The phone continues to ring.

The image of Luci’s hands on him, standing between his legs, superimposes itself over the ringing phone.

“No,” I answer, then silence the call.

It rings again a minute later. Then again.

Finally, on the fourth call, I silence all notifications from him. I don’t outright block him. I can’t do that yet. I just make it so that I don’t have to hear that ring and see that photo pop into my head over and over. Or him holding her while I stare from the doorway. Or hear him telling me that he wanted her in the cab next to him, not me.

Whatever’s changed, I can’t do it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

It’s late afternoon when the air changes.

Back before things went sideways, Brooks used to say that I had a supernatural ability to track storms in a way that no radar could. And right now, everything is pointing toward trouble. The pressure around me feels different. The light looks wrong, like something out of a sci-fi movie, although no one can seem to sense it other than me. The clouds look almost benign, but there’s something off about the way they’re stacking.

I set the tray on the bar and turn toward the plate-glass windows that frame oncoming chaos.

Petra stops, following my gaze. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at that sky.”

“Line’s shifted.”

Tom’s sitting at the bar with his tablet. “I’ve been watching it on the weather apps.”

Petra lets out a breath that says he was supposed to be working on homework but says nothing.

“It wasn’t supposed to come this far south,” he says.

Smart kid.

“No,” I confirm. “It wasn’t.”

Petra walks over and flips on the television, switching to the local station where the meteorologist has already broken into regular programming. She’s speaking calmly, but I’ve watched local meteorologists in this corner of the world for too long. She’s too calm. The kind of calm that says she’s working hard to pretend what’s showing on the radar isn’t giving her the willies.

“Weather radio?” I ask, turning to Petra.