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“Do you hold that little amount of faith for what the two of you built at the cabin? I’ve seen the looks she gives you when you’re not looking. It’s evident she’s fallen for you.”
“She doesn’t take being lied to very well, and I can hardly blame her. If she can’t feel she can trust me, we have nothing. I’ve told her some pretty big doozies, and I’ve run out of excuses and white lies to placate her.” I rub the back of my neck and sigh in defeat. “She’s at her breaking point; I can feel it, and I can’t give her the answers she wants right now, especially when I don’t have most of them myself.”
“Her head may be telling her to leave, but her heart can’t let you go,” Stryker insists. “She’s confused, and you have to understand both the mental and physical traumas she’s incurred, and how they relate to her psychological state. She’s highly fragile, Trav, and I'd venture to say she's damn near psychopathic. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you what it was like when you had your first kill, do I?”
“Oh, I remember it, but I didn’t make myself an island, shutting everyone out.”
Stryker scoffs aloud, and I pull my gaze away from the edge of the darkened property line to look at him with narrowed eyes. “Mind telling me what you find so funny?”
“You’ve got one thick head, buddy. Look over your hard-headedness for a minute, will you? Not everyone can bounce back from traumatic shit like you, and not everyone handles stress in the same manner as you do. You keep forgetting there are multiple factors at play here.” He shakes his head at me, irritated he has to lay it out for me as his voice rises in frustration. “Besides the fact she’s a female, her brain isn’t operating on all four cylinders. Do I really have to reiterate everything Grant told you in regards to her head trauma?”
He leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his thighs, locking his eyes with mine as he tries to drive home his point with a heated tone. “All the behavioral fluctuations she’s been experiencing is to be expected, Travis. It’s not like she has control over this…control over the speed of her mental and physical healing. You know damn well there are medically proven negative side effects related to what she’s been through that can lead to a psychosis in the blink of an eye.”
“No, I don’t need a recap,” I gruffly state, “nor do I need you giving me a lecture on all this shit.”
“Apparently you need some sort of reminder, Trav, because you’re acting like a lovesick fool. I never really understood that term before, until now,” he says, shaking his head as he leans back in his chair. “I think you’ve lost more than your sanity when you decided to fall head-over-heels for this girl. I believe you lost a chunk of your brain in the process.”
“Fuck you.”
Stryker half-laughs at me. “I have never seen you this tied up in a knot over a woman since Clarissa. You went off half-cocked, running wild with your emotions on this one, and that is not the Travis I know. Hell, I didn’t think Stonewall had any emotions left.
“Fuck off, Stryker,” I warn. “I’ve got my shit together, and I’m in control of myself. I know what I’m doing.”
Stryker breaks out in a set of deep, low-sounding chuckles. “You think you’re in control. This girl has you all fucked up, which surprises the hell out of me, because even when you had Clarissa, you were in control of your emotions. You were still the notoriously badass Stonewall Jackson everyone knew you to be, but this,” he shakes his head, “this takes the cake, and I don’t need to remind you what happens when you let your emotions take the driver’s seat.”
“I’m still the same calculating and measured man who can think five steps ahead of everyone else.” I glare at Stryker, ready for him to get off my case. “Contrary to popular belief, I have thought of every angle possible and then some for my decisions. Granted, I did most of this last minute, flying by the seat of my pants, but I still had a formulated plan. I’m sure right now it looks as if I’m coming off as the lovesick fool you say I am, but all I’m trying to do here is help ease her pain.”
“Nothing is gonna ease her pain, buddy.” Stryker begins ticking off all the crazy shit that’s happened to Jules while being under my care. “She’s had head trauma, wound up with amnesia, and then she killed another human being, was kidnapped twice by sex traffickers, and in her mind, she’s your captive this go ‘round. Of course it doesn’t help matters when she finds out the love of her life up and remarried within a month of her disappearance.” His eyes narrow on mine as he lowers his voice, “That is one motherfucker of a pill to swallow.”
