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I set my back teeth and glanced toward the front of the plane. “No kidding.”
“Like me with this whole misunderstanding kerfuffle with Santiago. It all started ’cause Jacob Horn’s a big jerkbag. D’you know, the game was originally supposed to be called Nut of Glory?”
“Was it?” I asked glumly. From the front of the plane, I could hear the rise and fall of Riggs’s voice, sharp with tension. No doubt telling Champ and the boys all about how he’d rescued fearful, difficult Dr. Rogers time and again.
“It sure was! And the magic seed?” Buck went on. “It was meant to be a magic nut.” His voice turned bitter. “Until Jacob came along, dangling all kinda promises in fronta me. ‘You and me, Buck, we’re a team! We’re gonna change the face of gameplay!’ Pfft,” he scoffed. “Nothin’ worse than a man who tells you you’re a team when he really means he already has a team, and he just wants to steal away a little part of your soul and pretend he’s never met you before. You can’t trust a man after something like that.”
“Never a truer word, Buck Nutter.” Bitter fury, cold as the west wind, blew through me, and I darted a look at the front of the plane again. I hoped Riggs and his team and his job were very happy together.
“Now everyone’s all ‘grab your Horn and have some fun.’” Buck removed a Horn from his pocket—one he’d wrapped in a piece of velvet that looked like it had once been the bed hangings at Gustavo’s crime palace—and stared down at it in disgust. He sniffled a little. “When I think that all this time, people shoulda been grabbin’ their Nuts…” He broke off with a shake of his head. “It ain’t wrong to expect a little respect from people when you’ve given ’em a little piece of your soul, is it?”
No. No, it wasn’t.
“But I suppose if this whole life and death business taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you have to let go and move on,” he sighed, swiping a finger beneath his eyes. “Plottin’ revenge only got me kidnapped. Bein’ sad only made me sadder. Time to give it up and get on with my next brilliant idea, I think.”
Tears pricked behind my eyes too, but I took a deep breath and ignored them. I was just tired. And suffering from an adrenaline crash. That was why I felt jittery and irritable. It was a hundred percent hormonal. Entirely physiological and explainable.
In fact, the whole affair with Riggs had been the result of stress exposure influencing my basic neural circuits, making me crave stability… even if that stability was William Bossy Motherfucker Riggs. Simple as that.
I threw my head back and sniffed away the last of my tears. “You know, you’re right, Buck.”
“Am I?”
“And you’re brilliant.”
He blinked. “More people oughta realize that, you know?”
“I think moving on sounds great. The best decision ever. In fact… maybe it’s time for me to leave the Thicket.” I didn’t realize my thoughts were leaning that way until I spoke them aloud.
“Leave Licking Thicket?” Buck’s blue eyes widened in shock. “Not permanently?”
“Probably not.” My heart cracked at the idea. I hadn’t realized how attached I was to the place, but Kev was right. I had gotten comfortable over the past half year, and the thought of leaving all the Johnsons and Nutters and Wrights and Churches was way more painful than I’d imagined it would be. But the alternative…
Ugh.
I darted a look in Riggs’s direction yet a-fucking-gain. I couldn’t make out their words, but someone was jeering at someone else, and everyone was laughing, and I was pretty sure that whenever Riggs was in my vicinity for the rest of my life, my eyes and attention would wander in his direction… unless I stopped this right now.
I could take another Doctors Across Continents assignment. They owed me after this last one, honesty.
Or I could take over the Rogers Family Foundation and be boots-on-the-ground in some remote part of the world.
Or I could go back to Nashville. I had plenty of contacts there, and any contacts I didn’t have, my grandfather did.
Or…
“No! Shut up. That’s not how it happened!” Riggs protested about whatever they were discussing, but he was laughing too, clearly not worried about me at all now that the fucking job was over.
“Yeah, for a few months,” I told Buck. “Just until things settle down.”
Until I stopped turning my head every time I heard Riggs laugh.
Until I stopped wondering where he was or what he was doing.
Until I stopped looking back fondly on our time in fucking captivity, because at least then we’d been together.
“You know, Doc, that ain’t a bad idea,” Buck said thoughtfully. “I think you might have a little brilliance in ya too.”
I snorted. Brilliant? No, I was a fool. A clichéd fool who’d fallen for the guy who was supposed to be guarding my body… and ended up letting him hijack my heart.
