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“Has he been grouchy?” Rivet asks Sunshine, looking between the two of us.
I watch as her eyes drift down to the undone button on Sunshine’s jeans. In her haste to get away from me, she forgot to button them.
The small smile that plays on Rivet’s mouth doesn’t hold an ounce of jealousy. Hell, the woman doesn’t even seem surprised, and I don’t know that I like fitting perfectly in some fucking box she’s put me in in her mind.
What I can see is that ship has well and truly sailed. There’s nothing on Rivet’s face that tells me she has a problem with what she suspects was going on when she arrived.
“We just got finished eating,” Sunshine says as she walks across the room and grabs our empty plates as if she has to prove to Rivet that she isn’t lying. “He’s probably going to want to nap soon.”
I narrow my eyes at her, annoyed that she’s speaking of me like I’m a fucking toddler. The nine-inch erection in my sweats would easily prove otherwise, but instead of looking me in the eye so I can challenge her, she carries the plates to the kitchen.
The older house design makes it so I can’t see her when she disappears into the other room, but it doesn’t stop me from staring at the doorway, waiting for her to reappear.
After the sound of the sink turning on and the dishwasher opening, she’s back in the room.
“I’ll give you two privacy to visit.”
And then she’s disappearing down the hallway into her room.
“Atta boy,” Rivet whispers, smacking my shoulder before sitting in the same spot Sunshine did when she was eating.
“You have really shitty timing,” I mutter, wishing she would look away long enough for me to put my dick in a better position.
I can recall Rivet giving me shit about hooking up with someone in a bar while we were on leave. She’d always tell me to go for it, to go talk to another woman, but I couldn’t because of how I felt about her. There were many times I saw it as a test, wondering if she was urging me to go to test my loyalty to her. It hits me that even before Bahrain, I think I knew she didn’t look at me the same way I looked at her. Yet I still let the tequila that night tell me it was a good idea to push things further.
“I can leave,” she says, hitching her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the front door.
Before I can answer her, the bedroom door down the hall opens. I don’t know how to read the straightness of Sunshine’s back as she walks back toward the living room. Her chin is high as if she has something to prove. She drops onto the couch, leaving a cushion between the two of us.
As much as I’d like to think that she’s staking some sort of claim, I know better than to let my mind create things that aren’t there. I did that with Rivet for years. I may not have my shit together fully, but I’ve always been capable of learning from my mistakes.
Chapter 23
Sunshine
I hate feeling like a coward, but that didn’t stop me from scurrying away from the two of them. If it weren’t for that stupid vow I made to myself about facing my fears and the things that make me uncomfortable, I’d probably be sitting on the bed in my room, wishing I were braver.
Instead, I’m uncomfortable as hell, sitting in the room with Brent and Rivet. The air around us is uncomfortable and tense, but I realize as they chatter about stuff that maybe it’s just me.
I know the two of them aren’t together. Rivet is engaged to another man, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like an outsider, an adulterer on some level because the man who had his lips and tongue on my skin earlier woke up less than a week ago, madly in love with this woman.
As much as I hate doing it, I can’t stop comparing myself to her.
She’s successful, both with Cerberus and her career in the Marine Corps.
I couldn’t make it through a second semester of nursing school.
She’s vibrant and full of life.
Most days, I wouldn’t get out of bed if I weren’t responsible for another human.
The thought of not having Ryder to care for right now is like a knife in my heart. I hate both my mother for not protecting him and Travis for being so self-absorbed that he put our son in danger, again.
Brent asked how often I make the wrong choices, and although I answered it honestly in regard to what was going on at the time, I now feel like a liar.
I can’t exactly wish Travis away. I wouldn’t go back in time and change anything that led up to me being Ryder’s mom, but I could’ve easily walked away any second after. The man Travis is now wouldn’t have put up much of a fight. He would martyr himself, complain to anyone who listened that I was taking his son from him, but I don’t think he’d put forth the energy needed to stay in his life.
