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Don’t I?
Something about this doesn’t feel right. The sky is no longer black and filled with stars. It’s bright with morning light, harsh and blinding. I squint into the glare as Willow pulls away from me.
I reach for her, but she’s gone, and so is the truck and the lake and the croak of bullfrogs in the night. I sit up in bed, shirtless and covered in a sheen of sweat, the sheets tangled around me. Warm morning light pours in through the window.
I was only dreaming.
In my grogginess, I become aware of Willow lying in bed next to me. She’s facing away from me, the covers pulled back just enough to show the flawless skin of her shoulders and back. Still half asleep, I lean to kiss the nape of her neck and put my arm around her. We can snuggle for a while and maybe when she wakes up we can pick up where the dream left off.
But I stop.
This woman is a brunette—Willow’s hair is golden blond.
Then it hits me like a bucket of water. Willow isn’t the woman sleeping next to me. She and I broke up a long time ago. The woman in my bed is named Megan.
My girlfriend.
CHAPTER 2
WEARING ATHLETIC SHORTS and nothing else, I pad around the kitchen in my bare feet, filling the coffee percolator and putting it on the stove. Before it’s ready, Megan strolls into the kitchen wearing nothing but one of my shirts, which hangs down only low enough to cover the tops of her long lithe legs. She gives me a long kiss and hugs me. With her hair a mess and not a lick of makeup on, she’s a knockout.
I’m a lucky guy.
But I feel guilty as hell after the dream. I had my chance with Willow, and no matter how many times I’ve told myself I’m over her, I guess maybe I’m not.
It doesn’t feel fair to Megan.
I haven’t cheated on her. I’m a one-woman man, no doubt about it. But I haven’t given Megan my whole heart yet. I don’t know what the hell my problem is because any man would be blessed to be with her.
“Good morning, Ranger Yates,” she says in a jokey tone.
“Good morning, Professor Casewick,” I say.
This has become the way we greet each other when we’re in a humorous mood. Megan is an assistant professor at Baylor. She’s just finished up her first school year on the job and plans to spend the summer doing research to make headway toward tenure.
As for me: I’m a Texas Ranger and plan to spend the summer catching bad guys.
We make breakfast together and talk and joke. It’s Sunday morning and, for a change, neither of us has anywhere to run off to. But we don’t quite have a morning ritual down, and our interactions aren’t as comfortable as I would like. With Willow, we’d had a routine—coffee (she’d make it), breakfast (I’d make it), then sitting on the porch with our guitars (making music together).
But Megan and I don’t live together—we haven’t even talked about it—and most of our time together is squeezed into brief windows in our busy schedules. On the rare nights one of us does get to sleep over, it’s usually me staying at her apartment in Waco, which isn’t far from the Texas Rangers Company F headquarters. And I’m always rushing off in the morning, often before she’s even out of bed. But she stayed over at my place in Redbud last night, and life always feels just a little bit off when she’s here. Probably because Willow and I used to share this house. I’ve lived in it alone longer than I ever lived in it with Willow, but still I often think of it asourhome.
The uncomfortableness might also be because Megan and I had a fight last night. Not really a fight. Just a little argument. I’m supposed to go with her to a brunch at one of her colleagues’ houses this morning, and I made the mistake of whining like a fourteen-year-old boy and saying, “Do I have to go?” All of her coworkers are nice enough, but I just don’t fit in when I’m at their get-togethers. They talk about student retention, curriculum changes, and the latest agenda items coming up before the faculty senate. I’ve got nothing to add. In fact, it’s like they’re speaking a language I don’t even understand.
But Megan made the point that I’ve dragged her to plenty of cookouts hosted by cops, where she’s been forced to make small talk with people she has nothing in common with. I agreed she was right—if I ask it from her, she should expect it from me—but the damage had already been done. She said she didn’t want me to do anything I didn’t want, but I could tell she was hurt.
Now I’m going to try to make up for it.
“I’ve decided I’m going to go with you today,” I tell her.
She sets down her cup of coffee and gives me a discerning look.
“Only if you want to,” she says.
“Of course I don’twantto,” I say. “I’m doing it for you.”
Shit.
Wrong thing to say.
