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“Your trauma doesn’t give you the right to be a fucking bitch,” Brielle snaps at the woman.
The woman swallows, telling me she might talk a big game, but she really wasn’t prepared for the way she has been spoken too.
“I’m Beth,” I tell her. “We’re about to go watch a movie. Would you like to join us?”
I can feel the heat of Brielle’s stare on the side of my face but I don’t break eye contact with the other woman.
“Arica,” she says, staring down at my proffered hand without taking it. “And thank you, but no.”
Brielle lifts her chin a little higher in the air before carrying the bowl of popcorn from the room.
“The offer stands if you change your mind. Have a good day, Arica.”
“Should’ve told her to have the day she deserves,” Brielle mutters when I join her in the living room.
“Be nice,” I chastise, knowing I’m taking a risk.
I get the feeling that it wouldn’t take much for Brielle to turn on me like an injured dog that will eat out your hand one minute and bite it off the next out of fear.
“Sorry,” she mutters, pressing play on the television.
“What are we watching?”
“Enough, with Jennifer Lopez.”
“Really?” It seems a little weird for a woman who survived some form of domestic abuse to want to watch another woman going through it.
“I fucking love this movie. That woman has the strength not many women have. It’s inspiring, and if I ever get in another situation like I’ve been in before, it helps me plan the murder.”
She cackles when my eyes go wide, but she never tells me that she’s kidding.
Chapter 25
Oracle
“You’re going to twitch right out of those fucking boots,” Newton says in annoyance.
I don’t bother reacting to him. The guy’s wrist isn’t broken, but it’s a very bad sprain and it will keep him from field work for several weeks.
“It doesn’t change,” Hound says over his shoulder from the passenger side of the SUV.
We hit the airfield over an hour ago, and despite knowing the entire procedure when we get back into New Mexico, I still somehow convinced myself it wouldn’t take as long as it usually does to get back to the clubhouse. As if I’m more special than any of the other guys excited to see their loved ones, time is supposed to bend for me alone.
“What doesn’t change?” I ask.
“That thrill you’re feeling in your blood at the idea of seeing her after a mission, especially one that doesn’t end with a hundred percent success. You’ll feel it every single time, and it’s worse after you have kids.”
For some reason, his words send a zing of need down my spine even knowing that Beth doesn’t want kids. I know that our time together was always going to be short-lived. I guess I should feel lucky that I haven’t gotten word that she bolted in the week that I’ve been gone. Two weeks isn’t a very long time, but it’s about ten days longer than I originally thought we’d last. Even on the plane ride from Texas, I figured we’d be at the courthouse the Monday morning after we got to New Mexico, filing the necessary paperwork to split our lives back up.
I guess I can’t really count the last two weeks, considering I’ve been gone for half of it.
“Is she pregnant?” Newton asks.
“Fuck no. Jesus, don’t say that kind of shit.”
Chuckles run through the SUV at my reaction.
“Don’t want kids?” Hound asks. These types of questions always sound like a trick coming from him, the father of four kids and one on the way.
“No,” I tell him, but it’s not the whole truth.
It would’ve been a resounding no not long ago, but the idea doesn’t make my skin crawl like it used to.
“A couple weeks ago he didn’t want a wife, and look at him now,” Newton says.
I smack at him with the back of my hand, feeling like an asshole when I accidentally hit his injured arm.
“Fuck, sorry.”
“There’s my girl,” Hound says, but instead of looking in the direction of the woman standing on the front porch of the clubhouse, I watch him.
His smile is wide, and like he said earlier, even after all these years of being with Gigi, he unbuckles his seatbelt like he plans to jump from the moving vehicle. The man is absolutely obsessed with his wife, and for the first time in my life, I realize I want that too. There’s possibly already a part of me that feels that way, but when I look away from him and gaze at all the people waiting for us to get back home, I don’t see Beth in the mix at all.
I’ve seen several of the guys who have gotten bitten by the fucking love bug come home for the first time to their women, and although it’s a little embarrassing to admit, I’ve been anticipating this moment since we pulled out a week ago.
