AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Loud and clear.
“He’s game. Yours?”
Riggs typed up a message and hovered his thumb over the send button. “I’m ready.”
Chapter Nine
Marney
In the end, I did answer the phone. Before I was ready to look to the future, I needed to close out the past, and that meant giving Claude a chance to talk to me. It had been one hell of an awful time, the past week, but I couldn’t imagine what it was like to live a lie.
“Hi, Claude.”
“Hi, Marney. Hate me much?”
“Not as much as you’d think. I found the card from Carl. Are you with him now?”
“No. I am on my own. He won’t leave Maria because she is holding him to his commitment, but I couldn’t do that to you.”
“You could have told me at any point, you know? Trusted me to get it? I felt railroaded into the big wedding with all the pomp and circumstance and stuff, but I did it because I thought you wanted it and afterward we could just go back to being us.”
He cleared his throat. “Did you really believe that?”
I considered. “I wanted to. But on some level I probably knew better.”
“Even if Carl is never free, promise me you will be yourself. I know it might cost you everything, but being yourself is pretty valuable.” Not that I could put myself in his position, but the idea of masking the real me, of pretending to be something I was not sounded so painful.
“That’s why I’m not there. The house is being sold to show me what happens when I don’t toe the line. I know you’re in a tight spot, and it’s my fault, but I don’t have a whole lot. I’m cut off. Is there anything I can do for under a thousand dollars?”
“Actually, I need to get my stuff transported to storage. Can you do that?”
“That’s it? But where will you go? You don’t even have a car. And mine is leased through the family or I’d give it to you.”
“I’ll figure it out. You just take care of you. And, Claude?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for not marrying me.”
He promised to have my stuff picked up and taken to the storage unit tomorrow, and we disconnected. I still loved him, even if I now realized I hadn’t been in love with him. He had so many good qualities it was nearly impossible not to have strong feelings for him. Hell, nearly every girl did. But this week, I’d spent so much time reliving our relationship, I’d begun to question every aspect of it. We were good together; we had fun. But how long had he been cheating on me with Carl? That was a question I didn’t want the answer to. We were no longer in a relationship, and it was no longer my problem.
It might take a bit of time to get used to that, but I was relieved to find hope for him to find a path forward in my heart. I’d never wanted to slap his mother more. She’d manipulated me while making her own son feel like his feelings were something to be ashamed of. There was a special level in Hell for people like her.
I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water, drank it down, and stared out the window over the sink. While I’d truly wanted a small house that we could take care of and have privacy in, I’d also had visions of the garden I could create in that beautiful space out there. All the food I could grow. The flowers. Drawing pollinators of all kinds…
But that was part of a dream that had been a mirage. One I had to put behind me and take a firm step forward. We each had our own destiny to follow.
I turned my attention to the app, wondering if it truly held the future the bartender seemed to think it did. Had he called it “a sure thing” at some point? I’d been drunk for a lot of that time, so I couldn’t be sure. But I needed a distraction, so I started going through the various profiles recommended to me. It soon became clear that someone in there thought shifters would be the best choice for me. I’d actually dated a wolf shifter in high school briefly before he left to move to another pack, and it had been a pretty good experience.
Why not, right?
I continued on, going from one to another, and then suddenly I was being shown pairs of men. I had checked the box that I was up for two men but that had been just a daring move. I didn’t really think I’d be brave enough to go out with them…and then there they were. A pair of polar bears of all things. I didn’t even know there were polar bear shifters, and certainly not down in the lower forty-eight. And before I could second-guess myself, I sent them a message. They were looking for a mate to share, and their pictures completely beguiled me. Big, handsome guys standing in the snow in front of a cabin with trees all around? I couldn’t think of a better place to live. As far from the city as possible, two guys completely different from Claude in nearly every way. I wasn’t sure I still believed in love, but what did it hurt just to message them, chat a little, flirt a little… There was something more there, a reaction from deep inside me, but I wasn’t ready to trust my judgment quite yet.
Chapter Ten
Nacho
I wouldn’t admit to anyone out loud how many times I’d looked at her profile after I went to bed. She didn’t have many details about her life but what she did, I pored over, tattooing them in my memory.
