I finished the last order Kristen had for me, but I stayed. I wanted to be there when she got home.
I wanted to see that she did come home.
The waiting was physically painful. My chest hurt like a bear trap was clamped over my heart. My mind ran wild. Where were they? At a restaurant talking? Or at a hotel, in his bed, making up?
No. She wouldn’t. We’d just been together last night. She wouldn’t, right?
Fuck, even the thought of her letting him hold her hand sent me into a meltdown.
He was here to get back with her—I had no doubt in my mind. The only thing I didn’t know was what she was going to do about it.
Watching her leave fucking killed me.
But I had no right to her at all. I didn’t even have the right to be upset. This was the guy—the one she’d been heartbroken over for the last month.
He was the guy, and I was no one.
I paced the garage. I paced the house. She was always home when I was there and the vacancy inside made my anxiety worse, reinforced the wrongness of it all. So I went back outside where at least I wasn’t looking at her empty couch.
My stomach grumbled, but I couldn’t eat. Even Stuntman Mike was worked up. He kept crying and looking at the driveway, following me
around my workstation like he’d witnessed her kidnapping and was pissed I hadn’t done anything to stop it. Finally I just put him in his satchel and carried him around with me.
6:00.
7:00.
8:00.
There was only so late I could stay before it became obvious I’d been waiting for her. I’d never worked past 9:00 p.m. before. But if I left and just went home, I’d never know when she came back, or how she came back. Happy? Sad? Tomorrow, wearing the same clothes?
And what if he didn’t just drop her off? What if he came back to stay the night? I bet the fucker would love to rub that shit in my face. He’d probably do a goddamn victory lap.
Every car that drove by made my heart pound and head jerk up.
Maybe I should leave. I didn’t know if I could handle seeing them as a couple. I told myself if she wasn’t back by 9:00, I would go. Because the later it got, the more likely it was they were staying the night together— here or elsewhere. And either way it was better if I didn’t know about it.
Finally, at 8:17, a maroon Nissan pulled into the driveway. She came back in an Uber.
Alone.
My relief was a thousand-pound weight off my chest. I could finally breathe again.
Three hours. They could have just been in a restaurant. The drive there, the drive back—that easily could have been one hour of the three. She didn’t stay the night with him. And after everything, she only gave him a few hours and didn’t let him come back with her? Maybe this was a good sign.
I took off the satchel—I’d rather die than let her see me use her dog purse—and made it look like I was busy laying carpet on the already finished steps and not sitting in the garage waiting for her to come home like a lovesick puppy dog.
She got out of the car and came in through the garage, holding her sweater in her hand, dragging the sleeve along the driveway. Stuntman Mike ran to meet her, bouncing and crying at her feet, but she didn’t reach down to pick him up.
“Hey,” I said casually as she approached. “I’m just finishing up here.”
She stopped in front of me and studied me wordlessly. I tried to figure out what happened from the way she looked.
She hadn’t gotten dressed up to go out with him. That was good. But her lipstick was gone. Was that because they ate? Or because they’d been kissing? Had they fought the whole time? Is that why her shoulders were slumped? Her eyes were red. A little mascara smeared, like she’d been crying.
“Josh? Do you want to go sing karaoke with me?” I blinked at her. “Karaoke?”
She sniffed, looking at me tiredly. “I feel a spree coming on. It’s either a cleaning spree or a singing spree. Singing might be healthier.”
I grinned at her. “Yeah. Sounds like fun.”
She smiled weakly at me. “Okay. And you have to feed me. Like, soon.” I raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t feed you?” She hadn’t eaten before they left. They’d taken off over three hours ago. Damn, that fucker played with
fire.
I hoped she was a nightmare the whole time.
“He kinda fed me.” She grimaced. “I had some deconstructed Chilean sea bass ceviche tapenade thingy.”
I scoffed. “Is that even food?”
“I have no idea. I’m starving,” she mumbled, turning for the house.
It hadn’t gone well. That was obvious. And they’d just been at a restaurant, like I thought—a shitty restaurant that she didn’t like, on top of it. He hadn’t scored himself any points with that rookie move.
Hope swelled inside me. Maybe this was the last we’d see of Tyler. Still, she was down.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, standing.
She stopped with her back to me and let her head loll. “Fine.” She paused for a moment. “He asked me to marry him.”
The punch to my heart knocked the wind out of me. What?
I was grateful she wasn’t looking at me because she would have seen it on my face. I couldn’t catch my breath. I almost couldn’t compose myself to answer.
I cleared my throat. “Oh yeah? What did you say?”
She waited a beat until she replied, talking over her shoulder. “I said
maybe.”
* * *
While she changed, I made her a sandwich—no mayo, only one piece of ham, provolone, no crust—the way she liked it. I handed it to her wrapped in a paper towel when she came out of her room. She looked like she wanted to cry when she took it from me. I hated seeing her so upset.
We called an Uber so we could drink. And drink I planned to fucking do.
I said maybe.
He wanted to marry her and she was actually considering it. I felt sick.
In the Uber, she sat next to me with her leg tucked under her in the back seat, her knee poking through the ragged hole of her jeans. She’d done her makeup. She gazed wearily out the window.
I stared at her hand on the seat. Her ring finger was bare. For now. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
She looked over at me. “You want to talk to me about my boyfriend?”
Boyfriend. She called him her boyfriend. Not ex-boyfriend. Boyfriend.
The knife twisted in my heart, but through sheer will I managed to keep my voice level. “Sure. I might be able to give you some insight.”
I was torn between wanting to remain blissfully ignorant and needing to be informed. Morbid curiosity won out. I reasoned that whatever was going to happen would happen whether I knew the details or not. And if she talked to me about it, maybe I could sway her decision in my favor.
She took a deep breath. “Well, he reenlisted. Only this time he won’t be in war zones. He’ll be translating for dignitaries and high-ranking military personnel.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Translating?”
“Yeah. He’s a linguist. He’s fluent in nine languages—ten. Maybe now it’s ten. He said he’s studying Mandarin. I don’t know.”
Jesus Christ. How had Brandon failed to mention that this joker wasn’t some infantryman doing grunt work? He was smart, educated, and good- looking to boot?
Fucking Brandon. His penchant for understating things was killing me. I was completely unprepared for this guy.
So that’s why the Ice Queen liked him. I looked like a damn fuckboy next to Tyler. No wonder Kristen didn’t want anything serious with me.
“He wants me to marry him. We’d move overseas.” Her eyes flitted up to mine.
My stomach lurched. “And you said maybe?” “I said I would think about it.”
I scratched my cheek, trying to act like none of this bothered me while inside I was losing my fucking mind. “What are your reservations?”
She didn’t answer me.
“Sloan would miss you if you moved,” I said. Not to mention what it would do to me.
But she just took a deep breath and looked away from me.
She gazed out the window, and I stared at her watching the road. When she turned back to me, her eyes were full of tears. Then she unbuckled herself, slid across the seat, and climbed into my lap.
My heart jumped at the unexpected affection. I pulled her in and tucked her head under my chin, breathing in the smell of her hair. The feel of her small, warm body in my arms was like home. There was no other word for it.
She was home.
It was hard to see how much he affected her. This was the second time I’d seen her crying and both times had been over him.
The jealousy was almost more than I could handle.
This woman was mine. She was mine, not his. Why couldn’t he have stayed away from her? Let her just get over him?
But then I realized the truth. She wasn’t mine—she never was.
I’m hers.
And it’s not the same thing.
I’d been fine being patient, because I was just waiting for her to come out of it. I hadn’t been braced for him to come back into her life. And now, faced with the reality that I might lose her altogether, I realized what I’d known for weeks.
I’m in love with her.
And now this guy that I couldn’t even begin to compete with might take her from me.
I felt helpless. Panicked. A fight response triggered inside and it had
nowhere to go, because I couldn’t do shit about this. All I could do was be me, and that wasn’t good enough.
A sex thing. It will only ever be a sex thing.
She raised her head and planted a soft kiss under my chin, and it almost broke my fucking heart. She was never like this with me. And as much as I loved it, it was all fueled by her feelings for someone else. He hurt her and I was here, so I got to be the one to comfort her.
But it was something. At least I could do something for her beyond just scratching an itch.
She was with me, holding me. Letting me hold her. I needed to enjoy the moment because I didn’t know how many more of them I’d get.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced down the lump in my throat, tried to focus on her breath on my neck, her cheek pressed to my collarbone—the vulnerability she was giving me that I only ever saw when she was sleeping curled up next to me on those nights when she let me in.
I vowed to make tonight fun so she’d forget.
And so I’d have something to remember when she left.
