Total pages in book: 156
Estimated words: 158829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 794(@200wpm)___ 635(@250wpm)___ 529(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 158829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 794(@200wpm)___ 635(@250wpm)___ 529(@300wpm)
I bang on her door, holding a colorful bouquet bigger than my head in my other hand.
No answer.
I wait ten seconds and knock again. When no one appears, I try the knob desperately, and I’m surprised when it opens.
“Piper?” I call through the darkness.
I walk into the small, dark house and find her on the couch with a glass of wine and shadows around her eyes. “Hey.”
“Why didn’t you answer the door?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t know who it was, and I kept hoping they’d go away. Or burst in and put me out of my misery.”
“You left the door unlocked?” I flare.
“Jenn was here earlier. I guess I just forgot to lock up when she left.”
“Can I come in?” I growl.
She gives me the side-eye. “You’re already in.”
“I brought flowers,” I say, holding them out.
“Take them to the cemetery. Dead people need them more than me.”
“You’re still upset.” I square my shoulders.
“How observant.”
Fucking hell. I knew this wouldn’t be easy.
I shut the door behind me and cross the room, stopping to lay the bouquet on the coffee table in front of her.
“We need to talk,” I say bluntly.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Sunshine, I came to apologize. You’re not making that easy. I shouldn’t have gone nuclear, even if you had no right to go digging through my shit.” I still sound mad, even after rehearsing these lines in my head.
She looks at me slowly like she’s sizing me up. Then her gaze softens.
“Brock, listen... I will always appreciate what you did for my family. I also don’t need your apology. We don’t need some big ugly breakup when we were never really together.”
Shit, that stings.
Never mind the fact that it’s technically true.
She’s staring at some stupid show with the volume turned down so low I don’t even think she can hear it.
I stomp over, pick up the remote, and switch the TV off. “Look at me. I promise you that those messages you saw are not what you think.”
“Okay.” She still doesn’t look at me.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“You’re an only child, so I know she’s not your sister,” Piper says miserably.
Goddammit, why won’t she look me in the eye?
I stomp in front of her, fold my arms, and glare until she finally looks up. I might as well spit it the fuck out or go home.
“You want to know who she is? She’s Darren’s fucking wife—and for a couple months, she was mine.”
That gets her attention. Her eyes bug out and she makes a strained sound, scrambling up on the sofa.
“She’s what? You...you were married?”
“She was widowed. Then she married me. We were never in love. It was a legal formality,” I say, reaching for her hands.
She’s so stunned she doesn’t fight me.
“I don’t understand, Brock. What does that mean?” Her eyes are glistening and red.
“Where do I even start?” I mutter, looking down.
My eyes land on my chest and I pause, bringing my hands to the seam of my shirt.
“Fuck it,” I say, grabbing both sides.
In one fierce jerk I lose half the buttons, exposing my bare chest.
Piper stares at me like I’m possessed.
“What are you doing? Um, you can’t striptease your way out this...”
“Miss Sunshine, if you’ll shut it and listen, I’d like to direct your attention to this.” I stab a thumb at the jagged line cutting across my chest.
Her jaw tightens and her eyes follow, tracing that hideous scar.
“You remember the day you asked me about it?”
“Yeah. You didn’t want to talk about it. Combat, you said, right?”
I nod grimly. “It’s from the day I almost died. I can’t go into specifics, but I’ll tell you what’s relevant.”
She glances away. “If it’s from a war and you don’t want to talk about... I get it. I wasn’t going to mention it again. My dad still has nightmares from Iraq—that highway of death—so if something terrible happened, don’t go there again for my sake.”
“I said I’ll tell you what happened. I want to,” I admit.
She bites her lip and nods slowly.
I sit beside her, clasping my hands.
“Darren was my copilot. We were flying a surveillance mission along the Syrian border. Maybe it was a malfunction or we took a hit from one of those Russian missiles the brass swore they didn’t have—I’ll never know—but either way, we barely bailed out before we went down.”
“Oh my God.” Her face tightens.
“We ejected over hostile territory. I was hurt in the tumble down over northern Iraq. Darren, he had it worse. The internal bleeding made him a dead man before I even crawled over...”
“That’s terrible,” she whispers, fingering her lip. “Let me guess, he was a good friend? You promised to take care of his family after...you know.”
“Fuck no,” I growl, shaking my head. “Darren was a human piece of shit.”
She looks at me in stunned silence, waiting for more.