Chapter 4
Knox
While I loaded my clothes in the wash, I thought about what I’d just heard, my mind skittering off each detail, absorbing it, memorizing it.
Then I went to the bathroom, locking myself in.
In private, I mulled over Gwen’s declaration to her friend.
She was looking for a lifer. A man to marry.
It wouldn’t be fair for me to slip under her dress, even though she’d told her friend that I’d caught her eye.
Hearing that had made me feel good. Out of all the guys at the party, I was the only one she’d had eyes for. Me.
But that didn’t change the fact that fucking her would be a disaster.
I was staying here due to Eric’s charity. That fact grated on me terribly. But it would be even worse to get kicked out for fucking his wife’s best friend.
Sure, I could get by at a local motel until I got settled on my own. But staying here at his place for a month or two would save me a lot of money. And I was hoping to buy. Not rent.
That took time.
So even if silent sparks were flying between Gwen and me, nothing was going to come of it from either of our ends.
She was the type of woman who’d find a nice, respectable man to marry. One who wore a suit and tie, and came home at five o’clock sharp every night.
Being a ranger hadn’t left much room for a love life.
I was used to working in small units behind enemy lines, doing things that would sound distasteful to the general American public.
A man can’t put himself into dangerous situations like that if he has a sweet Gwen waiting for him back home.
It makes a soldier gun-shy because it’s not just his life on the line. He has a family to think of, too.
The best rangers were single and fearless.
And that’s how I’d lived my life for a long time.
A woman like Gwen? If I had a woman like her waiting at home for me, I never would have made it through eight years as a ranger.
I sighed and looked in the mirror. Did any of that matter now? I wasn’t a ranger anymore, and I hardly recognized the man looking back at me.
When I’d first joined the army, I’d been a young punk. They gave me a choice of enlisting or doing a short stint in prison for breaking-and-entering.
The decision had been an easy one. Then I bounced around in the army for a while before I got my shit together and landed at ranger school.
Even though I had ranger blood coursing through my veins, I’d been tossed out like last year’s model. And I’d never planned for what life would look like past being a ranger.
Now I felt like an old man even though I was only thirty-two. When you’re in your twenties, you think you’re going to be young forever.
I lifted the razor to my cheek, then stopped.
I was still doing everything the army way.
But to really transition, I was going to need to make a lot of changes. One thing I’d immediately noticed about this area is that every man seemed to have a full beard, a flannel shirt, and a pair of work boots.
I put the electric razor back down and ran a hand across my jawline.
There was a day’s worth of stubble on my cheeks. Would that matter for an interview at a sawmill?
Fuck it.
It was time for a change. And this was one small change I could make right away.