2. Elka
Chapter 2
Elka
J ust my luck. I hadn’t been in town for even ten minutes and I’d already made an enemy. It was my superpower according to my brother Austin, and it was almost comforting to see that not everything in my world had changed irrevocably. I couldn’t let it worry me. Officer Vargas had a stick shoved so far up his behind, it distracted me from the impact he had on my body. Those dark assessing eyes seemed to see far more than I wanted him, or anyone, to see. Worse, that assessing gaze seemed to find me lacking.
It was the story of my life and why I shoved away all thoughts of his dark Mediterranean features and broad shoulders as I watched him leave. The man was beautiful, that much was sure, but like all beautiful men, he was a bit of an asshole. That didn’t stop me from appreciating long thick legs that I just knew were hard with well-used muscles or that perfectly round butt that I bet would send a quarter flying right back at me. Even the slightly crooked nose made him more appealing.
To look at. Only to look at. I wasn’t in the market for any of that. My plan was to keep my head down and build a life for myself. One that I lived for me and no one else. Not even you, Austin.
I tried to tell myself that he would be proud of me, breaking free from our parents and choosing to live my own life. At least once an hour on the thirty-hour drive down to Texas, I tried to tell myself this was the right decision. That leaving had been the right thing to do, the only thing to do in order to live life on my terms. It was scary as hell being so far away from home, even a home that had never really been a home to me, for the first time in my life. Sheltered and alone, most people would think it was stupid to go so far away, but most people had a place in their families.
Most people were wanted. Loved.
Me, I was nothing more than a tool who had outlived her usefulness. I left before they could ask me to leave. Before they could tell me what I already knew to be true: I wasn’t needed any longer, therefore I was no longer wanted.
So of course, after all that driving and confidence building, my car would breakdown on a residential street just miles from the small cottage house I’d rented. And of course it would land me in front of the hottest cop in America with the worst attitude.
And the nicest butt. That thought made me giggle, but when Officer Vargas’ cruiser pulled back onto the highway and left me behind, a long, frustrated sigh escaped. The older man on the phone, Rusty, had said he was fishing and that it would take “some time” before he was back in town. I didn’t know what that meant but like I told Vargas, waiting was the one thing I was good at. Hospitals and doctors specialized in making people wait and I’d spent nearly all my life waiting in lobbies, exam rooms, and on operating tables.
Waiting I could do. I picked up the eReader I bought a few months ago and tried to read, but like they always did these days, my thoughts turned to Austin. He’d made me promise, on his deathbed, to go out and live my life. Have the life he never got to live and never would now. He’d made me swear on our friendship that I would leave the bubble of protection and experience what the world had to offer. “Get out there and fall in love, get your heart broken, and have wild sex with a stranger. See a waterfall and enjoy a kiss in the rain. Live for us both.” Tears fell as I thought of his kind smile and those killer blue eyes that had all the nurses swooning even in his sickened state.
One month after burying my brother, I bought the trailer and hitched it to my car filled with all my worldly possessions and headed to Texas. It was a far cry from the semi-posh life I lived with my family in Washington state, but I’d read a book about the woman who’d founded Tulip and she sounded amazing. Forging a dynamic path during a time when women were little more than property. She was strong and smart and independent, all things I aspired to be. She’d done it all and never lost sight of herself in the process.
Maybe now that I was in Tulip, some of that would rub off on me.