Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Desiree turned over and saw that it was Max in the bed with her. All she could do was lay there and look at his face as he slept peacefully with his arm still wrapped around her.
She closed her eyes as she inhaled his scent. Woodsy, leather, and Old Spice cologne.
Damn that smell shouldn’t turn her on, but she’s always loved it when he was around and she could smell those smells on him. Especially when he was sweaty from his workouts when she would go to the gym and run into him.
What she never told anyone was that when she and Bradley broke up, she wasn’t as hurt by the breakup as people assumed she was. Part of her had been feeling guilty for the way she’d fantasized about Max while she’d been dating Bradley.
Their sharing an apartment together was her compensation for that guilt. Yet she’d kept her old apartment just to be safe because she honestly didn’t think that she and Bradley would have lasted very long.
She’d had some suspicion of him cheating on her for a while but had yet to catch him in the act.
She had purposely told him that her team would probably be gone longer than they were so that she could hopefully catch him in the act after a huge fight they had two days before she’d gotten the mission that she had left on.
Bradley suddenly had a change of heart about her being a part of the Rangers, wanting her to resign when her term was up. Instead, she’d signed up for another six years and didn’t tell him until the night they had a huge fight.
When he found out that she had re-enlisted for another six years, Bradley lost his mind and started throwing things and shouting at her. She walked out and went to the gym and worked out for a couple of hours to calm down.
When she got home, Bradley had already gone out for the night. She’d decided that she was going to catch him in the act when word came in that her team was being shipped out.
By then, she hadn’t seen Max in a couple of months after he and Bradley had gotten into a huge fight about something that he wouldn’t tell her about. She’d decided then and there that she was going to catch him in his lies.
She lied to him about the length of time, telling him that her team would be gone for six weeks on their op, which isn’t unusual. Instead, she was back within four days and walked in on him banging the stripper that he’d been seeing for months.
When she walked in and caught them, she didn’t scream, rant, or throw things like Bradley had apparently expected her to do. She politely told him thank you and started packing her things up.
Luckily most of her prized possessions were still at her apartment that Bradley didn’t know that she owned. The entire time she was packing, Bradley didn’t just watch her in shock as she packed her things and left.
The only person who ran their mouth was the stripper he’d been banging. But the words she said might as well have been his.
For two weeks, Bradley pursued her, begging her to come back to him, yet when she ignored him or flat out told him no, he would get angry. Not once in his begging or pleading did he ever accept responsibility for the things said one done.
“What are you thinking about so hard there, trouble?”
Max’s sleepy voice had her looking into his dark whiskey-colored eyes and nearly combust. Shit this man was hot as hell.
The man stood roughly six feet, four inches tall, muscular in all the right places, tattoo’s that his uniform covered when he wore it, dark hair and whiskey-colored eyes that made a girl want to drop their panties at the first glance.
“Why did you help me? I didn’t think you even liked me honestly.” Desiree quietly admitted hoping he didn’t hear it so she could change the subject.
“Why did you think I didn’t like you?”
Desiree’s whole face turned red when she realized he had heard her question and was moving so that he could see her better as he rested his head on his hand. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Because you seemed to always glare at me if you came over to the apartment when I dated Bradley. You didn’t hold conversations with me or anything. It was like you didn’t think I was good enough for him.”
“I’m sorry if you thought that, Desiree.
I wasn’t glaring at you, I was memorizing everything I could about you because I was wishing it was me.
You weren’t good enough for Bradley. Not because you weren’t worthy, but because he wasn’t worthy of you.
I didn’t hold conversations with you because I was afraid that if I did, what I felt for you, just being in the same room with you would intensify and I’d wind up beating the fuck out of Bradley just for breathing the same air as you were. ”
“Why did you stop being friends with him?” Desiree asked, biting the corner of her lower lip.
“Because I’d found out from one of his buddies about the stripper.
I confronted Bradley about it and he just laughed it off.
Said some pretty nasty things. I was planning on coming to find you and let you know but we got called out.
I knew as soon as I returned from that op, I needed to find you, so you knew what was going on.
But, by the time I returned from that op a couple of months later, you’d already found out about the stripper and ended things with him.
We got into a fist fight the week before Green Beret selections because I’d found out he was bad mouthing you for not taking him back.
You handed him his ass during selection, so I felt that was revenge enough. ”