2. Rhodes
2
RHODES
The mountain roads are starting to get dangerous. No one should be out here, much less me, but I don’t give two fucks about anything right now, so if I slid off into the ditch it would just be the cherry on top of the shit sundae this decade has been.
And now I’m on the way to my family’s cabin to enjoy my Christmas alone in the Rocky Mountains. I’m about an hour from Denver and hour from near Storm Canyon where I live in a small town as part of the firefighting department.
I round the corner and quickly pull off the mountain road.
I slow my old beater truck…
No one is supposed to be here.
No one but me, that is.
Vehicle tracks run lines in the newly fallen snow, leading down the mile road to the house. Checking my bag, I retrieve my tranq gun only for animals. I used to carry the real thing, but war makes a man consider what he’d like to have in his hand— weapon or woman?
I don’t have either right now, making me a little grumpy. But I chuckle thinking about how this tranq gun would make a man feel pretty shitty for a while. I imagine a burly dude swaggering around jacked on a Ketamine-Xylazine mix, tumbling into the snow and falling backward like a pudgy snow angel. It would be one nasty hangover, but it wouldn’t kill anyone over two hundred pounds. I aim to slow, not to kill.
Never again.
Being a Ranger in the Army taught me lots of self-survival and that’s why I love being up here in the mountains. I get to still use those skills, but I don’t have to report to anyone when I do. The city has too many noises that make me jump.
My heart clicks faster, the fight or flight response kicking in. I think back to being ambushed in Kuwait and then again in Kabul and the world spins around me. I put my forehead to the steering wheel and take a few breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
Smell the flowers. Blow out the candles. Smell the flowers. Blow out the candles.
A silver Lexus sits perfectly parked in the driveway.
Probably Shane’s new ride. The lawyer always has to have the best of the best. Spoiled.
I do adore his two little girls though. They make my pompous brother almost tolerable. It’s not the fact that he’s gay. It’s that he’s so fuckin’ perfect. The dashing and perfect family. The perfect partner who adores him. The perfect job that pays for his every wish. The perfect four-bedroom house. The perfect Lexus, apparently.
Plus, I’m still a little irked that he never came out to me. But I suppose I never told him I was heterosexual either. Fair is fair and honestly, I kinda knew. He had a poster of Justin Timberlake on his wall. He said it was because of Timberlake’s music… I suspected otherwise.
I still love Shane just the same and he makes it a point to tell me that he loves me more often than I’m comfortable with.
Well, fuck…
They’re probably here to surprise me. What the fuck is he thinking? He knows I hate surprises.
My heart taps my chest wall. It’s a little wonky after my service and one of the reasons why I’m out of the military.
I start to drive forward when I see a deliciously curvy, forest nymph come from the back side of the house, her hand wrapped around the hand of a little girl older than a toddler, but maybe not quite school age. I’d guess around Kyla and Maya’s ages, and they’ll enter kindergarten next year.
I bet they’re lost.
But with this snow coming down, I can’t imagine they can go anywhere.
I’m not going to worry. I didn’t put them here. I didn’t get them into this mess. I’m not the one… trespassing. And the rules mean something. The rules are important. People get hurt when the rules are broken.
I park and her eyes meet mine when I step out.
“Hello?” she says as a question. Her voice is more direct than I imagined.
“Hello.” I walk toward her and every step seems I’m stuck in some sort of tractor beam.
“Honey, get in the vehicle and wait for me.” She opens the door and the little girl hops back in. The car beeps as the woman locks the locks.
Do I look like untrustworthy? Maybe…
The look in the woman’s eyes is sheer terror and a part of me sees myself in that vision.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“No. You can’t. But I need you to leave the premises.”
“I have permission to be here.”
“No, you don’t. My family owns this place and I’d know if someone?—”
“Shane told me I could be here.” She crosses her arms with attitude, making the valley between her breasts more prominent. Before it was distracting, now it’s plain annoyingly attractive and alluring.
“Well, Shane doesn’t rule everything.”
Her head tips. “You’re Rhodes.”
I stumble back a step. “How’d you know that?”
“Shane’s talked about you.”
Oh shit…
My heart beats fast. Shane doesn’t know everything about me, but the shit he does know isn’t flattering.
I was discharged from the Army, honorably. But twenty years in took a toll on me. I’m not the same man I was going in, as the one who came out.
I’m… broken .
As I’ve come to find out, no woman wants a project. Even if I’m trying hard to put myself back together again. They see the cracks and ignore what I’ve been through as to how they got there.
Maybe she could be different? No, they’re all the same.
“Don’t care, buttercup. There’s a motel down the mountain. Get going. This is my dojo for the next week.”
She turns and her hand sits softly on the doorhandle.
I wait and wait.
And wait.
We don’t have all day, chicka.
When she turns back, I expect there to be tears, but there’s not. Her eyes are daggers and they narrow in on me.
Her hands go to those lusciously full hips, pulling her down puffy jacket in and showing me her hourglass figure. “No. I’m not leaving. The snow’s coming down hard now. It’s too dangerous to drive. If you don’t want company, fine. We’ll stay in the north, or south, or east, or west wing of this monstrosity, but I have every right to be here, too!”
My lips rise to a smirk when I see her hand shake when she runs it through her long red tresses, shaking out the snowflakes.
“What about this is funny?” she spits back.
“Is that the first time you’ve stood up to someone?”
Her mouth drops open. “As soon as the snow lets up and the roads are better, we’ll leave, Mr. Hawking. Do we have a deal?”
That formality reminds me of days gone by.
I could do with a little company. It wouldn’t kill me to be nice.
At least I hope so.
“My name is Rhodes.”