Chapter 7
Don’t just assume ’cause you see me on my porch that I’m home.
— Cutter to Chevy
CUTTER
Leaving her in the woods went against the grain.
And even after I lost sight of her, I still stayed, thinking about how it felt wrong to just leave her out here in the middle of nowhere.
But at least she wasn’t on the road.
Anyone could’ve hit her out there…
I was heading back to my bike when movement caught my eye.
I would not admit how excited I was that she might come back, but that excitement quickly died.
Two women were running up, both of them looking very well put-together for them to be doing exercise.
What was the point of twenty pounds of makeup when you were just going to sweat and ruin it?
“ Was that her?” I heard one of them ask.
I walked away from the two women and back to my bike, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t listening to their entire conversation.
“ That’s her.”
“ Hazel , she’s totally stalking you. Didn’t you say that she hated this part of the trail, and that’s why you came to this part?”
I looked up to see who was talking.
The blonde was the one to reply.
Obviously , she was the one addressed as Hazel since she answered next with, “ Yeah . I feel like she’s just desperate. Her family is crazy over the top, and maybe they just rubbed off on her.”
“ You said that her family was bad. That her brother was in the military?” the redhead chirped as they came to a stop in front of the bathrooms. “ How do you have a family that’s in organized crime, yet still go into the military? Isn’t that sacrilegious or something?”
That definitely had me intrigued.
Were they talking about Milena ?
I had my confirmation in the next moment. “ Milena is a conundrum. She’s never actually told me that her family is bad, but she always has a bodyguard when we go out and drink. She also lives in that gated community at the end of the lake over there.” She pointed to a point across the lake. “ You don’t need the kind of security they have if you’re not trying to protect your ass from retaliation.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against my bike, not even trying to hide the fact that I was listening into their conversation.
“ The worst part is, she broke up with Asher ,” Hazel said. “ Seriously , Rayann . That man was the one, and she kicked him to the curb because he wanted to go out and have fun. And she always hated going. He’d ask her to go out with his friends to dinner, and she’d refuse. Asher thinks it’s because she felt like she was too good for him and his friends. Which is a joke. He was too good for her.”
The Rayann chick looked appalled. “ I’ve met Asher a time or two. He’s the stock trader, right?”
“ Right ,” Hazel replied. “ And he has a ton of money.”
My gaze went back to Rayann .
For a small woman, she had a big personality.
Normally , that would be an attractive trait.
But for this woman, it made her abrasive and in your face.
“ That’s a plus right there.” Rayann snickered, which sounded more like a cat sneezing. “ That’s why I’m with Gibson , really. He makes beacoups of money, and I don’t have to work once we get married.”
She sounded like a real winner.
What a great trait to have when looking for a husband—has lots of money and won’t make me work.
I doubted that any significant other would want their spouse to have to work, but times were tough. Sometimes you didn’t have a choice.
I was getting ready to leave, getting tired of hearing their vitriol, when Hazel said what she said next.
“ Asher said to me in private when Milena was at work that Milena was a cold fish in bed. He admitted that she never wanted sex, and that she was still refusing to give it up to him after months of them being together. Who the fuck makes their boyfriend wait that long if there isn’t something wrong with your vagina?” She snickered. “ She did smell super bad after our long runs. Maybe she has something wrong down there…”
I’d had enough.
I didn’t even know Milena , but based on the way she looked and acted, I knew that she was reserved. She had self-respect.
Oh , and she didn’t smell at-fucking-all.
And I’d just been pretty fuckin’ close to her as I’d driven her here.
As close as one could get without both of us being naked…
Let’s just say, what I smelled wasn’t stink.
It was womanly, and so goddamn appealing that just thinking about it made me hard all over again.
I probably shouldn’t have reacted the way that I did.
I definitely should’ve kept my mouth completely shut, but fuck. The women and the way they were talking about Milena . It did something to me.
It made me enraged, and I didn’t like catty bitches that spoke ill of people they were supposed to protect.
I’d had enough of that happen in high school regarding my little sister.
She’d changed at some point, and her friends had noticed. Instead of treating her with caring and compassion, they’d turned on her. Which had only been worse for Keely .
Channeling the anger that always formed in my heart when it came to how my sister was treated, I stood from my bike, making myself known.
“ I’ll have you know that Milena was here meeting me,” I said carefully. “ She wasn’t here to ‘stalk’ you. She was here to meet me to give me a key since I was in the area. I can also share that she’d been running all the way from her house, and she most certainly did not stink. She smelled fantastic, and had she not been fresh from a breakup with an abusive man,”— I leveled Hazel with a look—“ I would’ve made a move on her because she’s gorgeous. I also have to admit that she’s likely only a ‘cold fish’ with her ex because he was a disgusting human being. Why would you want to give your body to a man that you don’t respect?”
Neither woman had anything to say to that.
“ As women, you should uplift each other. You should never tear each other down. And I hate that Milena has someone like you as a friend when it’s clear that you don’t think of her as a friend.” I turned my back on them and straddled my bike. Only when I had my helmet in place did I turn back to them and say, “ Maybe you should do yourself a favor and start investigating why you have so much hate in your heart toward a woman that only has love in hers.”
With that, I started my bike up and headed toward my house.
I switched my bike out for my work truck and trailer, then headed to Milena’s place, The Grizzly .
Her shop was a little bit farther out than I would’ve liked, but that was okay. It was a nice change of scenery on the outskirts of Dallas .
A lot less headache, too.
Sometimes , I questioned why I’d decided to come back to this hellhole.
But then I remembered about my task for this afternoon, and all made sense again.
Traffic . People . Higher cost of living.
All of it was worth it to be closer to my brother.
Hours later, I was setting up the plastic so that the wood dust didn’t go all into the air ducts and into the finished back area when she came in.
She looked beautiful, albeit tired.
“ How far did you get, Go ?” I asked, unable to stop myself from asking.
She gave me a halfhearted smile and uttered, “ All nineteen miles done.”
“ Nice ,” I declared. “ Never got up to a marathon, mostly because the thought of running that far makes me want to cry, but I did a couple of halfs for the Navy when I was in. It sucked. Especially on a trail. I commend you for getting it done.”
She grimaced. “ I don’t really do all that well on trails, to be truthful. I have a condition with one of my eyes that pretty much makes it impossible for me to see without both of my eyes open. My left eye has perfect vision. My right I’m nearly blind. But as long as they’re both open, I’m good. But the downfall is on my right side I have absolutely zero depth perception. So running on a trail is damn near impossible without wearing a contact. And the contact makes me feel disoriented because my brain has had so long to adjust that it doesn’t know what to do with twenty-twenty vision out of the one eye.”
“ Amblyopia ?” I asked. “ My sister had that.”
“ Yes .” She smiled. “ That . I don’t think I’ve ever met someone that has it besides me. That’s …” she paused. “ I was going to say exciting, but anyone that has it suffers. And I would never be happy to have someone suffer.”
“ She actually doesn’t necessarily have it anymore. From the age of three to seven, she had to wear an eye patch over her good eye. She was able to get it corrected,” I admitted.
“ Oh ,” she sighed. “ That’s what I was supposed to do, to be honest. But we caught it pretty dang late, and there was no way that I would’ve worn an eye patch in middle school.”
I snorted. “ Kids are brutal.”
“ You have no idea,” she muttered. “ You’re putting up a lot of plastic.”
“ Just trying to keep the dust to a minimum and save you from having to clean out your ducting system when I’m done,” I said, watching her.
She nodded, her face a little sad.
And I wondered if she knew how bad of a friend she had.
Between her friend and her ex, she could use a break.
Which had to be why I was blurting out what I did next.
“ You want to go for a ride?” I asked, sensing her need for a distraction and running with it.
“ Oh ,” she paused. “ Where ?”
I grinned. “ Somewhere that you probably don’t want to go…but it’s a nice, long ride. And I figure that it’ll give you time to clear your brain of whatever it is that you’re thinking.”
“ I don’t know,” she bit her lip. “ The thought of getting onto another bike…”
“ I swear to God , I don’t drive like that prick,” I said. “ I’ll stop if you want me to stop.”
She worried her lip with her teeth, then nodded. “ Okay . Let’s go.”