Chapter Seventeen
Catarina stood with her backpack over her shoulder, arms crossed over her chest, eyes on my truck, frown firmly in place.
“If I’d seen this first, I would’ve been worried,” she strangely said.
I beeped the locks and reached for the door handle. “What?”
“It’s jacked up,” she rightly noted.
“Yeah.”
“Chevy Silverado HD, all blacked out and jacked up. That gives a woman pause, Jack. You know what they say about men with big trucks . . . they’re overcompensating for the small penises.”
I opened the passenger door and held out my hand. “Then it’s good you’ve seen my dick and know that’s not the case.”
Cat swung her pack off her shoulder and handed it over.
“See you tomorrow,” Mason yelled from across the parking lot as he pulled himself up into his truck.
Cat looked in his direction and waved. “Guess he’s not part of the Chevy family.”
Mason wasn’t part of any family except maybe Pete’s, but that didn’t extend to truck manufacturers.
“Mason is his own man.”
“His has a lift too.”
We’d just gotten off a six-hour flight from Belize.
This after two hours in the car to get to the airport.
It wasn’t late but it was well after dinner, and I was exhausted and hungry.
Still, I’d stand in the parking lot of Brown Field having a ridiculous conversation about nothing if that conversation was with Catarina.
“I can’t say for certain,” I started. “I don’t have personal knowledge and don’t want it. But if the rumor is true, that lift on his truck says not one thing about what he’s packing.”
Mason’s Ram roared to life.
“What about the exhaust? Does that say something about what he’s packing?”
Mason gunned the engine, showing off for Catarina, and fishtailed out of the parking lot.
“Not sure what that says, baby. Hop up.”
Her foot went to the running board, and she heaved herself up. Before I could close the door, she asked, “So what’s the rumor?”
I should’ve known she wouldn’t let that go.
“That he’s hung like a horse.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Damn, that must suck for him.”
That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I asked, “Why does that suck for him?”
“Because, Jack, size matters,” she solemnly informed me.
“There’s too small, too big, just enough, and holy wow.
Women like just enough and holy wow if they find it.
But too big is just that—too big. A woman will see that, consider her vagina’s future, and not want the repercussions of too big.
Hung like a horse is way too big. Then there’s running; who wants a horse cock between their legs when they’re out for a jog?
I mean what does he do, tape that bad boy up so he doesn’t bruise his thighs?
And just in case you were wondering, you fall into the holy-wow category. ”
Fucking hell, she was funny.
“Good to know.”
“So? Do you think he has a shaft sling that contains it or does he tape?”
A shaft sling . . . good Christ.
As funny as she was, I was done talking about Mason’s dick.
I leaned in, hooked her around the neck, and took her mouth. Then I got her tongue and didn’t let her go until she groaned down my throat, and my dick twitched in warning it was time to get my woman home before I committed a felony and fucked her in my truck in a semipublic parking lot.
On a smile, she said, “I take it you’re done discussing Mason’s package.”
Yeah, I needed to get my woman fed and home.
To conclude the conversation, I closed the door, made my way around the hood, opened the back door, tossed her bag and mine into the back seat, and hauled my ass in.
She was still smiling when I hit the ignition and the dash lit up.
“It pains me to say this, but it’s a sweet ride.”
“I needed something to take up to the mountains when we train.”
“You said you had two trucks.”
I pulled out of the parking spot much slower than Mase and answered, “She’s an old nineteen-seventy-seven square body. The C10’s lowered, wouldn’t make it up the mountain, and I wouldn’t risk her getting dinged up.”
I was pulling out of the lot and rolling to a stop at the red light, waiting to make a right, when Catarina asked, “How far do you live from here?”
I wanted to correct that question to “How far do we live from here?” but I refrained.
“This time of night with no traffic, fifteen minutes. My house is out on the strand.”
“I haven’t been down to San Diego in a while,” she told me. “Is the Gaslamp district still the place to hang?”
“Can’t say I’ve been in that area since I’ve been back. If I go to a bar, I go to the Dirty Plank, and that’s in Imperial Beach.”
“Tell me about the Dirty Plank.”
“Can’t. You have to experience it for yourself. We’ll swing around for lunch before we head up to the mountains.”
Catarina fell silent, but I could feel her eyes on me instead of the sights. Not that there was much to see in this part of town, just a bunch of condos, houses, and palm trees. The beach was too far away, and the mountains were to our southeast.
“Tell me about your family,” she said.
I glanced over at her. She had her body turned facing me, elbow on the center console, chin resting on her palm, fingertips resting on her cheek.
In the dim light of the dash, she looked younger than she was—not innocent, but the hard edges had softened.
There was no danger lurking, no bad guys to engage, no reason for her to be on alert, so that part of her had shut down. This was a side of her I’d never seen.
From Vegas to Honduras to Belize, there had been moments when I’d seen her relax, but never completely powered down.
“I have an older sister, Anna. She was a biochemical engineer.”
“Was?”
I didn’t miss the uncertainty in Cat’s question.
“Was,” I confirmed. Then to put her mind at ease, I quickly added, “Now she lives in Alaska. She worked for a big pharmaceutical company in Durham. She fell in love with a pilot. After they got married and she got pregnant, they decided to move to Thorne Bay, where Craig grew up. Now she’s got four kids and twenty acres, and every time I talk to her, she’s got a kid screaming in the background, and she’s never been happier.
Her husband still flies, but he does medevacs, wilderness flights, things like that.
My mom passed away five years ago. Somehow, my sister convinced my dad to move up there.
After all the years he bitched about the snow when I was a kid, I thought he’d pick a beach for his retirement. ”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” she whispered.
“So am I. She was a good mom, the best.” I had to stop and breathe through the pain that five years later had not lessened. “I miss her.”
I felt Catarina’s hand on my shoulder before it slid down my arm and wrapped around my wrist. Then I gave her the rest.
“My dad retired a year after my mom’s heart attack, and Anna went to work on Dad. It took her another year and another grandchild for him to sell the house in Minneapolis. Now he lives about fifteen minutes from my sister and sees his grandchildren pretty much every day.”
“What about you? Do you go to Alaska to see them?”
“I went up for a visit before I moved down here. If Craig’s not available to fly you up from Ketchikan, it’s a pain in the ass to get there.
A ferry ride from the airport over to the mainland, then another four-hour ferry over to Hollis, then you’ve got another hour and a half up to Thorne Bay.
Last time I went up, he was out flying. It took me almost six hours to get to my sister’s place after I landed in Alaska.
I swore I’d never go back unless Craig came down in his seaplane to pick me up. ”
“I don’t believe that.”
I loved my sister, my dad, and my nieces and nephews, so she wasn’t wrong. I also liked my sister’s husband, and the fishing wasn’t bad. Though I didn’t like it enough to move there, which was my sister’s constant refrain.
“What about you? Where’s your family?”
I felt her hand on my wrist spasm and chanced a look over at her. She was staring out the windshield, her expression completely devoid of emotion. I twisted my wrist free, reached for her hand, laced our fingers, and rested our hands on my thigh.
“I’m an only child. My parents died when I was four. Snowmobile accident. They went away for the weekend for their anniversary. I was with my grandmother. After they died, I stayed with her.”
“Damn, baby, I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t imagine losing both parents at such a young age. Losing my mom in my thirties had been torture on me and my sister.
“I don’t remember them,” she softly confessed. “I remember the stories my gran told me. I have pictures of them. But I don’t have any real memories.”
Christ, that was rough. I had a memory bank full of good times.
“Growing up, I knew I was missing out, but I didn’t feel like I was.
That probably doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t.
I didn’t have my parents, but I had my grandmother.
She did everything she could to make sure I knew how much she loved me.
I can’t really remember losing my parents.
I can’t remember if I cried for them, though I’m sure I did.
But I was four. All my childhood memories are with my grandmother.
Now, when she died, that hurt. I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying. ”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. She had type one diabetes. She’d had it her whole life. She took care of her health the best she could—stayed active, was vigilant with her diet and insulin. She went to sleep one night and never woke up.”
Holy fuck.
“Baby.”
“I looked it up—nocturnal hypoglycemia—it’s called the dead-in-bed syndrome.
Her blood sugar dropped in her sleep. Almost half of severe diabetic shock episodes happen at night while sleeping.
If I had known, I would’ve slept next to her.
I would’ve watched over her the way she looked out for me.
But I didn’t know, and she died in the room next to mine while I was asleep. ”