Chapter 4 #3
Kelly’s eyes widened. “Please don’t! George is a good man.
We just weren’t right for each other.” Not wanting to concentrate on her failed relationship with the town’s fire captain, Kelly brought the conversation back to her original topic.
“What I’m trying to say is that declaring our love for each other is nice, but it doesn’t mean I’m any better at dating today than I was yesterday. ”
“It makes all the difference,” Grumpy argued lightly.
He patted his lap and Kelly rearranged herself on the couch again to give him her feet.
“They’re not two mutually exclusive things, Kells.
I’m not dating you because I love you or love you because I’m dating you.
I love you. Full stop. End of sentence. I could list countless reasons why, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is knowing that my love means my loyalty, my protection, and my support.
Dating, sex, romance… It’s like the cherry on top of the cake. ”
Kelly felt herself start to tear up. “I liked it better when you grunted at me. I cried less.”
“As long as they’re happy tears.”
Kelly lifted the hem of her shirt to wipe at her eyes. “Are you ready to talk about your mom and what she told me now?”
“So long as you’re willing to stop feeling guilty for leaving the hospital as you did.”
“You can’t just order me to stop feeling guilty,” she snapped without malice. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Make it work like that. I don’t blame you, Kells, and neither should you.”
She scrunched her nose, feeling like a child being scolded. “I feel slightly less guilty. That’s about as much as you’re getting today.”
Grumpy grunted, but thankfully dropped the subject.
“Well?” she prompted when he said nothing.
“I’m really starting to hate that word,” he practically growled through gritted teeth.
“Well,” she added because she could, “if you would just talk instead of making me pry the answers out of you, I wouldn’t have to say it.”
His eye narrowed on her. The other was slower to respond. “Well, it seems my mother needs to learn to keep her mouth shut. What I don’t understand is why she would tell you about that at all.”
Kelly paused, licking her lips. “Because of the girl.”
Grumpy frowned. “What girl?”
“The one who showed up to the hospital about a week or so after you were admitted. It was days before I left,” she clarified, “but it’s what prompted the conversation. Your mom didn’t just randomly walk up to me and tell me about her cheating son.”
Grumpy’s expression darkened at Kelly’s poor choice of words. “I’ve never cheated on a woman in my life. Never have, never will.”
Kelly squeezed his thigh. His feet weren’t over hers anymore, but she was able to reach them easily. “I know. I think a part of me always knew. It was why I kept talking to you, kept being your friend. But I also didn’t argue enough. I didn’t question her story enough.”
“There were accusations of cheating,” he clarified. “But I never did.”
“With both of them?”
Grumpy nodded sadly. “Nadine and I were young. Really young, but I loved her. We wanted to get married before I got my first orders so she could come with me. It wasn’t going to be anything big, just a quick courthouse outing.
But the day before we were set to go, she called me and told me that it’s over.
That she ‘knows what I did’. I tried to get a hold of her, tried to fight for her, but it was like she vanished off the earth. I never saw or spoke to her again.”
Kelly’s heart bled for him and what he’d gone through. “And with your ex-wife?”
“We were married about six years. I was stationed at Fort Hood at the time, down in Texas. Everything seemed good. Really good—and then one day, I came home and Tanya was in an uproar. She called me a cheater and a liar. Kept waving these pictures around in front of me, but at the time, she was too frantic to even let me see them. I tried to defend myself, tried to tell her that it wasn’t real.
But she never believed me, didn’t trust me.
She kicked me out and filed for divorce. ”
“You didn’t live on base?” she inquired softly.
He shook his head. “We bought a house, wanting to make a forever home we could keep after I retired.” He snorted somberly. “Apparently she had a different definition of ‘forever’ than I did.”
Kelly could hear the pain in Grumpy’s gruff voice as he spoke. “I’m sorry.”
He grunted, as if to say that it didn’t matter now. But it did. He’d been hurt, not just by the accusations of these women but by their lack of faith in him.
“I shouldn’t have let what Margery said get to me,” Kelly told him. “I can say I didn’t believe her all I want, but clearly something got to me because I kept you at arm’s length all these months. Even if it was subconscious, I am sorry, Grumpy.”
“If you tell me you’re sorry one more time, I will take you over my knee. You’ll likely have to put yourself there, and I’ll have to find like a spatula or something to use on you, but I will spank your ass.”
Kelly laughed. “Not exactly a deterrent.”