Chapter Four
I blare my music the whole way back to Rosarita. I’ve never felt so on top of my game, and each time I look at the rock on my finger, it brings a smile to my face and butterflies in my stomach. More than once, I consider calling my sister and telling her the news, but I also feel that she’ll do exactly what I predicted she’d do if I tell her.
I’ll enjoy the weekend with Mac, then after he leaves Sunday night, I’ll call her and let her know my news.
I cross into Mexico and continue home, hardly noticing the miles as they pass. I’ll get back home with time to shower and get ready before heading to the restaurant, and Mac should be getting there just about the time I am.
I’m looking forward to the time when he and I live together and share the things we have. It’s going to be nice not having to attend to pretty much everything we do in separate vehicles.
I chuckle to myself as I pull into the parking lot of my villa. I pull into my parking space at the same time my neighbor is just getting home, and his vehicle is identical to my own.
“I thought you were joking when you said that you were going to get a carbon copy of my Jeep,” I tell him when I get out of my car.
“Joking? No way!” he laughed. “I told you that I had mad Jeep envy, right down to the color of the interior, so I went and got one of my own.”
“I’m happy for you. All the shit I’ve been through with this rig, and it’s still ticking.”
“I’m not going to say I’ll put anywhere near the kind of miles on mine that you put on yours, but I’m happy with it. It’s exactly what I was hoping for.”
“Good deal! I’ll catch up with you later,” I tell him as I sling my bag over my shoulder and head into my bungalow. I’ve always liked the people in this villa, and Enrique has lived next to me for almost three years now. He’s the only neighbor I’d consider my friend, and I genuinely am happy for him and his Jeep.
I decide to get a light workout in since I’m full of energy with all the excitement of the day, plus I have a bit of time to kill before heading to the restaurant for dinner. This is one of the few times in my life I wish I had more girlfriends I could share news like this with. There will be well-wishers, but naturally, no one is going to be as happy about the engagement as Mac and I are.
After my workout, I hop in the shower, though I hate to wash Mac’s scent off me. I’m already looking forward to what we’re going to be doing later that night, especially knowing that neither of us has any obligations tomorrow morning. We can sleep late, be lazy, and stay in bed all day if we want. It’s a novel thing for us since we rarely sleep in after all the years of waking up at zero-dark-thirty. It’s an appealing thought.
After my shower, I pour a glass of wine and pull up my “good vibes only” playlist when suddenly I have an idea.
I could reduce the number of things to do that weekend if I went ahead and threw the things that I’ve packed for the JTFL mission in the back of my Jeep now. I have time to load it up before heading to the restaurant, and it would make for one less thing that we had to get done on Sunday.
I’ve already been in the habit of keeping bags semi-packed. God knows I go on enough missions to justify having a few bags ready. There are still a few necessities I need to throw in that I need access to daily, but that only takes a few moments.
I haul the bags out to the Jeep and toss them in the back. It takes three trips for me to get everything, which causes me to laugh at myself for packing so much. I give Mac grief for being overly prepared, but then I pack as though I’m going on a month-long vacation when in reality we’re going into a covert operation.
I check my phone. I’ve got to hurry if I’m going to make it to the restaurant on time. Typical of me, I start out ahead of schedule and then suddenly I’m behind schedule because I thought I had all this extra time to do extra things. I can only imagine the way Mac will tease me if he manages to beat me there when I have a healthy head start. I put my phone in my back pocket and slam the back hatch of the jeep, and instantly, I see orange.
My brain isn’t able to comprehend what’s happening in that tiny blip of time but I register that Im flying through the air. I don’t scream, instead, I’m trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. Everything is going so fast, I can’t think at all.
Intense heat engulfs me, and for a split second, I fear that I’m actually on fire. When people say, “My life flashed before me in that moment,” I get it because it’s a thing. Then, I hit the ground, and everything went black.