I prepare myself to make some excuse so they’ll let me leave, but the military looking men just keep staring forward, like those guards they have at Buckingham Palace. I suppose they are stationed here to prevent unwanted intruders from coming in, not guests from leaving.
I slip out of the small side gate and then walk down the country path that leads to the closest town to Colton’s estate, two miles up the road. I walk as quickly as I can, breathing in the scent of nature, trying to summon it inside of me so that I don’t have to think about the way he looked at me, the disappointment on his face, the twisted resentment.
I thought you were going to be an easy lay, an interesting fling, I imagine him saying. Why would you let me get all excited by going down on you and then drop that bomb on me? What a disappointment.
I walk into the small suburban town and find my way to the closest bus stop, sitting in the corner, right up against the wall, and taking out my phone as a force of habit. Sometimes I wish I was above the mindless scrolling, the memes and YouTube binging, and the rest of it, but I’m not, I’m only human, and so as I wait for the bus.
I end up on my photo gallery, cycling through pictures of Rusty.
The Jackhuahua is smiling in this one, despite the surroundings being yet another halfway house, yet another line for a free bowl of soup, yet another chance to outrun Omar and the despicable things he said he’d do to me.
I’ll always follow you, slut, I hear him roaring. Never forget that.
I lean closer to the phone, staring at the last photo I ever took of Rusty, his teeth bared in anticipation of the treat I was holding behind the camera. His snow-white coat is fluffy and recently groomed because no matter how poor I was, I always put him before me.
I miss him.
I miss him so much it hurts.
And knowing that I can’t go home and forget about Colton and his reaction to my virginity – or non-reaction as the case may be – by being with him, it makes me sick. It makes me want to cry.
I put my phone away and take a bolstering breath, deciding that if Colton doesn’t bring up what happened, neither will I. It will be this big looming unsaid thing between us, but from here on I’ll just be Scrappy’s trainer, nothing else.
It will be easier that way.
That’s what I try to tell myself, even as my heart gives a pang, and my mind floods with the moment he knelt before me, dragging his tongue across my body, pleasing me as I’ve never been pleased before.
I feel a shiver, an aftershock of the orgiastic pleasure move torturously through me.
Then the bus pulls up and I beat that feeling down.Chapter SevenColtonI stand in the middle of the wrecked gym with my VP, Jason Price. Jase is another ex-military man, thirty years old with a shaved head and a flat, rocky, no-nonsense face. His thrice-broken nose wrinkles as he steps over the ruined husks of a heavy bag and lets out a growling sigh.
“This just makes no damn sense,” he says. “Why burn down two of our gyms? I understand it on some level, fine. I understand that some son of a bitch would want to hit us, considering the sort of work we do, the sort of people we protect. Maybe somebody’s angry because they couldn’t get to a celebrity we were protecting or some shit? I don’t know. Maybe they want revenge. But it’s the timing that’s got me stumped. We haven’t done a job like that in at least a month. And arson—it just seems so fucking …”
“Mindless?” I offer.
I try to keep my attention on the here and now as I look across the ruined husk of the gym at Jase. But I feel Kat at the back of my mind, a whispering I can’t ignore. I remember returning to my bedroom and finding her gone, and the feeling that swept through me, the need to see her again—to talk this out, to explain to her, to let her know...
Focus.
I’ll have to wait until the business here is finished before I can see her again. Because no matter what I feel, I’m a professional and I always have been, ever since I passed BUDs and got into the SEALs.
“But then,” I go on, “arson is a pretty fucking mindless thing. Except …”
“When it’s two gyms in the span of an hour,” Jase finishes always on the same wavelength.
I nod shortly, stepping over the remains of an exercise bike and glancing out of the charred, ruined window.
The fire department let us in on account of our military background and the fact that there’s no DNA to spoil. The arson investigation was short and conclusive. There are multiple points where the fire began and plenty of gasoline residue, and, on top of that, an actual canister of gasoline at both locations. It couldn’t be clearer.