Cara’s gaze was riveted to the desert in front of us. “I wasn’t crying over him, by the way. I was just so frustrated, and... furious, I guess.” She turned to look at me. “I mean, how dare he, right? First, he dumped me, then he spent months...” She pressed her lips together like she didn’t want to say the words.
“Stringing you along. Taking advantage of your vulnerability. Being a real piss-ant.”
That made her laugh again. God, I could get used to that sound.
“I would have said asshole,” she said, “but I appreciate your grandma-friendly version as well. Honestly, I’m angrier at myself than him. Seeing him today made it so obvious to me that there’s nothing between us. I don’t miss him. I haven’t missed him for the forty days since I blocked him. Why didn’t I see that sooner?”
I let out a long sigh. I wasn’t sure I was ready to share anything about my past mistakes with her, but when did I ever care to share those? Since it was for a good cause, which was helping out a good woman, I bit the bullet. “By the time I was your age, I’d been married, divorced, and sleeping with my ex for a year.”
She stared at me, wide-eyed. “I did not see that coming. I have so many questions. What...? How...”?
“We met when I was 22 and she was 23. I was in a bad place, and she made me feel better. Simple as that. She had her own shit, her own reasons for getting married six months after meeting.” I stared out over the vast desert. My marriage had been a bit like the view. Long stretches of heartbreak with scattered islands of joy. “The first six months were okay, sometimes great. Then I shipped out for a new assignment. Neither of us was cut out for long-distance, at least not at that age. So, six months later, when I got home on leave, she served me with papers.”
“And then at some point, you started... I mean, how did you decide to keep seeing each other?”
I let out a small laugh. “There was no decision. We started down that path before the ink was dry on the divorce decree, and every time I was back in the area, we hooked up. Sure, we were using each other for sex, but it was more than that. It was familiar. Comfortable. It let us be divorced without really grieving the loss of our marriage.”
She nodded. “I can see that. It took blocking Riley forty days ago to really start letting go. That’s how I was able to feel nothing today.”
“Forty days?”
She’d mentioned the number twice.
She frowned. “Yes, I’m counting. When I made that decision, I hadn’t heard from him for twenty-three days and I realized I was anxiously awaiting his call, which always came three or four weeks after the last time I’d seen him. I woke up one morning feeling like I’d had a nightmare, and realized this was our new normal. When the hell had I agreed to that? I’d gone from live-in girlfriend to once-a-month booty call, and I’d never agreed to that!” She blew out a quick breath. “Yeah, I haven’t let go of the anger yet.”
“Anger is a much-maligned emotion. Handled correctly, it can be a really good thing. I think you should be angry at that frigger for as long as you want.”
“Frigger?” She laughed like I’d hoped she would, with her blue eyes crinkling and her pink lips parting to show her straight white teeth.
Damn, I wanted to kiss her. Which was my cue to go. “We should probably get back on the road.”
She nodded, but didn’t stand. “Can I ask you something first? Totally unrelated to the Riley situation.”
“Okay.” I prepared myself for questions about my marriage or divorce or ex-wife.
“Why do you hate Christmas?”
That blindsided me and I sat there in shock for a few beats, which was not my usual response to anything.
“I know a little about your job,” she said quickly, “that you sometimes join emergency response teams in the field, and Mason told me you work a lot of holidays so I’m sure you see awful things.”
I understood the leap her mind had made, but she had it backwards. “I volunteer for a lot of Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays so the people with families can have off.” It wasn’t the only reason, but it was enough for now. “That’s not why my relationship to Christmas is complicated, but that’s a story for another day. I can tell you that some of my proudest moments on the job have come from successes on those fraught days. Like this past Thanksgiving. We saved a mother and three kids under the age of ten.”
I didn’t mention the wannabe family annihilator who’d held them at gunpoint for six hours. He’d lived, too, although he was still in the ICU from the winging he took from one of our sharpshooters. I didn’t give a fuck about him, other than wanting him to receive the harshest punishment our justice system would allow.
Cara smiled. “So, you’re a real-life hero. And not just mine.”
Her last words made my heart trip over itself. “Not a hero,” I said quickly. “Just doing my job as part of a team. I’m not even one of the front-line guys. I’m there to advise the bomb squad in case we run into potential booby-traps.”
“Wow. Sounds heroic to me. Sorry, you’re going to have to live with my assessment of you.” She reached across the table and laid her hand on top of mine. Her gentle touch sent a shock of electricity through me. Based on the way her eyes went wide, I guessed she’d felt it too. “About that conversation for another day, I’m a good listener, too.”
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that at some point.”
For the first time in my life, I thought it might actually be true. I might actually be able to trust her with a part of me that I’d encased in stone decades ago to keep it from destroying me. I was smart enough to realize what that meant. And the thought of being in so deep with a woman—a young woman—who was so off-limits was fucking terrifying.
“You’re sure about this?” Cara asked from the passenger’s seat. “You’re not too tired?”
“Positive,” I said as I sped past another Arizona highway mile marker. “I’ll feel better making up some of our time and putting us farther away from your asshole ex. And I wasn’t kidding when I said the Army taught me to sleep under any conditions. Those three hours earlier while you drove made me feel like a new man.”
