How About No
Page 11

Hell, I even missed the bad.
The crying during at random times. The agonizing way she’d tear herself down. The way sometimes she’d go into one of these moods and not come out of it for a couple of days.
I now understood some of that to be the depression that Kourt had explained to me. It all made sense.
I wished I could go back in time.
I wished that I could make things right.
I wished that I hadn’t tried to make her feel bad for not doing what I thought was the right thing when it came to donating to her sister.
Had I known then what I knew now, I wouldn’t have said a word.
If I’d only left it alone…
“What are you doing?” I asked in confusion.
She pulled out a mini bottle of lotion, and then a small pink razor.
“I’m going to take care of this little patch,” she murmured like I was dumb. “That okay?”
And before she’d even heard my reply, she applied the lotion and started to shave. In the front seat of my truck.
“What are you going to do with that?” I asked, eyeing the lotion and hair.
She pursed her lip and then eyed the window. “You fling that out of my window and it’s going to go all down the side. I just had the truck washed.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll just put it in the bag in my purse,” she murmured, doing just that.
Moments later, she sat back, and I had to smell the scent of her peaches and cream lotion for the next few miles and did so without saying a word.
It took me back to a time right after our first date.
And an idea struck me like a hammer coming down at the perfect angle on a nail’s head.
Whack.
I’d remind her why we were good together.
Now that I had confirmation that her roommate was nothing more than a friend who supported her in her times of need, I realized rather quickly that the only reason I’d been staying away, giving her her space, was due to the fact that I had assumed that she had moved on with someone else.
Except she hadn’t moved on, not even a little bit.
A person who’s moved on doesn’t get that upset over her ex-husband being hurt.
It just didn’t happen.
For instance, if you were to ask Castiel, another club brother, what his ex-wife—who had divorced him because he was married to his job—would do if he’d been shot, it was not go to the hospital and wait for hours and hours. It was not, after getting shot in the hand after waiting those hours and hours, sit in an uncomfortable plastic chair beside your ex-husband’s bedside.
What Castiel’s ex-wife would have done was to receive the phone call, hang up the phone, and then celebrate that she was finally rid of him.
That was not Landry.
Landry cared, but I could tell that my job scared the crap out of her.
Yet, even despite her worry over my occupation, she fully supported me.
I shifted, my leg starting to throb, and Landry’s eyes once again came to me.
“Can I ask you a hypothetical question without you getting upset?” She tilted her head warily in my direction.
I knew what she was going to ask. She wanted to know what I’d do without my leg.
“I guess,” I acquiesced.
“If you have to have your leg amputated, will you still be able to ride a motorcycle?” she questioned.
I felt my stomach somersault.
“The infection is down by my knee for some reason. It’s my hope that I don’t have to have it amputated, but they said that if it was needed, then it would be an above-the-knee amputation. It will depend on where, exactly, they perform the amputation that would answer that question better. I would think that as long as I still have a stump to attach a prosthesis to, then it should be okay.” I paused, thinking about something else. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to run.”
She looked at me with sadness filling her features.
Running had always been my escape.
I was a big man, tall at six-foot-four-inches, and I had long legs that allowed me to eat up the ground. When I needed a break from reality, I slid on a pair of running shoes and let the burn of my muscles take me away for a while.
But, if my leg was gone, would that even be possible anymore?
“There are amputee runners all over the world,” she disagreed with me. “There’s a cop on the Kilgore SWAT team that just ran a marathon. It was a big deal. The Old Dogs New Tricks Rescue sponsored him.”
I felt fondness at hearing Landry had sponsored him.
When we’d first gotten together, Landry had fallen in love with an old dog at a shelter the day we’d gone there to find a puppy so Butters, my old Labrador, could have a playmate.
We’d left with a dog, of course, but not a young one. An older one that was well on his way to death.
But, Landry had wanted that dog, and we’d gotten him.
He’d passed away peacefully in his sleep about six months after we’d gotten him, and that had started her love for older rescue dogs. She’d started up a dog rescue, and now went around to shelters and found every older dog that was being passed over by prospective new dog owners. Dogs that were ugly and just wouldn’t be able to pull off the ‘cute’ card. Dogs that were handicapped. Dogs that were temperamental. She found them homes.
My plan to remind her of all the good we had firmly in my mind, I took the next exit and pulled up outside a convenience store.
“Let’s go grab something to eat that’ll tide us over until lunchtime,” I murmured.
She eyed me warily.
I knew what she was thinking.
I hated to stop, and I’d literally just offered to do so without her even asking me.
What was my game plan?
I could practically hear her wheels spinning, and I wanted to laugh.
Instead of giving her any indication that I was up to something, I pushed the car door open and got out, smiling when she stayed put until I could make my way around the car.
Old habits die hard, and Landry and I had it out quite a few times in the beginning of our relationship. After realizing that opening the door for her wasn’t going to cause any unwanted side effects on her end, she gave in and allowed me to open her car door for her like I wanted to, and I did it from that point on.
I was happy to see that she allowed me to do it today.
“Thanks,” I murmured as I opened first her car door, and then the door to the convenience store. “I was hoping you wouldn’t give me shit.”
She snorted. “I lost that battle a long time ago, Wade. And, if it makes you happy to open the car door for me, who am I to tell you that you can’t?”
I winked at her and went down the aisle that had the beef jerky, while she went to the one that had the candy.
I stepped wrong when I bent down to get my favorite brand and felt bile rise up my throat as my wound reminded me that it hated me for only the seventy-fifth time today.
“Wade?”
I dropped my eyes so she wouldn’t see the pain, and said, “Yeah?”
“You want me to get it?” she offered.
No. What I wanted was for my leg to be better. What I wanted was for her to be back in my bed. What I wanted was for my life to be what it was before she’d left.
What I got wasn’t that.
But I was working on it.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Would you?”
She bent down and the tank she was wearing rode up, displaying a sliver of skin above her shorts.
My tattoo was on her upper hip, right where I’d left it.
It was a picture of a shield—my badge—and my numbers on it.
She’d gotten it the day before we’d married, and then had shown it to me the moment we’d arrived in Bora Bora for our honeymoon.
I’d fucked her…
I immediately shut that line of thought off before I could so much as think about how it felt to be inside of her while staring at my stamp on her right hip.
If I didn’t, I’d not only have a stiff, sore leg, but I’d also wind up with a stiff, throbbing cock.
“Thank you,” I murmured when she stood up, her shirt once again covering her tattoo.
She smiled at me. “I got what I want. I’m going to go to the bathroom just in case, and I’ll meet you at the door.”