Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2)

by Jodi Watters

  Smiling sadly, she looked down, her fingers shredding the ends of the tissue. “Well, if that’s true, then you might want to tell him, because he’s clueless. And hard headed and emotionally unavailable. And did I already say clueless?”

  “The best thing for you right now is school. That’s where your focus should be. The best thing for Beck right now is time. A handful of deployments in seven years isn’t easy to leave behind. It’s something you can’t even imagine, much less understand.” He leaned back in his chair, his casual body language belying his words. “He wasn’t considered a person during those years, but more an extremely valuable tool. His skills and durability were put ahead of his physical and mental well being. The needs of the Navy came first and he met them. Now he needs his own time to sort through it. And I don’t mean a few months, Hope, it could him take years.” Shrugging, he added, “Maybe never.”

  She crumpled the tissue in a ball, nodding as he spelled it out. “So, he’s damaged goods?”

  “No,” Ash said, shaking his head. “None of us are damaged. We just look at life—and death,” he emphasized, “a hell of a lot differently than most. Seeing humanity at its worst will do that to you. Especially if you’ve been a willing participant.” Pausing, he softened his voice. “Move on, Hope. Don’t wait for something that might never be.”

  He was right. Not that Asher Coleson was ever wrong, but in this case, he was dead right.

  And she was almost late for work. “Tonight’s my last shift at Club Kitten. I’m heading for Denver tomorrow. Classes don’t start for three more weeks, but I want the extra time to learn my way around the city.” As if it was her choice to go early and not Beck’s.

  “Club Kitten?” Ash’s brows lifted and he leaned forward in the chair. “You’re stripping? Holy fuck, you’re not doing drugs, are you? Never take ecstasy, Hope—”

  “No, I’m not stripping!” she cut in, before he lost his mind. Except for one night, which he didn’t need to know about. “And I’m not taking ecstasy. I’m a waitress.” He didn’t need to know about the cockteasing part, either, but she felt offended on Bridget’s behalf. “Cripes, Ash, what era are you living in? Even if I was, it doesn’t mean I’m drugged out and hooking on the side, or whatever other stripper stereotype you’re thinking right now. I’ve managed to make a decent chunk of money and I’m using it to bring substance and culture to my life.”

  “Jesus, Hope, give me a little credit, will ya?” But she could read the relief on his face.

  Leaning back again, his lips quirked. “Substance and culture to your life? Been practicing that speech for awhile?”

  She grinned, a knock on the door interrupting her response.

  “Hey, I hate to break up the Beck bashing,” Sam said, holding up his cell phone as he walked in, “but the eagle is landing in T minus ten minutes. That means he’s on his way here.”

  “And on that note, I’m out,” she said. “I never want to hear that name again.” Hope waved at them as she headed for the door, stopping suddenly. “Hey Ash, do you know a woman named Donna Decker? Because I’m pretty sure she’s in love with you. Although she did say she’s open to, and I’m quoting,” she said, making exaggerated quotation marks with her fingers, “a sex only type thing.” Her face scrunched up. “Eww. I’m grossed out just saying it.”

  She smiled when Ash’s face drained of color and he looked to Sam for help. “Shit! What am I gonna do about this? Oh, holy fuck.”

  Sam could only shake his head. She watched him literally do nothing but shake his head for a solid five seconds, until he finally said, “I don’t know, man.”

  For two incredibly accomplished men, with numerous years of medal-inspiring military service between them, they looked utterly perplexed.

  “I do,” Hope said, unable to filter herself. “I think it starts with you and Donna sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” Laughing out loud at the resulting gagging sounds, she laid a hand on her chest, barely containing herself.

  Sam cupped his forehead. “Jesus God, that would put me in the ground.”

  “What?” Ash asked, insulted. “Why would you say that? I’m not exactly a loser. I have a job and a checking account. She’d be lucky to have me!” Smirking, he held out his hands. “I’m the pinnacle of a good catch. I’m her Mount Everest.”

  “Is that right?” Sam countered. “Then tell me how you’re feeling about Beck, right now? Because I’m guessing he’s tops on your shit list.”

  Good Lord, now that the male ego was involved, it was definitely time for her to go and after a quick good-bye to Ash, the debate between him and Sam raged on as she walked out the thick glass doors. When she made it out of the building and into her car before a black Mustang roared in, she considered herself lucky.

  She was Beck’s Mount Everest, damn it, and she wanted to rub it in his gorgeous face. But she couldn’t. He’d kicked her aside like she was nothing more than an ant hill.

  “See? Boobs really do make you feel better. And they taste good in your mouth, too.” Bridget threw her head back in lively laughter, wrapping an arm around Hope’s shoulder and pulling her close. “Now we know what all the hype is about.”

  The walked side by side toward their cars, a full moon shining like a spotlight over the nearly deserted parking lot. It was the end of their shift—her last shift—and her steps were heavy. She’d come to love this place and the odd mix of people working here.

  “I can’t lie to you, Bridge, boobs in the form of cake are delicious,” Hope agreed. But they hadn’t done much to make her feel better. That would take considerably more than a huge set of knockers covered in cream cheese frosting.

  “Hey, there’s a cute guy holding up the side of your car,” Bridget said, nodding toward her orange Toyota.

  Looking that direction, she saw him, and her steps slowed in surprise.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you,” Bridget called out breezily, walking toward her own car. “If I doze off, just honk your horn real loud.”

  Camping out on Bridget’s couch for the night, Hope planned to get about ten hours of uninterrupted sleep before filling up her gas tank and heading east. By tomorrow afternoon, San Diego would be nothing but a dot in her rearview mirror.

  Ignoring the man leaning casually against the car, she unlocked the passenger door and whipped it open. Tossing her canvas bag on the seat with enough force to break anything fragile inside, including her brand new eye liner pencil, she slammed the door shut and walked around to the driver’s side.

  He didn’t budge, blocking her from making a dramatic exit. “If I say I’m sorry, will you love me again?”

  Hands on her hips, she gave him her best glare. “Nope. And those pants are hideous.”

  “You fight dirty,” Val chided, looking down at himself. He wore an expensive pair of glazed cotton skinny jeans the exact shade of lime jello. And damn it, he was pulling it off. “What if I go to confession and say a dozen Hail Mary’s?”

  “Do you even know the words to Hail Mary?”

  “I know the words to Google it,” he said logically, sliding to the side when she elbowed him to open her car door. Rubbing his ribs, he winced. “Ow. That’s gonna leave a mark. You know I bruise like a banana.”

  “I don’t have time for this, Val. Bridget’s waiting for me.” She started the car, not ready to deal with his drama. “Just tell me this, though. Why’d you do it?”

  “I’ve been replaced by a beauty queen with an ass you could bounce a quarter off of.” He glanced Bridget’s way and for the first time, Hope realized he was jealous. Her heart pinched and she almost caved. Almost.

  Kicking the crumbling blacktop with his suede wingtips, he sighed. “My mom has medical bills up the wazoo. Insurance only pays for half of the facility. He paid them, Hope. All of them and more. All I had to do was talk you into going back home. Talk didn’t work, so I tried to scare you a little.” Looking like he might cry, his bony shoulders shook. “I’m sorry, Ho-ho. It was all for sho
w.”

  “I wasn’t scared, Val.” Her voice wobbled. “I was freaking terrified. Do you know what that feels like?”

  “Uh, yeah...” he said, agreeing dramatically. “Your boyfriend went all Terminator on my ass. He barged through the front door like a one man swat team and scared the snot right out of me. My roommates flushed a week’s worth of weed because they thought he was the cops. And a few, pretty gnarly narcotics that I could use right now.” Rubbing his ribcage, he added, “Oh, that reminds me. I’m thinking of taking steroids. You know, the injection kind. I’m gonna get all beefed up.” He flexed a scrawny bicep. “Start hitting the gym every day.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend anymore.” She wasn’t sure he’d ever been to begin with. “And you do know they stick a two inch needle into your ass, right? I hope your balls shrink to the size of raisins.”

  He looked horrified and proud at the same time. “Now, there’s the Ho-ho I know and love. Does that mean you forgive me?”

  “No. It means, don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Honking even though Bridget was watching the whole scene unfold like she was at a drive-in movie, Hope followed her out of the parking lot on spinning tires.

  She wasn’t kidding about hating men. In fact, the whole gender could be summed up to one major con—they’re dicks. And one major pro—their dicks. If a girl wanted the second, then sooner or later, she better be prepared to deal with the first.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ask me to come back.

  Five simple words he didn’t have the balls to say. Or the brains.

  Beck knew she was gone when he pulled up to the house. There was no God awful orange Toyota parked at the curb. No welcoming smile and flashing blue eyes when he walked through the kitchen and up the stairs to the master bedroom. No lingering scent of green apples and a dozen different shampoo bottles lined up in the shower when he stripped and stepped under the scalding spray. The sharp bite of burning water on his naked skin surprised him. He’d been sure all feeling had drained from his body permanently when he’d turned away from her for the final time and walked out the door.

  Be High had been a blur. He completed the assignment by rote, on autopilot the entire time. In and out of Illinois in thirty-six hours, Nolan watched him like he was an escaped mental patient the entire time. Ash barely spoke to him, communicating only when necessary, using as few words as possible. But his body language said it all.

  Beck was lucky he still had a job. And no broken bones. And functioning internal organs.

  And the hell of it was, he didn’t give a single shit.

  A hollowness filled him now, the echoes of his many mistakes bouncing off his tired bones like pinballs. Goddamn it, he was sick of fighting. Fighting the attraction. The connection. Fighting himself. The bottle. He thought he’d left it all behind him when he’d quit fighting the enemy on the battlefield. But his real life enemy had only morphed into a fiercer opponent. One that was fed with liquid.

  He didn’t want it. He wanted Hope. Problem was, he stood in his own damn way. And as Nolan had said on many occasions, if a guy always got what he wanted, then he’d have a twelve inch dick and a harem of Victoria’s Secret models. Sure, he had the dick, Nolan would jokingly brag, but the models only showed up one at a time.

  If all Beck wanted was a catalog model, his life would be a shit ton easier right now.

  Instead, he wanted a blue-eyed bundle of positive energy who, through some miracle of twisted fate, apparently wanted him back. She wanted love and sex and loyalty. From him. Too bad he was an emotionally repressed son of a bitch who’d promptly fucked his opportunity up and sent her away, probably right into the arms of another man who would see her value for what it was. Fucking pure gold.

  Dropping his head to his chin, he let the hot water run over the back of his head, cascading past his unshaven face. The sheets of water did little to block the vision of that cold harsh reality. Thoughts of her having sex with another man, just any ole’ dumb fuck that was willing and God knew there were many, had him seeing red. Thoughts of her holding another man, stroking him so firmly he had to sing the alphabet backwards so he didn’t come in her hand before the letter K, had him plotting the deaths of several, yet to be materialized men who dared to breathe the same air as his Hope. Only she wasn’t his.

  Snapping the handle as he turned the water off, he grabbed a towel and padded into the bedroom, dropping down on the neatly made bed. She’d ruined it for him. She’d ruined his entire private space with her presence. She’d made this house into something he’d never intended it to be. A home. A place he felt safe, which defied all fucking reason considering his training and experience. He’d spent time in the Korengal Valley in Kunar Province Afghanistan, a known hot zone for terrorist activity, and felt safe. Stupid, yeah, but safe.

  And now, this house without her, was back to being nothing more than wood and concrete. Solid and impenetrable. Untouchable and alone. Exactly what he wanted to be, himself.

  That was safety. That was the place he wanted to reside. Where he was the only one who could hurt himself. Nobody else got that particular privilege. No unknown person with a warped religious agenda and a dusty scope locked on his location. No grooved dirt road with cleverly hidden trip wires leading to devastating IED’s. No magnetic woman with a quirky sense of humor and more guts than good sense.

  No bottle of booze that could create more chaos than all three of those combined, innocently wrapped in a seductive package.

  One hundred days sober. Triple digits. A milestone, she’d said proudly.

  Reaching for the racquetball, he squeezed the hard rubber in his fist. Felt it flex, bending against his strength. And he whipped it as hard as he could against the wall.

  One. Two. Three times. The sharp ping echoed off the walls, bits of paint and texture floating down to the floor with the force of his throws, drywall dust dancing in the air. He had to be on a flight to Karachi in less than twelve hours and needed a decent four hours worth of sleep between now and then to be on his game. If he wasn’t, Ash would not only take notice, but likely replace him. It would be curtains on his career.

  Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.

  She deserved so much better than this. Than him. A man counting hits against a wall like he counted the minutes and hours between drinks. But he should have told her. He should have told her he loved the sound of her laughter in the middle of the night. The feel of her long, silky hair against his belly when she slid down his body. He should have told her that he never knew sex could mean so much, and that it certainly never had before.

  He should have told her that he loved her. When, why, and how that happened, he had no fucking idea, but it was the God’s honest truth.

  Instead, he’d told her where to leave the key.

  Rolling the ball around the palm of his hand, he made his way through the darkness of impending dusk toward the kitchen. There it was, sitting on the island next to the fish bowl as instructed, the polished silver key glinting off the light she’d left burning above the sink. Left on intentionally, just for him. Cat and Dog darted around in their tank, mocking him with their silly presence. What the hell could have possessed him to buy goldfish? The sight of Hope’s smile, that’s what.

  “Fucking asshole,” he hissed to himself, scrubbing a hand over his face repeatedly, the scratchy sound of his three day old beard abrasive in the too quiet house.

  Turning, he stared at the closed pantry door where his unopened bottle sat patiently. Like it knew he would eventually do something so incredibly stupid to Hope that nothing could right his wrong. Nothing could make him feel better. Except that bottle. There was an oblivion to be found at the bottom of it, along with a promise to silence his troubles. Delay the inevitable pain that had to be felt, sooner or later.

  Hell, he was feeling that pain right now. The churning in his stomach so intense, he felt like his entire being was slipping into a pit of blackness, never to see the light of day again. And he had no
body to blame but himself. He’d put his head above his heart. His pride above his head. No risk, no reward had been his motto. Riding the razor’s edge of death because it made life more exciting. And where had it gotten him? Standing in front of a goddamn door, sorely afraid he had a broken heart, debating whether he wanted to feel the pain or make it go away.

  A war between the greater good of sobriety and the evil freedom of addiction raged inside him, but it was over all too soon when he touched the handle and turned. As it had on so many occasions, evil came out the victor.

  Beck pushed the door open with authority, sickly relieved that a decision had been made. And the surprising sight in front of him nearly sent him to his knees. His clenched fists loosened, the forgotten racquetball hitting the travertine floor with a hollow dribble, rolling away unnoticed. His whiskey was there, covered in a thin, untouched layer of dust, the amber liquid shining like a reservoir of clear water in the middle of a parched desert.

  And next to it, folded in a neat square of dingy pink fleece, was Hope’s bad news blanket.

  The wetness that flooded his eyes came from somewhere deep inside him, embarrassing in their lengthy intensity, and Beck vowed to deny their existence to his dying day.

  Which, given how quickly he had the whiskey in his hand, might come sooner than his chronological age would suggest.

  Gripping the short neck of the bottle like a life preserver, he lifted the blanket to his face. It smelled like her. Like green apples and sunshine and hope. Like a little girl who’d suffered too much tragedy in the midst of a bountiful vineyard, because of other people’s greed and lust. And yet, she’d made her way out of that mess, smiling and determined. Willing to take a chance on what had burned her so much as a child. Love and sex and loyalty.

  Ask me to come back.

  He was right to send her away. She deserved so much more than him. She deserved the whole fucking fairy tale, right down to the knight on a white horse. A happily ever after kind of life that some other man could give her. Because he sure as shit couldn’t. The only thing he had to offer her was this house and a sip of his whiskey.