Page 83 of Drop Three

“I will,” she responds, leaving me standing in the laundry room alone to watch her walk away.

I can hear the guys hollering in the living room, asking where we’ve been and what took so long.

I’m immune to all of it.

Right now, I need a second to regroup from the fact that Navy admitted to my face she’s moving on.

25

NAVY

8 MONTHS AGO

“You’re gonna regret this,you bastard. I’ve got fuck around or find out wired in my genes. I am…I am a catch! You, sir, are missing out on the best thing that ever happened to you!”

Ugh.I stomp my feet in frustration. I need to remain frustrated or I’ll cry. Not because things are now over between me and my boyfriend of almost fifteen years, but because the poor excuse of a man threw my things outside.

Outside.

It took him less than an hour after our breakup to toss my things outside his apartment door and have the locks changed.

Leaving me to my current predicament.

I finally put on my big girl pants and ended things with Luke, yet now here we are. Let’s just say he handled me breaking up with him in a less than stellar way.

No regrets, though. Our relationship was dull and lifeless. Essentially, we were playing house. I did think, or hope, I should say, we would be able to end things amicably and be peaceful in these next steps for the both of us.

We weren’t married and didn’t have kids together, which I see now worked out in my favor.

That’s part of the reason I ended things. I don’t know if I ever want kids, and Luke enjoys pressuring me to do things I don’t want to. Hence, our fifteen-year stagnant relationship.

I glance down at my abundance of things: clothes, shoes, blankets, pillows, kitchen utensils, he even tossed the hand towels.

What am I supposed to do with all of this?

I drive a Mercedes, not a pickup truck.

This is laughable. If my best friend, Kodi, could see me now, she’d be on the ground laughing her ass off.

I look down and realize I’m still in my school drop-off mom clothes. I’m not a mom, but I’m excelling at the look. My hair is in a mangled messy bun—lopsided. I’ve got on my dancing shark socks with purple star sleep shorts and a stained white T-shirt that says “honk if you love hookers.”

I see why Luke loved me so much.

And here I am telling him what acatchI am.

I can’t believe I ever felt remotely bad about breaking up with him. God, I practically cried myself to sleep at the thought of hurting him. When you invest so many years in someone—and fifteen is a lot of years—they become your comfort and not always in a good way.

Pacing the hallway of Luke’s apartment, I lift a bag and say to myself, “I’ll take one bag at a time. It’ll be fine. My car may be small, but this has to work. It has to?—”

“Navy?” A masculine voice cuts off my thought process.

Uhh… “Yes?” I say on a slow rise, my voice hesitant to meet the stranger behind me.

“Are you alright?” he asks me, and I recognize the voice right away.

Bodhi St. James.My brother’s best friend and the man whose shoulder I’ve cried on far too many times this past month.

Of course the hottest man I’ve ever laid my hungry eyes on is the one who gets to witness me like this—vulnerable and face first in fiery chaos.

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