Page 68 of Explode
Ash sighed. “She would have found out eventually. It’s abouttime the two of you stopped pussy-footing around and talked about everything.”
“Don’t you think I haven’t been trying?” I growled, my hands curlinginto fists and my jaw grinding.
“Yeah, but your wife is a stubborn mare. You need to get her to listenand put us all out of our misery. I’m not sure how much more of your moping I can cope with,” Ash replied.
He wasn’t wrong. She could be a damn stubborn minx when shewanted to be.
“Why the fuck do you think I brought her here?” I snapped, gettingangrier with the dick by the second.
“You’ve done a lot of talking about what happened in between thefucking and the arguing,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his tone.
“Fuck you, Ash,” I sighed, taking a breath to calm the building storm,frustration at Riley’s stubbornness getting the better of me. “I don’t know what more I can do to make her listen.”
“Don’t fucking ask me,” Ash huffed. “See, this is why I don’t getinvolved with women.” Seeing the resigned look on my face, he crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me. “I don’t know, Kai. She’s too stuck in her head over everything. You need to distract her, get her to think about something else so she’s not constantly in her head with her anger, and then try to explain why we decided on this course of action.”
His phone rang cutting off my response, and as I watched him walkaway to take the call, I let his words resonate in my head. He was right, she was so focused on being angry, allowing her hurt to consume her like it had done every day since being told I had died. She needed something different to think about, something that would take her mind completely off everything that had happened in the last six months.
I churned it over in my head, thinking of every little thing I knew aboutmy wife, and it didn’t take long before a grin spread on my lips as an idea formed in my head.
I knewexactlywhat I needed to do to win my wife over again.
Chapter 20
Riley
Thescentofpineand fresh air calmed my racing heart as I walkedaway from the cabin, desperate to put some space between me and the two assholes. Ash’s words rang in my head on a repetitive loop that made anger churn in my belly. Not the words he’d just said inside the cabin, but the words he’d first said when he arrived at the safe house all those months ago.
‘I’m sorry for what happened to Kai. I’ve known Kai for years, he’s agood friend. I promise you, you’ll get revenge on every cunt who hurt you and him.’
He’sa good friend.That’s what Ash had said. Not,he was agoodfriend. I didn’t give it any thought at the time, just assumed he hadn’t quite come to terms with Kai’s death, but now I knew why he’d used those words. He’d known at that very moment Kai was alive.
Not just known, but had spent the month beforehand by his bedside.
For some reason, that betrayal cut deep. Deeper than Miles’ betrayal,Miles hadn’t left my side from the minute he told me Kai had died, but Ash, he’d beenwithKai, and had the barefaced cheek to lie so blatantly to my face.
As far as I was concerned he could take his apology and stick it uphis ass.
Reaching a huge tree, I sat down and rested my back against thetrunk, taking several deep breaths in hopes my hands would stop shaking. Leaning my head back against the tree, I closed my eyes.
I was so tired.
Tired of harboring this constant anger. Tired of Kai trying to force meto forgive him. Tired of the confusion that lay heavy in my heart. Tired of one minute wanting to picture a future with Kai, and then the next minute wanting to get as far away from him as possible.
My head was a mess, and my heart hurt.
And I didn’t want to feel anything anymore.
I wasdone.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I needed to get away from here,away fromthem. But as I’d deduced before, I had no means of getting my ass back home on my own.
Wherever home was nowadays.
Besides, on the way back from meeting Stephanie, Ash had said wewould be flying back to Forest Point this evening. I just had to survive a few more hours with Kai and Ash, but as soon as we were back in familiar territory I would come up with a plan.
Maybe Sofia had figured out a way we could both run away withoutbeing found by the dickheads in our lives.
With the recent developments surrounding Max, and with emotionsrunning high, my head had started pounding and was slowly turning into a migraine, which wasn’t helped by the sound of approaching footsteps. My heart rate spiked to a gazillion beats a minute when a familiar scent that made my core clench hit my nostrils.
