Page 7 of Forced Proximity
Surprisingly, it was him explaining to the sexy little number who’d caught my eye at the restaurant.
“Listen, Dru,” Eugene said. “I can explain everything. You just have to let me do that.”
“Explain to me? What are you talking about? How about you explain to your girlfriend?” she suggested, then hung up on her sister.
She shoved her phone into her pocket and stared at her aunt for a long second before she said, “You know he’s dead, right?”
Jennifer nodded, her face solemn.
“You knew that he’d been dying, and you still didn’t go home?”
Again with the nodding.
“Okay.” She shook her head. “As long as you know that. I’m not going to make you explain this.” She pointed at the two in front of her. “Just leave me the hell out of it. And don’t make me attend y’all’s farce of a wedding, Eugene, when we both damn well know that you don’t care about her. Also, just sayin’, but you may be ‘reformed’ as you’d once said, but Daniella isn’t. This is going to get ugly, and you know it.”
Eugene didn’t say anything, but he did glance over at Jennifer.
When neither one said anything more, Dru took that as her cue to leave.
She headed back down the length of the street and walked right past me before I fell into step a couple of yards behind her.
She stopped when she got to the gate, unsure how to get out.
I pulled out my app and let her out, despite my every instinct screaming at me to make a move.
I waited until she was well and truly out of the line of sight before I headed to my own car and went to my home away from home—a.k.a. a small studio apartment near the airport.
It was everything I wanted it to be.
Impersonal, and not a hint of memory.
Sometimes, when I was at home, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
All the memories of my son there, it made me want to scream.
Even though I hated being in DC with a passion, I hated being at home in Dallas even more.
Everything in Dallas reminded me of my son, Tavi.
The grass in the front yard—he loved when we drew patterns in it.
The old swing set outside—we’d built it together from the ground up.
Passing by his school every single day—seeing the kids out there where my son should’ve been felt like a dagger straight to the heart.
But the worst part of all was that I couldn’t be with my own found family—the Truth Tellers MC—without feeling like my heart was breaking.
I loved the guys from the club.
I would do anything for them.
But they were all moving on. Even the one that I’d related to the most—Gunner.
They all had kids. Wives. Responsibilities.
The only one left that didn’t was Jasper, and he was as touchy-feely as a cactus.
He didn’t want to be messed with, and he certainly didn’t want to hear about petty problems.
