Page 58 of Finally Mine
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Another sleepless night.Some nights, it was worse than others. Tonight, every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was dust and blood. He heard the explosion. Saw from a distance as the truck he drove bounced on the shock wave. He watched Oluo crawl out of the passenger side as gunfire erupted. Fear. Pain. Darkness. Red. He wasn’t dreaming. His brain had cobbled all accounts of the incident into a monster memory.
He pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. It was one in the morning. No one would be out and about. He was safe. The first few walks he’d taken, he’d worn pants in case he ran into anyone. But Benevolence was a town of early risers. Restaurants closed at nine, and downtown was a ghost town by ten.
He snuck through the kitchen, past the stairs to the front door. Even here he could hear his mother’s snores upstairs. “Fucking chainsaw,” he muttered, stepping outside into the cool summer night. He didn’t bother locking the door.
He shuffled off the porch and headed toward her. Always her.
Downtown Benevolence was, as expected, dead asleep. The traffic light blinked, coloring the night in a steady green, yellow, red. Dawson’s Pizza was dark, but two floors above the restaurant, the lights were blazing.What was she doing awake,he wondered. Was she binge-watching TV? Reading? Was she upset about something? Didn’t she feel safe enough to sleep either?
He stopped and stared up, willing her to appear in a window, hoping that she wouldn’t.
He shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t fair to either of them.
What was he going to do when she moved on? When she finally met a nice guy? When he had to read her engagement announcement in the newspaper?
He turned his back on the building and walked on, leaving Gloria Parker behind him.
33
The key slid in the lock, and Aldo pushed his front door open, waiting for the waft of stuffy, unlived air. Every time he came home from deployment, the first thing he did was open the windows in the entire house, letting the stale air out.
But when he stepped inside and dropped his duffle, all he smelled was the faint hints of lemon and cleaning products.
He frowned. Aldo knew damn well his mother wouldn’t have thought to clean for him.
And if she had, nothing above her stocky five-feet four-inches would be dusted. The place was spotless. He’d never been a slob. But this—the spotless mantel, the neatly stacked mail, the charmingly arranged plants…
Gloria.
“Shit.” Her presence was all over his house like a fingerprint. She’d repotted the plants that he’d purchased just so there would be a reason for her to be here.
He was going to have to get rid of them all.
Leaning against the wood of the front door, Aldo waited for the relief he’d expected to course through him. He could finally be alone. No one would be lurking in his kitchen or keeping up a running commentary overThe Price is RightorEntertainment Tonight. No one to pretend for. He could sink into the misery in peace.
As soon as he removed all traces of Gloria from his house. Starting with those fucking cheerful plants. It was like she was here.
Hell, he could practicallyhearher. Singing.
When Gloria appeared on the stairs, lugging his vacuum cleaner down from the second floor and belting out “I Will Survive,” Aldo was convinced he was hallucinating. He was back in that hallway in high school, watching the pretty girl in the spotlight.
And then she spotted him, shrieked, and dropped the vacuum cleaner the last half flight of stairs.
Gloria yanked the earbuds out of her ears. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Aldo blinked. “Me? I live here. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Your mother said you’d be moving back in this weekend.”
His mother knew exactly when he was moving back home as she’d started a countdown on the refrigerator door last week when he told her.
“So you broke into my house to clean?” Asshole Aldo was rearing his ugly head. But he’d come home for peace and quiet. Not to have his sanctuary invaded by the very woman he was desperately trying to forget.
She looked fresh and pretty, and it made him hate himself even more.
“I used the key you gave me when you asked me to look after your place,” Gloria said stiffly. She descended the rest of the way and stepped over the vacuum cleaner.
