Page 91 of Broken Love

I swear, if I ever stumble upon Elijah fucking Hart again, I’m going to punch him in the face. Seriously. How a full-body tranquilizer manages to make me feel like Nurse Ratched sawed into my head and scooped out my brain using her fingers, I’ll never know.

I head straight for the bathroom for a bottle of aspirin, refusing to even turn on any lights along the way. It’s like the world’s worst hangover and if the nausea in my stomach tells me anything, it’s about to be one of those hangovers.

My dry tongue rejects the handful of pills I shove inside. I try to gather some spit to swallow them down but it’s like sandpaper in my mouth.

I stumble through the loft with half-open eyes and navigate the kitchen to find an empty glass.

“Boxcar?” I ask the abandoned room.

He was here last night. I remember his arm around me. His warm body pressed against mine. Mostly, I remember not even questioning it like it was always meant to be that way.

I fill the glass with water and choke down the pills lodged beneath my tongue.

“Boxcar?” I ask again, instantly regretting the volume in which I chose to shout it.

There’s no answer. No surprises there. Our last moment in this place before last night wasn’t exactly a happy one. I said fuck you and he replied with I love you and I didn’t do a thing to reciprocate no matter what my heart told me.

My emotions take a swift turn toward annoyance until I spot the brown envelope sitting on the counter.

It takes me a moment, thoughts fighting to overcome the splurge of pain and misery, but eventually, I remember what they are. I remember everything.

The envelope is a bit crinkled but it’s the exact same one I touched two years ago. When I never got a response from Boxcar concerning our divorce, I assumed he torched the documents and ran off. I never thought he kept them. He dodged my communications for two months after that and eventually, I stopped trying. He made tracking him down damn near impossible.

I open the envelope and I slide the papers out.

This moment has drifted through my head many times over the last two years. I imagined how relieved I’d feel for it to be over and done with. For Boxcar to go on living without the constant threat of my death lingering over him. Now that the moment is here, I stare down at my old signature and his next to it and cold darkness strikes my chest.

Bartholomew Carson. My ex-husband.

I never thought I’d be anyone’s wife. I’m not even sure I ever wanted to be. Sure, I’ve had boyfriends, but they all bailed on me. I was too emasculating. I didn’t wear enough make-up. My hobbies were strange. They all found something in me they didn’t like.

Except Boxcar.

I thought our differences made us weaker, but I was wrong. When I think of us together, it’s not the moments of anger or frustration that stand out anymore. It’s the good, tender moments that do. The way he always caressed my face before a kiss or the gentleness in his voice, even when what he was saying was harsh or blunt.

And now, he gives me this. The thing I’ve wanted for two years. It’s the last thing he wanted but he made that sacrifice anyway, along with taking that bullet for me.

He didn’t have to do that.

And just like that night in Afghanistan when he plowed into that warehouse to save me, I feel an overwhelming urge to smack him for it.

Chapter 28

Boxcar

I drop the last of the overpriced outdoor cameras in the garbage sack and toss the thing over my shoulder.

Designing the ultimate home security system for a beautiful Hollywood actress and her live-in bodyguard is a dirty job, but there’s no one out there more qualified than me. I also owe him — a lot — so I won’t be charging him a dime for my time. Not that I would anyway. The challenge is, honestly, the most fun I’ve had in ages outside of the twenty minutes I spent in Caleb’s bed yesterday.

As I step back inside the house, murmuring voices pull me toward the kitchen. I find Fox and Dani bent over the island counter, facing each other with serious, somber expressions.

Dani’s short, black hair falls over her face, casting deep shadows of doubt across her perfect, pale skin. That plastic surgeon did a bang-up job fixing the Gash Seen Around the World. You can’t even see it unless you’re really looking for it, unlike Fox’s identical scar on his freshly shaven face. I guess Dani made him drop the beard, but he looks far more handsome without it if you ask me.

I drop the sack to the floor near the garbage can and Fox looks down to see what’s inside.

He sighs. “Seriously?”

“Dude.” I slide onto the stool by the counter. “Trust me.”

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