Page 14 of Bull Rush

SIX

Ramsey

Hazeland I are locked in uneasy silence standing at the kitchen table in the ranch house. It’s still my mother’s massive old oak table, and it warms my heart a little to know she didn’t replace it. Looking around, there’s still a lot of my family in the house, even all these years later. Some memories I want and others I wish I could forget.

“Do you want something to drink?” She hovers near a chair.

“I’m good.” I shake my head and pull out the one that was always mine to sit.

“Okay…” She shifts on her feet for a moment before finally following my lead. “I’ve thought about your offer and talked it over with Curtis. We decided that we’ll do it but only under a few conditions.” She emphasizes thewein the sentence like her life depends on it, and I resist the urge to correct her.

“Which are?” I don’t like conditions. I don’t like that he hasany say in something that should be between me and my wife, but then I guess after five years I have to earn that understanding back. Something I have every intention of doing.

“I’m still talking to Curtis throughout the ninety days. He’ll be out of town most of the time anyway. But I’m not cutting him off.”

“I didn’t imagine you would.” I’m not worried. I’ve seen Curtis. He’s a fucking speed bump I’ll run over in due time.

“I want all the paperwork presigned. We can put it in a lock box at the bank and give the key to Bo.”

Bo is her oldest brother and my best friend, Boden Briggs, although my hurting her put some long hard miles on that friendship.

“We can do that,” I agree.

“You sleep in the guest room.” She looks down at the table when she says that one because she knows what my reaction will be. I was clear about what I want, and I’m tempted to argue the point. I want to insist I’m in her bed—our bed—from the start. But I’m holding back. I don’t want to cause friction with her already—not when it seems like she’s about to agree to this fucked-up plan of mine.

“I’ll start in the guest room. Give you time to adjust.” I study her face as her eyes slowly lift to mine. “But once you get used to me around here again, I want my room and my bed back.” I see her start to speak, and I cut her off before she can make a comment about her going to the guest room. “Withyouin it.”

“I’m not promising anything on that front.” There’s a steely defiance in her eyes.

“You don’t have to promise.” I fight the smile that tries to form, but she registers it anyway, and her eyes narrow in response.

“I’m not the girl you remember.”

“I’m counting on that.”

“Then count on being disappointed. I don’t give a flying fuck about men like you anymore. The tattoos and muscles and that little lopsided grin you do when you think you’re being clever have lost their luster. They’re all just warning signs for me now.”

“Well, that explains your choice of boyfriend.” That part I can’t resist.

“Fiancé,” she corrects.

“Use whatever fancy French names you want for him, sugar. It’s still HazelStockton,the last I checked.” I see her nose twitch ever so slightly when I say her last name.

“Don’t read anything into that. I was too lazy to change it—nothing more.”

I’m definitely reading into it. If she hated me as much as I thought she did when she asked for the divorce, she would have changed it. She wouldn’t have been able to stand all the times she had to say it over and over again just in the daily course of her life. It meant something that she didn’t go back to Briggs—whether she can admit it yet or not.

“Any other rules?”

“We don’t tell my family the dirty details of this. Or anyone in town. We make up a lie about your needing to be here for parole and with the glitch in the system that we’re still married, it looks better to the justice system if we’re a happy family. We’ll tell them Curtis and I are on break for the meantime while we work through the mess this still married thing has made.”

“I don’t like lying to them.” I might be an asshole, but honesty is high up there on the short list of morals I do have.

“Bo would kill you if he found out you were treating me like this, and I’m not going to do all this just to lose out on the money when he puts you six feet under.”

“You wouldn’t lose out. If anything, that’s the fastest way to it. Assuming you can stomach being a murderer.” She’s still the beneficiary of my will. My parents are long gone, and my siblings have their own money. If anyone deserves a payout for all the hell I caused this world, it’s her. Her eyes are wide with that information, and then she shakes her head like she’s off somewhere distant, trying to process that information.

“I’ll leave the murder to you.” She realizes she’s said it out loud and her hand covers her mouth. “I’m sorry, that was… unkind.”

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