Page 69 of Old Flame

Pepper tossed the shirt, skirt, and the bikini she’d chosen for me onto the bed. “We can agree to disagree. But while we are stuck here, humor me. Wear this and keep your hair down.”

I was beginning to realize telling Pepper Abe no wasn’t acceptable. She wouldn’t allow it. If I didn’t like her so much, I would be annoyed by that fact.

This wasn’t who I was. I didn’t put myself out there and try to draw attention.

My life had been comfortable and safe. Going to work, knowing that I had a dependable husband who loved me and accepted me with all my flaws, was my normal. I took it for granted. That was something I’d learned the hard way this past year.

Sure, Eamon hadn’t been rugged; hadn’t smelled like cigarettes, the outdoors, or leather; and hadn’t had tattoos and piercings, but he was handsome. He’d smelled like clean soap, had a smoothly shaved jawline with his hair trimmed every four weeks on schedule, and dressed in Ralph Lauren the majority of the time. I loved all those things about him. But that wasn’t where the guilt came seeping in through the crevices of my memories. It was that my heart never fluttered, it never raced, and there was never that excited knot in my stomach at the sight of him. His kisses never made me cling to him, panting and wild for more.

That was where my shame lay. And to make it all the worse, Eamon had always known it. I liked to pretend he didn’t. I had even convinced myself that I had hidden that from him. That he’d had no idea there was another who had caused those things in me that were now broken. His last words replaying in my headwould forever haunt me. I’d never be able to shake them.

Pepper stepped in front of me, waving a hand. “Hello? Where did you go?”

I blinked, shaking my head as I pushed away all those heavy thoughts, and I looked at her. “Sorry. Did you ask me something?”

She studied me for a moment. “Yeah,” she replied. “Three times.”

“I, uh…I was thinking about before,” I admitted. “My life after Rome. Married and how different it all was. I’m not used to dressing to get someone’s attention. It…it isn’t me, and I don’t think I want Rome’s attention really.” Not that this was going to change anything anyway.

I just didn’t look forward to the humiliation of him ignoring me and letting naked young girls with tight bodies crawl all over him. Nina, Goldie, and Pepper were so sure he was going to see me and want me. This would be the embarrassing truth. I was not his type now. Why couldn’t they see that?

Pepper gave me a sympathetic smile and gently squeezed my arm. “I’ve never loved a man enough to marry him. So, I don’t know what it feels like to lose him. But you lost two men you loved in this life, and one is there for the taking, if you want him.”

I wanted to laugh. No, he wasn’t. He could spout that he had never forgotten me or that he saw me when he was screwing other women, but that wasn’t true.

I had been there when he walked out of my life. I was the one wrecked and lost. So completely lost. He had carried on with his life. Never looking back.

He might not have gotten my note with the address I had left him. I could believe that. But he had my number. I’d never changed it. In all these years, I’d kept the same one because, deep down, I held on to the fact that it was the only way he couldfind me. And that was just another one of my sins. Another piece of myself that I’d never given to Eamon.

Rome never called.

“I don’t see tonight going the way you do. You weren’t there for it all. How it ended. Rome couldn’t have loved me and ripped out my soul the way he did. But”—I smiled as brightly as I could—“I will go have a good time. This week has been one of the most traumatic I think I’ve ever experienced, and I’d like to not think about my dead boss being a drug trafficker or his lifeless body on the floor.” I paused and winced as the image came back with my words. I would never get over that scene. “Anyway, whew, I want to find an escape, but I’m under no illusion where Rome is concerned.”

Pepper smirked. “You say he isn’t the same guy you knew, yet you still call him by that name. Must be something there you see.”

She was right. Calling him Rome labeled him in my head as the boy I had loved with everything I had. The one I had thought loved me until he broke me. He wasn’t that boy. He was a very different man.

“It’s habit, what I know, but you’re right. He’s not Rome. He is Tex. The man he became. It’s time I call him that and let Rome go.”

Like I should have done a very long time ago. The way Eamon had deserved.

Pepper nodded at the clothes on the bed. “Get dressed. I have to go meet Micah in the library. He texted, and it’s insurance stuff about the bar. The walls with blood-splatter stains and bullet holes aren’t going to be cheap to replace. If I’m not back when you’re ready, just go on out back. Nina and Goldie will be out there, along with Dolly. Sit with them. They’ll have the ole ladies’ VIP spots under the gazebo beside the pool. The rest of the bitches don’t come around them and aren’t allowed in thepool until Dolly is done with it. Micah doesn’t want her having to swim in the same water as the club sluts and strippers.”

My eyebrows shot up. That was thoughtful of him. But then the man worshipped her. He rarely took his hands off her when she was with him. The way she would gaze up at him as if he were her sun made me envious. They loved each other in a way not many people found in life. At least not that I’d seen. It had always seemed like one loved more than the other.

She nodded at my surprised look. “Yep. And it’s been cleaned. He has a company come in and professionally clean it before she steps foot in it.” She shrugged. “We normally leave when the nudity starts. Their men go with them because it becomes a fuckfest out there. STD central.”

I shivered and scrunched my nose at the thought, and she laughed.

“I’m kidding. The girls all have to get tested monthly at the clubs they work at, and the men use protection. The only STD outbreak here I can ever remember was when Drifter—he lives in Ocala now and manages Devil’s, the strip club they own there. Anyway, he brought in this skank he’d met—I don’t know where from. I was a teen. I didn’t have all the details. But syphilis was running rampant around here. Sores on lips, genitals.” She shivered and grimaced. “Yeah, so after that, they set up rules and precautions. Still, Micah doesn’t want Dolly near them or anything that touched them. Them being the other females.”

Yeah, I really would rather stay in this room.

“We for sure get to leave before the pool orgy takes place?” I asked.

She laughed and nodded. “Yes. Promise. Micah, Brick, and Jars will come get us, and we will leave them all to it.”

I glanced back over at the bikini and outfit, then sighed. I could do this. I’d have fun. Enjoy female friendships. I’d not had many of those back in Boston. Mostly just wives of Eamon’s businesspartners, and we were never really that close. Especially since I was almost positive two of those wives had wanted in Eamon’s pants.

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