Page 92 of Walking Red Flag

I pulled her to me and stared directly into her eyes when I said, “I’d have to be dragged away dead before I left you.”

Other girls: I’m a delicate little flower.

Me: I’m the claw end of a hammer.

—Text from Milena to Cutter

MILENA

Married life was a lot like single life.

Well, more accurately, being married wasn’t nearly as bad as I always thought it would be.

Not that my brother and sisters didn’t have great relationships. They did.

Moreso, it was because I always thought it was a bit suffocating.

Having someone constantly know where I was, what I was doing, and asking when I would be home sounded awful.

But being married to Cutter wasn’t like that.

Not at all.

He cleaned up after himself. He made coffee in the morning before I left for work—which was about an hour earlier than him, but he always, always followed me in then went to his place to pick up his work trailer and hang for a bit to watch the sunrise.

Oh, and he was considerate, kind, and everything that I could’ve dreamed up in the perfect man.

“Montana, eh?” Cutter asked. “What if I don’t wanna go to Montana?”

I grinned. “I mean, I never really invited you.”

His eyes twinkled as he said, “Do you want to go alone?”

I thought about it for a long second before saying, “This was something that Hazel and I were going to do together. As much as I’d like you to be there, I think that would be unfair to her.”

Hazel and I were…okay.

In the last few weeks that I’d been married, Hazel had made every single run with me, even the short ones.

She’d shown up, which had put me at ease for how this weekend would go.

However, she still didn’t know about Cutter.

I’d been keeping Cutter to myself when she was around.

Not that I was ashamed of him, but I just knew that she would lecture me on how I’d moved on too fast, and how I’d never really given Asher a chance.

She didn’t know about Asher, either.

All she knew was that Asher and I had permanently broken up.

She’d never know about Asher, because that would be something that we would never agree on, and I didn’t want to be disappointed in my friend if she chose to side with him after he’d almost killed me.

“It’s only for four days,” I pointed out. “And to be quite honest, you’re so freakin’ busy right now that you shouldn’t leave.”

He knew I was right, too.

His Cowboys locker room remodel was now in full swing. He had two more full days of work before he would be finished, and when he finished, he had to immediately go straight into another project.

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