Page 47 of Bad Seed
“I’m sorry. I…I should have texted you. I’m not very good with phone stuff, truth be told.”
“Is that it? That’s your excuse? You’re some nineteen hundred telegrapher bamboozled by this shiny new technology? ‘Hello Dolly, what’s this new thingamajig all the kiddies are gobsmacked about? The telephone, you say? Why I never!’” I seriously slipped into an old fashioned accent and held my thumb and pinkie to my ear. While people watched.
Can the sinkhole open up under me?
To my both shock and horror, he laughs. “It feels like it, some days. My old job didn’t like me leaving a paper trail, digital or otherwise.”
“As a bouncer?” I ask.
“Lawyers. Always looking out for the house.” Aubry gulps then slaps on a goofy smile. His eyes look about to scream, and I want to reach out to calm him.
No. Still mad. Still clinging to that rage.
“So that’s your whole explanation? You don’t do phones?”
Wringing a hand over the back of his neck, he stares around the room. First at the people all doing their best to pretend to shop while listening. Then he looks up at the mountain. “Is that a goat?” Aubry asks. “And a bear?”
So that’s how it’s gonna be. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work.” I slap the box to hammer home the point and turn to march to whatever’s on this side of the store. Fishing? Crap, I need camping supplies.
“Wait.” Aubry reaches for me, but freezes as I spin back to stare him down. Then this gigantic man folds in on himself until he’s smaller than a mouse. “The truth…the truth is my life’s…a mess right now.”
Whose isn’t?
“I was worried about dragging you into it all.”
“What’s the problem?” I ask. Ex-wife? Creditors? Warrants for a murder charge? Ha, I want to laugh at the last one, before I think about the first. It’s the ex-wife. Guaranteed.
“Work shit. A whole lot of complicated work shit. But I…I think I’ve bought myself some time.”
“Some time?”What does that mean?
“Before there’s another crisis that needs me,” he says fast and gives another laugh. “Can I tell you something?”
That’s all he’s been doing, but he’s giving furtive glances and has dropped his voice. Whatever this is must be important. Or trade secrets that could topple an empire. Either way, curiosity grabs me by the ear, and I lean closer.
“I was thinking about leaving Loomis,” Aubry confesses.
“Really?”
My world shatters. The one where I become hugely successful, get a glow up, then run into him one day at the grocery store and we begin a torrid love affair in five years.
“There wasn’t much reason for me to stay.” He licks his lips and raises his brow. “At least…” Aubry gives me a look that’d tear off all my clothes. “…at first.”
“Ah…” I want to swoon in his arms and tell him to take me now while the stuffed goat watches. But that’s giving him everything he wants.
I take a step back just as his fingers press into my spine. Was he about to kiss me? Either way, his hand falls off, and I stare up at him with a calculating glare. “And you think that I am…still available?”
Playing hard to get has never been so infuriatingly impossible.He wants me. I want him.
But I also don’t want him to fuck me then vanish for another week.
Aubry swallows and stands up. Running a hand back through his hair, he hardens into a complacent statue. Even as the emotion drains from his face, his eyes dart around mine. “Are you?”
“Perhaps.”
Yes. Fuck, yes. I would dump a thousand men just to climb on that cock and ride it like a pogo stick.
“So.” He cricks his neck like his body is turning into one knotted muscle. “…if I wanted to see you again...?”
