Page 14 of Forced Proximity
Y’all remember when we sent boys to Jupiter to get more stupider? Well, they’re back, and it worked.
—Dru to Apollo
APOLLO
“Finnian.”
The way that her lips formed my name set off a chain reaction inside of me, causing my cock to swell and adrenaline to dump into my veins.
I liked the sound of my name on her lips.
I liked even more the way that she seemed so ruffled.
She’d gotten into the airport so late that I’d thought she might miss her flight.
As soon as she’d sped out of Eugene’s neighborhood, I’d been on my phone looking up everything that I could find about her.
Her name was Drusilla Noel Rossi.
She was thirty-two years old, from a five-member family—with tons of extended aunts and uncles—and had both a mother and a father who were well and truly the salt of the earth.
Her dad was a bus driver and a coach at the local high school. Her mom was a homemaker and volunteered as a substitute teacher at the same school district that her husband worked at.
Dru had two siblings.
Her sister was two years older than her and was engaged to be married to Eugene—at least was.
Romeo Rossi, Dru’s brother, however, was in prison for life for committing a crime that he was guilty of committing.
Romeo had walked in on his wife fucking another man.
Romeo had reacted accordingly and had beat the absolute shit out of the man. But the man had a weak constitution and had slid into a coma which he’d yet to come out of even five years later.
Romeo’s wife had lost her baby, and the judge that had been in control of the case had done what the public had wanted—sentenced him to prison after the jury had found him guilty.
The reason he hadn’t been able to get out of the charge was due to the premeditated way he’d gone about the beating. There was no crime of passion on Romeo’s end. He’d known about the affair for months and hadn’t cared until she’d stolen their entire life savings and put it into an offshore account.
She’d planned to take off with Romeo’s kid and Romeo’s life savings, and he hadn’t liked that very much.
Not that I could blame him or anything.
I wouldn’t have laughed in court, though, when the opposing counsel had pointed out that it was likely the affair partner would never wake up.
I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison.
Dru, unlike her sister who had no prospects in life, and her life in prison brother—who had his act together before he’d been sentenced to life in prison—had gone to college right after she’d gotten out of high school. She graduated with her bachelor’s in nursing and had been working at Dallas Memorial ever since.
The only real issue that I’d been able to find when it came to Dru was that she supported her brother and sister unfailingly.
She lent her sister money any time she needed it. She was at the prison in Huntsville every month like clockwork, and she never missed her scheduled time, even when she was sick.
She had no life outside of work, and that wasn’t a problem when she lived at a nice place since her sister had been the apartment manager at their place of residence.
However, her sister had quit when Eugene had asked her to marry him, and had left the apartment complex in the lurch. After that had happened, they’d been unwilling to allow Dru to continue living there and had her evicted.
Dru had moved into an apartment that she could afford while still paying her student loans and her car payment. She also put some money away each month, religiously, into her 401K.
She was so damn responsible that it was quite cute.
