Jackson didn’t figure the Class Six had anything that would touch his granddaddy’s moonshine, but he didn’t sharethatwith anybody, so he pointed the truck to base.
“And then,” Lance said, sliding on his aviator sunglasses, “you can help me figure out how to tell Kaci I’m getting deployed.”
Maybe they’d need that moonshine after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
She loved him for who he was and what he did until who he was and what he did made her hate him.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Anna spent the weekend after finals at work. Her throat was raw, the skin around her nose so brittle she’d had to buy a tub of Vaseline. But there was filing and re-color-coding to do, and she’d promised Jules she’d run a few tests.
Beat staying home watching Walker bang his little fish face on the side of the brandy snifter. Fish apparently didn’t appreciateThe Wedding Singer.
Besides, she’d relabeled the kitchenandbathroom cabinets already. She needed something else to organize.
She started with the tests. Get the boring stuff out of the way first. Then she dove into the files, and the next thing she knew, nine hours and eight years’ worth of samples had passed. She drove home, warmed up a serving of hot dish, squirted it with ketchup, and ate it over aBuffy the Vampire Slayermarathon.
Walker still didn’t approve.
But she wasn’t in the mood for another Mae Daniels book.
She wasn’t even in the mood for ketchup shots.
“Relax,” she said to the fish, her voice as clear as if she were talking through water herself. “You don’t have enough blood for the vamps.”
She fell asleep on the couch, and Sunday morning she went back to work. Corporatehadasked for all the older data to be re-color-coded, they just hadn’t specified a time line.
With school out and having to break up with Jackson—her heart squeezed out a few more tears, dripping acid down to her stomach—now seemed like the right time.
Kaci brought her dinner Sunday night. Anna draped a cloth over Walker’s snifter and put onThe Wedding Singerwhile they shared a pizza. When the rapping granny came on screen, Kaci developed a case of the sniffles.
Anna blinked her own tenderized eyelids to peer at her friend. “Kaci?”
“He’s leaving me,” Kaci said.
She exploded in a beautiful mass of tears.
Anna tossed her pizza on the ground and wrapped her friend in a hug. “What happened?”
It was hard to get the whole story through the broken bits of words Kaci spit out between heaving gasps and sobs, but eventually she recognizeddeployandmonths.
“Oh, honey, he’ll come back.” Anna’s heart broke for her friend’s fears and her own love, who wasn’t coming back.
She was an idiot for letting herself get that involved.
“But I’llmisshim,” Kaci sobbed. “And what if?—”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” she interrupted. “No what ifs.”
Kaci elbowed her. “What if you leave me too?” she finished with a dramatic flair.
A week ago, Anna would’ve laughed. Today she felt her own case of the sniffles coming on.
What if she moved home? Away from Kaci, away from her independence, away from this crazy beautiful life she’d made for herself?
And what if she were never as happy again?
