And for the first time in a long time I went to sleep not thinking about business or blood or the next move I had to make.
Just her.
I slipped back into the bedroom and eased under the covers slow, barely breathing, making sure not to disturb anything. Brendon was still on his side, out cold, breathing steady and deep the way he always slept. Unbothered. Peaceful. No idea that I had just been in the other room whispering on the phone to a man who had his hands around my throat, then his dick deep inside of me in a parking lot less than two hours ago.
I laid there on my back staring up at the ceiling.
Griz had hung up in my face. Just laughed and disconnected the call like I hadn’t said anything worth staying on the phone for. And before that he had put me out his car in the middle of a park like I was being dismissed. Told me to go lay down with my lame ass fiancé and then ended the call.
And I was laying here bothered about it.
That right there was the problem.
I turned my head and looked at Brendon in the dark. His face was completely relaxed in sleep, not a line of stress on it, just a man who had cooked dinner for his woman and gone to bed expecting her to be beside him the whole night. He was a good man. I kept coming back to that because it kept being true no matter how inconvenient it was. He had never given me a reason to do what I was doing. Not once. He showed up every single day, consistent and present and real, and I had repaid him by sneaking out of our room at one in the morning to call another man.
I almost felt bad.
Almost.
Because underneath the guilt was something else that wouldn’t quiet down. The way Griz had said go lay down with that lame ass nigga. The easy confidence behind it, like he wasn’t threatened, like he already knew how this was going to end and was just waiting on me to arrive at the same conclusion.
That should have made me angry. It did make me angry. But it also did something else that I wasn’t going to think about too hard at one thirty in the morning lying next to my fiancé.
I made myself a promise right there in the dark. I was done. No more calls, no more sneaking out of rooms, no more letting him pull me into his orbit every time he decided to show up. I had been happy before I saw him at that bar. My life had been clean and predictable.. maybe even boring, but it was mine. I had built something real and I wasn’t about to watch it fall apart behind a man I hadn’t seen in all these damn years who showed up out of nowhere and started treating my life like something he could just rearrange.
I closed my eyes and told myself to sleep.
It took a while but eventually I got there.
—
Morning came and Brendon was already up when I woke. I could smell coffee from downstairs and hear him moving around in the kitchen the way he did when he was in a good mood, unhurried and at home in the space he called his peace. I laid there for a few minutes before I got up, washed my face, pulled my hair back, and went down.
We ate breakfast together and talked about the day the way we always did. He had a property walk-through in the morning and a client call in the afternoon. I had training starting at the office, new hires for the tax prep that I needed to get up to speed before season hit. He told me he might try to get home early and I said that would be nice and I meant it when I said it.
After he left for work, I clipped Goldie’s leash and took her out.
She was my dog, my sweet baby girl. Golden doodle, all curly fur and too much energy, my baby girl who had been with me since before the businesses took off, she was a gift from Brendon. Walking her in the morning was the one part of my day that didn’t belong to anybody or anything else. Just me and Goldie moving through the neighborhood while everything was still quiet enough to think.
I wasn’t thinking about Griz.
That’s what I told myself the entire walk.
Brendon’s allergies have been acting up a lot lately, and I know that he blamed my fur baby. He told me that since we both had busy schedules, he wanted me to consider rehoming her. That shit almost caused us to break up. He would leave before my dog would. And that was probably the only problem that I ever hadwith him. So, you see how small that is compared to things I have been doing lately. I vowed to get Griz out of my system.
—
I got to the office before Ashley and Savannah, which was rare. I had the coffee going and my training materials spread out on the conference table by the time they came through the door together, still talking about the other night.
“Okay so how long did you stay after we left the bar? You was fucking them shots up, we couldn’t hang with yo ass.” Ashley dropped her bag on her desk and looked at me. “Because you were giving us the wave goodbye a little too fast.”
“I had another drink and went home,” I said without looking up from the papers I was organizing.
“Mmhm.” That was Savannah. I could hear the skepticism without even seeing her face.
“What?”
“Nothing.” But she was smiling. I could hear that too.
