Pyre
Opening the door, I watched Rae as she came up the walk. “Right on time.”
She gave me a beautiful smile and scooted past me when I motioned for her to come in. I didn’t move out of the way, forcing her to squeeze her fine body past me. She was a little jumpy, so I wanted her to start getting used to my touch. I wasn’t sure why exactly she seemed so nervous around me, but I planned to find out. Eventually. Because I wasn’t going to be able to hold myself back for long.
I was trying to be a gentleman for her sake, but that wasn’t me. I wasn’t soft or gentle. It was never in my nature to be that man and any inclination I might have had to act that way had been driven out of me by my time in service. You couldn’t deal with the dead and dying in a combat zone and be gentle or nice. It would break you.
Instead, you grew a strong mental fortitude. And maybe even ended up being a morbid fucker—this being the go to for most in my MOS. Often the way I responded to all things gruesome made even my brothers pause.
People thought I was weird. That was fine by me. Meant they left me the hell alone more often than not. Everyone except my MC brothers. They didn’t give a shit about any of that. They understood my nature more than most. Civilians could almost never understand the things I’d seen. The things we’d done. The things we still do. Some paramedics understood, albeit in a G-rated version. They saw morbid shit too, in comparison to normies, but even their fortitude would be stretched after a few hours in my world.
“Have a seat,” I told her, watching as she quietly looked around my home.
“I like your place.”
“Thanks. It’s nothing special, but it works for now.”
She looked over at me, those dark eyes searching my face. “You don’t plan to stay here?”
“No. I want to get myself a ranch house, a bit of property, someplace a little out of town where it’s secluded,” I said, dishing up two plates for us. I’d made the only dinner I knew how to make. White chicken enchiladas. It was damn impossible to get good Mexican food up here in Wyoming, but I loved it. Anytime we went to Tucson, I hit all the local spots. Those little hole in the wall places—in Tucson that often literally meant holes in the walls—that served authentic food that made you want to weep as you ate.
I’d considered getting take-out, but I wanted her to see I was putting effort into this. Into her. I wasn’t afraid to treat my woman well, though to continue treating her well I’d need to never cook another dish because it wasn’t a skill of mine.
Maybe I could cheat, replace the chicken with turkey, then elk, deer? That counted right?
“That smells amazing,” she told me, rising a little as she took her plate from me. Her eyes widened. “You don’t expect me to eat all of that do you?”
“I’ll finish off whatever you don’t eat,” I told her, taking the seat next to her. Grabbing the top of the coffee table, I lifted it up until it hit the end of the hinges and acted like a dining table. “Sorry, nothing fancy around here.” I grinned at her.
“I don’t mind. I eat in my recliner at home.” She shrugged. “When you live alone, you don’t bother with formality.”
“Exactly. How’s work going?”
“Oh, good.” She paused, frowning. “I mean…as good as can be.”
She wasn’t comfortable talking about work, that much was clear. “What you do doesn’t bother me, Rae.”
She looked a little startled that I’d caught on to her unease. “It’s just…most people are.”
“I get it. I’m not.”
She smiled. We chatted, me asking her questions about how she worked both sides of her business.
“You must get some interesting cases.”
“Not a lot here in Sentinel,” she admitted. “I did when I was working in Boston, but I got tired of all the violent deaths. Though, I did have an interesting case Owen brought in not too long ago.”
Trying not to look too interested, I probed. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
“It was an overdose that…” She trailed off, realizing that she was saying too much. “Oh, I’m sorry. Actually it’s still being investigated so I better not go into detail.”
Damn. Still investigating? What are the odds that this is related to our new friends?
Pushing her was the last thing I wanted to do because then she’d just shut down, assuming I just wanted information out of her. I mean, I did, but that wasn’t the only reason I was interested. There were other ways to find out what I needed to know. Warrant approved ways.
I set my plate on the table and picked up my remote. “Alright. What are we watching tonight?”
She smiled at me and reached over, her fingers brushing mine as she took the remote. She flicked through the different streaming services until she found what she was looking for, then pressed play.
