“Oh my god, she was having a sex memory,” Jennie teased.
“Have to have sex for that memory,” Sarah egged Jennie on.
“Self-pleasure can count for that.” Jennie kept bantering with Sarah.
I smirked, knowing my friends were only trying to make me smile. “I agree with Jennie. My vibrator has been plenty over the years, thank you very much.” I shoved a bit more of my breakfast sandwich before we started swapping stories of bad sex and horrible men. And if we were counting horrible men's stories, I would win.
“But seriously girl, what’s stopping you?” Sarah asked, ignoring the dead stare from Jennie, whispering to her to shut the hell up.
The more times you tell a story, the less power it has over you. The memories and scars fade, although they are still there. Jennie’s dead stare aligned with my thought, because they knew, to an extent, why my mind put a fort up when it came to Shooter. Amongst other things.
“I mean we could go down the list of why.” I sipped on my large hot coffee.
Jennie started playing with her food, trying not to engage with this subject. Those who knew always gave their opinions, that I should have taken the risk and left him already. What most would never understand is that I wanted to be free with nothing chasing after me, that included money.
I gave everything I could. I survived this long; I could survive longer and happier.
“That’s still a fucking dumb reason,” Sarah said bluntly.
I snorted. “It’s a very solid reason.”
She just shook her head, her long ponytail whipping with it, “It’s an excuse to stop living. You have lived for others and now the one chance that a man is ready to crack that back, you run like a chicken because you think you’re not good enough.”
I blinked before I could even register her words. She was blunt but sometimes very truthful. I avoided Shooter for my own reasons, using my fucked-up life as an excuse. Shooter never backed down from me, he was always there, even when I didn’t want him to be. I was scared to want more.
“Fuck. Way to go Sarah, now she’s broken. You made her think,” Jennie teased.
“Well, she would need one or two brain cells to think.” Sarah snorted, leaning back in her chair and sipping on her iced coffee.
“So then how do you stop being scared then?” I asked them with enough sincerity to know I wasn’t joking around.
Jennie and Sarah looked at each other, probably contemplating what advice would work. Jennie reached out, took my hand in hers, and said, “Let him be what you need at that moment.”
Yeah, let him be what I need at the moment.
And at that moment, I needed to be folded like a pretzel, the signature on a long-standing divorce, and a million dollars to pay off debts and for someone to fold me over a couch or a counter. I needed a lot of things.
The question was, when was that moment going to come.
Chapter 16
Shooter
Eight weeks.
Eight weeks since she had laid in my bed, sleeping away the ghosts that haunted her.
Eight weeks since I had my first taste of her.
Eight motherfucking weeks.
Eight weeks of bidding my time, eight weeks of having Amelia within reach and I couldn’t do anything about it. She was a flight risk every day. The moment I thought we would be past a certain point she was back in her armor.
Eight weeks of my dick in my hand, listening to her say my name over and over again from her little message. I didn’t have to look for the video footage of her saying my name, she gave me her voice willingly. And each time she left me after the PT session, I’d play that recording over and over again until I shot my load like a fucking teenager getting off for the first time.
The doctors wanted twelve weeks; I gave them ten with a slight promise that I wouldn’t end up in their emergency room from my own stupidity.
After they allowed me to be boot-free, there was nothing stopping me from what I really wanted, Amelia in my bed, in my arms every night. I just needed her ass to be near me. The freedom of the boot came with a price, one that wouldn’t allow me to see her. To see the smile that she’d crack when she thought I wouldn’t see.
