“Exactly.”
Amelia smirked. “I’ve never had a speeding ticket.”
“Of course you haven’t,” I said as I pointed the truck up the mountain and draped my arm across the back of her seat. “Miss Goody Two-shoes.”
“You sound like Joel.”
“I bet you don’t kill spiders. You trap them and release them outside, don’t you?”
Amelia tried to hide her bashful smile by chewing on her lip. “They don’t deserve to die. I just don’t want them in my bedroom.”
“You’ve really never done anything bad, have you?”
She snickered. “I’ve done you.”
I cracked a grin. “Hell yeah, you have. I’m the worst part about you.”
It was meant as a joke, but Amelia didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.
“I don’t think you’re a bad man.”
“The news would beg to differ.”
“The news doesn’t know you.”
Amelia didn’t either.
Sure, she knew me better than anyone except Cole, but that was a different kind of knowledge. Cole had seen me at my worst. At my angriest. At my lowest. At the point where I hated myself the most.
Amelia had seen me at my softest. I liked the person she believed I was, but our time was running out. Eventually, she’d realize I wasn’t soft. I simply became whatever someone needed me to be. I was no one and everyone at the same time. I was soft for her because she needed someone gentle. Someone to care for her the way she cared for everyone else.
When she left, she’d take the small piece of me that was still allowed tofeel,and I’d continue my evolution into stone.
Still, I greedily stole her belief in me the way I had taken everything else she loved.
“Is Cole the only person you still talk to? You know? From the Navy?”
The regular mental debate about how much to share with her was quiet today, so I spoke. “There’s another guy. We don’t talk much. But sometimes. Maybe once a year.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why?”
Amelia lazily traced one of the tattoos on my forearm. “Because I think people should be called by their names. I think they should be remembered.”
“Is that why you went by your mom’s name the first night you showed up at the Four Horsemen?”
“Yeah.” A wistful smile painted her lips. “I like remembering her as Angela. Sometimes as my mom. But she was so much more than that. People are never just one thing.”
I took a turn at the downed tree and pressed a little harder on the gas to counter the rain-drenched ground working against the tires as we headed up the mountain. “Shane.” I cleared my throat. “We call him Hutch, though.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
I shifted my grip on the steering wheel. “It’s been a while.”
“Why’s that?”
I shrugged. “He’s got his own shit going on. A wife and a little girl. Made a good life for himself.” I cracked a smile. “You’d like his wife, Beth. She’s a math professor too. He flat-out refused to marry her until after she earned her doctorate so she’d be Dr. Hale instead of Dr. Hutchins.”
