After she did, she paid extra special attention to Louis as she cleaned and bandaged his arm.
“Oh, I forgot to give you a ball to squeeze today,” she pouted.
I rolled my eyes. “Could’ve used your tit. You did offer.”
I must’ve said it quiet enough that Prissy didn’t hear, but Louis did.
I heard his snort of laughter just as a couple of men walked through the door, momentarily drawing Prissy’s attention.
“Ohh, the whole crew is here!”
I groaned and willed the blood to drip into me faster.
Honestly, if there was somewhere else that I could do this, I would.
Prissy was by far the worst part of my month. Even my hellacious periods were nothing in comparison to being subjected to dealing with Prissy.
She was seriously the ditziest blonde I’d ever met. She only cared about men—and only hot men at that—and she loved to point out that I was nowhere near her level.
Which, I might add, I wasn’t.
I wasn’t because I just couldn’t compete.
I didn’t have tits and ass and blonde hair.
I had long legs, a pretty face, and black hair.
I didn’t have freckles. I didn’t have tits that could make a grown man weep—or stare at them like Sammy Spurlock, Louis’ cousin and another member of the SWAT team, was doing right that very second.
Hell, I didn’t even have a healthy body.
I was a broken pile of Calloway that had zero energy to do anything that would make my body look better.
Pretty much, I was soft, squishy, and I didn’t even go ‘woo hoo’ when I was poked like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
More often than not, I growled.
Which kept the men at bay.
Then again, I suppose it could be worse. I could have extra weight that I needed to exercise to get off but couldn’t.
That would suck.
I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t skinny. I wasn’t pretty, but I wasn’t ugly. I wasn’t anything. I just was.
Which, I think, sucked even more. At least most people knew where they stood.
I didn’t.
I mean, I had a hot guy once. But he broke up with me.
So… what did that mean for me?
Because I sure the hell didn’t know.
Derek, another member of the SWAT team, walked over and poked me in the forehead.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
I batted his hand away and glared.
“I’d be doing a whole lot better if I wasn’t almost late for my flight,” I said, batting his hand away again when he tried to poke me once more.
See, a lot of us grew up together. Derek, Ares, Bourne, Boothe, Louis, Sammy, and a bunch of others? We were the SWAT kids. The kids of the original Kilgore SWAT team members.
We knew each other well, and just like he knew what to do to provoke me, I also knew what to do to annoy him.
Which was why I pulled the hairs on his arm when he tried to reach up and poke me again.
“Oww!” he whined.
I rolled my eyes.
The idea of this big, six-foot-two giant of a man whining was hilarious in and of itself.
“Why were y’all late?” I asked curiously.
With all of them being here together, there must’ve been a call of some kind.
I likely could’ve asked Louis and gotten an answer, but that would’ve meant that I needed to actually talk to him civilly, and I didn’t think I could handle that right now.
“We had a call about a man that was trying to set his building on fire,” he said. “He wouldn’t come out of his locked basement. We evacuated everyone and then tried to get in only to find out he didn’t have a basement. He was in the attic.”
I snorted.
“Louis was able to pull some sniper mojo and get the sprinklers to set off in the attic,” he continued. “He was all in a hurry to leave, though. He wasn’t purposefully late.”
I knew that he wasn’t.
Despite everything that had gone on with us, he was usually quite punctual and serious about donating blood to me.
“Where are you flying to?”
That was Hayes, Ares’ husband.
“Ares didn’t tell you?” I asked. “I thought I heard you were in the room when we were talking last night.”
Hayes grinned wickedly. “I was preoccupied.”
I rolled my eyes.
He was preoccupied with undressing Ares, which was the reason that she’d hung up with me.
“I’m going to Washington, D.C.,” I said.
“Why?”
I ignored Louis’ question and acted like I didn’t hear it.
“Why?” Hayes asked, repeating the question.
“I’m interviewing someone.” I shrugged.
“For your blog?” Derek asked, taking a seat on the side of my table.
I moved over to allow him more room and nodded.
“Yes. And my magazine,” I whispered.
He winked at me, knowing exactly why I’d whispered.
I didn’t want Louis to know that I still did my blog, or that I did my magazine.
That would just give him one more thing to talk to me about, and it was already hard enough to stand being in the same room with him.
I was still in love with him, that was for sure.
I’d spent the last few years trying my damnedest to forget him, and the only thing that I accomplished was thinking about him even more.
It sucked.
It sucked even more that Louis didn’t realize what his presence did to me.
Which meant that despite me trying to stay away from him, he didn’t try to stay away from me.
The blood finally hit the halfway point, and I picked up my phone to see where I was at with my flight.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was delayed for an hour.
Thank God.
I did not want to miss this flight. Because missing this flight meant that I would have to drive to Dallas. And driving always brought out the worst in me.
It was inevitable that I’d get sleepy. Then I’d have to stop. Then I’d be late.
Which was the story of my life.
“What’s in Washington, D.C. again?” Louis asked.
I blinked, surprised to see him standing at the end of my bench with his arms crossed over his chest.
He had a pink bandage on his arm, compressing the spot where he’d just donated blood.
But his eyes were all on me.
I pinched my lips together, not wanting to tell him why or what.
But then Hayes answered for me, unaware of the tension.
“She’s going to Washington, D.C. to interview a couple of Navy SEALs,” Hayes said. “My wife was talking about her blog this morning.”
I frowned hard at him. “If you knew where I was going, why did you ask?”
He flashed me a quick grin and jerked his head in Louis’ direction.
“Gotta watch out for my boy.”
Then he was gone, leaving me with ‘his boy.’
I stared at Hayes’ back as he left, then turned reluctantly to face Louis fully.
“What?” I asked.
“Since when do you go anywhere?” he asked. “What’s changed that you’d be willing to fly to Washington, D.C.?”
I patted the bag that was in my lap.
“I found a miracle drug that allows me not to freak out when I get on a plane,” I said. “And sometimes, my seatmate is really nice and lets me hold their hand.”
Louis blinked at me as if he was trying to decide if I was being serious or not.
I was.
I didn’t like flying.
Even worse, I really sucked at takeoffs and landings.
I’d only held onto a man’s hand once, though.
The rest of the times, I was already passed out before the takeoff, meaning t
hat I didn’t worry about whether I was going to live or die.
“You’re so scared that you have to take medication, yet you’re still going?” he asked, sounding off.
I smiled sadly at him. “Someone once told me that I had to be brave to experience the world. I’m only doing what he suggested.”
And we both knew that he was the one to say those words to me.
What was worse, that was one of the reasons that I had a feeling he broke up with me about.
Not that he would ever admit it or anything.
That would make him look like a complete and utter asshole if he broke up with me because I was scared to do something.
He stared at me so long that I started to squirm on the table.
Thank God that the bag finally finished draining, because Prissy was there in an instant, unhooking me and shooing me out of her area.
When I walked around the table and tried to bypass Louis, he stepped back and wouldn’t let me pass.
“What are you doing next week?”
I frowned. “Why?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyes on me.
And they were weird. He was staring at me like he had something to say, but he wasn’t sure how to say it.
“I gotta go,” I said, looking away. “And I won’t be here for the next week. Sorry.”
He frowned hard. “Where? To Washington, D.C. the whole time?”
I didn’t want to tell him. In fact, I didn’t have to tell him.
So I didn’t.
Instead, I smiled, waved, and turned my back on him, and didn’t turn back when he called my name.
Before I left, I made sure to go see Myrtle next door.
Opening the door to Scrapbooks & More, I poked my head in and smiled at my good friend.
“Myrtle!”
Myrtle looked up from her phone and grinned. “I think I scared him, doll!”
I snickered. “You did.”
“He was all, ‘oh, no, ma’am. I don’t think that’s appropriate.’” She snickered. “I like him. You should date him.”
I frowned. “I did date him. He dumped me.”
Her brows rose. “Well, then maybe you should try again. The whole time I was trying to get him to sign my boob, he was all looking in at you and staring with moon-eyes. Trust me when I say, he isn’t over you at all.”
I refused to admit that he cared even the least bit about me.
Because to admit that he cared, meant that I was allowing him in enough to break my heart all over again. And I wasn’t having any of that.
Later, when I boarded my plane to Washington, D.C., I had to thank Louis for opening my eyes and seeing the error in my ways. Had he never broken up with me, I wouldn’t have pushed myself to explore my boundaries. And I wouldn’t have left the city limits of Kilgore and experienced the beauty that I had.
Today I would be traveling for my second job. The one that I did on my own time after I got off of work at the high school as the school nurse.
This week, the school was off for a teacher in-service week, and even though I wasn’t a teacher, I got to be off, too.
Which was a perfect time to utilize my time wisely and go do the interview with a couple of Navy SEALS that were now, sadly, disabled.
Ask Me If I Care Page 21
