Until then, it was just a matter of trying to tire him out.
A fruitless task, if you asked Eli.
He was even active in his sleep, running so hard in his dreams that he would drag himself clear across the floor several times.
Oh, the joys of puppy-ownership.
"I mean I went to the house when I hadn't heard from her in three days even after I called and texted, and the shack was empty. Not a trace of them. Fucking literally. The place was wiped clean. I doubt there was a fingerprint anywhere."
I told Eli the whole story, while keeping the rest of the family out of the loop. We were not generally a family for keeping secrets, but since this secret wasn't exactly my own, I felt justified in keeping it close to the vest.
That being said, I needed to vent, and Eli seemed like the safest sounding board.
"Did you call her after?" he asked, brows drawn together, holding the ball in his hand as Coop literally jumped up and down waiting for him to toss it again.
"Of course I did." And it wasn't like me to do that shit. It wasn't that I was always a wham-bam kinda guy. There were many women I talked to after, I kept on speed dial for something casual, but friendly. But if I texted once and didn't get a response back, that was it. I wasn't going to fucking beg anyone for their attention. But I texted Scotti. And when the last message wouldn't go through, kept giving me a failure notice, I called too.
That's when I realized the number was no longer in service.
"They moved onto another job," Eli guessed, just as I had guessed after I threw my phone and kicked a pile of lumber piled at my job site, almost breaking my fucking foot in the process.
"Yep."
"There was no note or anything?"
"I don't think I was ever part of her plan, man. I think I showed up and threw a wrench in the works. I don't think they ever stayed as long in a town after a job like they did here. Something must have been holding them up. That was the only reason I could get her to agree to come over here in the first place. Guess right after, whatever the holdup was, went away, and they had to go."
"Sucks, man," Eli said, exhaling hard.
It did.
Maybe it shouldn't have.
It wasn't like we had been together for a couple weeks, got really close, and she split on me. Hell, I had spent more time with a fuck buddy whose last name, address, and age I didn't even know than I had with Scotti. I had never gotten so hung up on so little before.
That being said, it didn't feel like little.
Maybe it was because we mostly discussed topics that meant a lot to us, that mattered, that truly made up who we were as people, instead of the useless, trivial bullshit most people discuss during the first weeks of getting to know someone.
Maybe it was because I had never met a woman like her before. And that was saying something because I knew a lot of women. I even knew a lot of badass, amazing women. But she was in a class all her own. Outside of women I didn't know all that well like Lo and Janie up at Hailstorm, I couldn't say I had ever met a woman with such single-minded focus, such drive to accomplish her own version of justice, such dedication to the cause. And even with all that, behind the mask she wore as a shield, she wasn't cold or detached or a loner. In fact, she had stronger bonds with her family than anyone else I had ever seen outside of my own.
She was blunt, but in a sarcastic way that wasn't offensive. She was confident, but had a hidden vulnerability as well. She was an experienced criminal, but not a hardened one.
The sex was off the fucking charts.
And it pretty much went without saying that she was almost unfairly gorgeous.
She had a lot going for her. And I had learned that about her in a matter of hours. I wanted to know what I could learn in days or weeks or, hell, even months.
That was unlike me. I wasn't a settling-down kind of guy. I didn't look at a woman and see a future.
But maybe that was because I had never looked at a woman quite like Scotti.
Maybe that was what happened with my brothers as well. Because, quite frankly, none of them were any more inclined to getting tied down than I was. Shane was always out on the town, but something just... changed when Lea came into his life. He pursued her with a single-minded focus he had never given a woman before. And they were happy. The same could be said of Ryan who had always been married to his job, too busy to even notice most women. And then there was sweet, troubled Dusty. His entire life became about focusing on her, getting her comfortable with him, letting himself become a 'safe place' for her and her anxiety. And while none of us had been around to see the beginning of it, Hunter and Fee had a bond as deep as any I had seen. He had seen the most tragic parts of Fiona and never once found them unattractive or unlovable. If anything, he loved her all the more for them.