I yank my shirt over my head, pull the tie from my hair, and crank up the shower, but I don’t plan to suffer in the cold water. I’m hot and hard, but not even an ice bath is going to fix that when Ana alternates those guilty looks with lusty stares that make me want to undress her. Okay, everything makes me want to undress her. She’s Ana, and for me, no one else compares. I put that to the test these past two years and proved it accurate. No matter how hot the woman, how sweet the woman, how perfect a woman seemed, no one else was Ana.
And it’s damn sure bittersweet right about now.
I step under the spray of the shower and let the water work on the tension in my shoulders, my mind chasing memories. The moment that bullet hit my gut and I’d gone down. I’d blacked out and come to with Ana leaning over me.
“I got you,” she’d said. “The ambulance is on the way. Can you hear me, Luke?” She’d patted my face. “You’re going to be okay.”
Talk about confusing as fuck, considering she’s the one who shot me. I’d faded in and out of consciousness. I’d heard “training accident” somehow, so when the hospital asked me what happened, that’s what I said. But I already knew the truth.
Flash forward a few hours later—or hell, maybe it was longer than that—and I opened my eyes to feel someone watching me. I glanced around, my eyes landing on the glass window, where I’d found Ana standing, tears streaming down her cheeks. But she didn’t come in. I didn’t see her again. I don’t think she was crying because I almost died. Maybe it was the guilt over wanting me dead.
Days later, I still don’t know how many, I hadn’t seen Ana since that window incident, but Jake told me what he’d said to the police. Kasey was killed by hostiles, and we managed to bring his body back with us. I expected Trevor to tell a different story to save his ass and turn Ana against me. It shouldn’t have worked. Not even for a moment.
It was Jake who told me the details of Kasey’s funeral. I wasn’t even supposed to be out of bed that day, but I checked myself out despite the protests of the nurses. I didn’t go to the church. I’m not that much of a hypocrite. But I went to the cemetery.
I press my hands to my face with the memory. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kasey was family, until he wasn’t. And Ana was still the woman I loved.
It was snowing that day and so damn cold. I stood behind a tree and watched the ceremony, watched Ana’s body quake with tears that I was on some level responsible for creating. I had no choice but to kill Kasey, but I was still the man who pulled that trigger. As the guests slowly faded from the scene, Ana was the last person there that day. Her body quaked and her pain reached across the divide between us and bled right into me.
I needed to comfort her.
Only then did I step out from behind the tree, but my feet froze on the icy ground as I reminded myself that she shot me. She blamed me. She hates me. Some things about these memories are past tense. Some are both past and present. I have no idea why she even saved me from prosecution. Her gaze had lifted and she’d stared at me from a distance, and then she turned and walked away, her hate for everything to do with me crystal clear.
I turn off the water, and thank God for memories that remind me that she didn’t even hear my story. I’d walked in the door of The Ranch’s main living quarters. I grab the towel, seeing her tear-streaked face, hearing the words, she said to me at some point in that confrontation—I don’t even remember exactly when. “You bastard,” she’d hissed. “You killed him.” And that’s it. I’m done with this trip down memory lane.
I wrap the towel around me and for the good of both me and Ana, I grab my phone, turning on some good old classic rock n’ roll, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and sing along. I pull on a pair of sweats I bought at the store for the drive, and don’t bother with a shirt. I dry my hair though—that shit is long—and the longer I’m in the bathroom, the better for me and Ana.
When I can stall no more, I decide I’ll give her the bathroom and go on to sleep while she’s in here. Then I don’t have to think about the bed and her in it naked, if at least one part of my body that is not my brain had its way.