Her Marine Next Door - Aliyah Burke Page 0,72
her attack, shaking his head.
“I don’t hit women, Gemma, and for that you should be thanking your fucking stars. Come at me again and I’ll have you arrested.”
She howled like a wild animal and rushed at him again, eyes crazed as she cursed Skylar and everything about her. “I should have slashed her fucking tires and burned down her house!”
More anger grew, and he knew he was losing control.
On and on her tirade went as she continued to come at him, swinging, nails like claws. Sidestepping again, he pulled out his phone and dialed. An hour later, thankful Cullen wasn’t there, he shut the door behind the cops as they drove away with her and her items he’d put in her suitcase.
Fuck. He needed a beer.
“One down and one to go.”
After Gemma had been taken away, he got to changing the locks, and when he heard a rumble next door, he stepped out to see a large truck back up to her garage door. Possessiveness washed over him, but he kept himself there. As volatile a mood he was in right now, he wasn’t going to behave well if he found strange men in her place, since he still had a chance to come back from his fuckup between them. If he ruined work for her like Gemma had, there wouldn’t be anything he could do to repair the damage.
He clenched his fist as he again thought about her warnings about Gemma’s vandalism. Fuck. Skylar should have come to him right away instead of hiding it for so long.
And he should have been much better about his reaction.
The truck wasn’t there long, and the entire time he hadn’t seen or heard Skylar. Throughout the day, he kept an eye on the backyard, looking for Alpin. No sign of him, either. She hadn’t taken a single one of his calls. Again.
While he was out running errands, his cell rang, and he answered it without looking at the screen. It wasn’t Skylar’s personal ringtone. Dammit. He wasn’t about to let her go without a fight.
“Jax.”
“We have training in six hours. I expect you there.”
His commanding officer.
“Sir? I haven’t been cleared for duty.”
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing? Calling because I care?” The creak of springs hit him.
“Never that, sir. So I’ve been cleared?”
“Just got the report from your physical therapist. Have to say, thought this was going to be sooner. Thought you’d do some well-known Parker Jax wooing-the-women bit and have her signing off more quickly. Regardless, six hours. Oh, and pack a bag.”
Joy filled him. Recon wasn’t lost to him.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Jax?”
“Sir?”
“Welcome back.” The man hung up.
Parker opened up his contacts and pulled up Skylar’s picture and hesitated right before he touched his thumb to the call button.
She was the first person he wanted to tell but he couldn’t, because he’d fucked this up.
After calling his parents to let them know what was up, with them agreeing to take Cullen for the time being, he called Ioan to let the man know he’d be there. Although grateful to hear his friend’s voice, it wasn’t even close to the person he wanted to tell. Skylar. Always Skylar.
As he loaded his bag in his vehicle, Mrs. O’Neary came to stand before him. Fifteen minutes later when she walked away, his head spun, and he couldn’t quite comprehend what she’d told him about Skylar.
…
The sun had dropped low in the sky, and he leaned against the porch post on the building he and his men were crashing in. The view he had was one of the most majestic he’d ever seen, and yet all he wanted to do was share it with Skylar. He missed her like hell, how she made him feel, and not just the physical. How she would look at him and give him her complete focus, as if he were the only thing that mattered. Her playfulness. Hell, he even missed watching her work on her damn crossword puzzles.
She had this way about her of making him feel special. How she could coax a laugh from him, how she slept, curved into him like she couldn’t get close enough to him. No one else was perfect for him as she was.
All this time, he’d been foolish to think being out here with his men was the most important thing to him in the world. That he couldn’t imagine his life without it, or them.
He’d been wrong.
Skylar was his world. She was his lodestar. And he couldn’t keep going