mad.
How the hell are you going to put that on a man and then walk away?
“Drummond told me what you said when you left,” she explained. “I can take a hint, you know. I’m fully capable of doing this on my own.”
The thought of talking to another man about me made anger start to boil in my stomach. Innocent talking or not, the thought of her being around another man at all was enough to send me into a jealous rage.
She was my woman.
Had been mine for a really long fucking time, actually.
I tilted my head slightly to the left as I looked at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She licked her lips. “If you wanted to get transferred out because of me, that’s fine. I can take the hint. You don’t want me around. But I can also take care of myself. I know that I can do it on my own.”
My brain clouded in confusion.
I shook my head to clear it. “Babe, I don’t know what you think you heard from Drummond, the dumbass who has had a crush on you for a really long time, but whatever it was was bullshit. I would never tell you anything through him. Can we go inside? I’d like to hear what I supposedly said.”
She rolled her eyes, but stepped back, putting her hand on the dog’s head.
“Sarge,” she said quietly. “Let him in.”
She and the dog backed up simultaneously, allowing me entrance into her place.
There were boxes lining all the walls, and the only thing that was ‘out’ was a television that was on the floor against the wall straight in front of me.
“This is a nice place,” I said. “Cora rented me one that’s literally right next door to yours.”
She hissed in a breath. “The one that’s the first house on the right?”
I looked at her. “Yes, why?”
“My brother told me that one was a bad place. Cursed,” she said. “Something about being in a flood plain, a murder taking place there, and a woman committing suicide.”
My brows went up. “They didn’t say that to my sister-in-law when she went to sign the lease papers.”
Blaise tossed me a look over her shoulder as she moved deeper into the house.
The place was set up weird.
Despite it being large and beautiful on the outside, the inside was like a maze of hallways and labyrinths.
After two turns and a long hallway, we wound up in the kitchen, which had a small window that overlooked the living room.
“This place is creepy,” I told her. “If mine is anything like yours, I’m going to have to move out before I even move in.”
Her brows rose. “I didn’t take you as a man that couldn’t handle a little creepiness.”
She was right.
“My brothers and I used to tell scary stories when we were little. As we got older, we made it a game to tell even scarier ones. We’d do our research right before our camping trips that we took once a year. Then we’d tell stories and see who got scared first. As we aged into adults, it turned into us researching unsolved mysteries all throughout the world. Then we’d tell what we found. Sometimes we’d have an idea, or one of us would have some insight that sounded like it may be something someone would want to know, and so we’d send our hunches into the tip lines that were attached to those unsolved mysteries,” I murmured, leaning my hips against the counter as I watched her move to the fridge. “So needless to say, I’m kind of hard to scare now. Not to mention I’ve just spent years in the prison system. If I wasn’t scared in there, then I’m not going to be scared out here.”
She looked at me curiously over her shoulder, then shook her head and turned back to the fridge.
Which appeared empty.
“I have beer and… outdated milk,” she said. “I’m fairly sure the milk is still good, though. I had it on some cereal before you knocked on the door.”
“You’re fairly sure?” I found myself chuckling, then sobered. “Who was the beer for?”
Because she was pregnant. There was no way in hell she should have that in the house unless…
“My brother was over last night,” she explained. “He helped me move some of the big pieces of furniture where I wanted them. He brought beer and pizza with him. Do you want some pizza?”
The thought of pizza was actually quite appealing.
“I am hungry,” I admitted. “But I’d