No f**king way.
Jesus, I was dreaming.
Fuck, I had to be dreaming.
His eyes on me, he was unarmed, his back to the wall, one knee bent, the sole of his boot also to the wall, arms crossed on his chest, he held my gaze steady, direct, intense and whispered, “Sylvie.”
At the sound of my name coming from his lips, raw washed through me, a feeling I last felt drunk on my couch in Charlene’s arms on my birthday last year.
A feeling I’d felt time and again before I learned how not to feel it anymore.
A feeling that threatened to shred me now.
A feeling that with lots of practice I buried.
“Tucker Creed?” I asked.
His arms came uncrossed only so he could lift his hands in the air which I was guessing was his confirmation that he was, indeed, Tucker Creed. My first love, my protector, my savior.
My betrayer.
He crossed his arms again and requested, “You wanna stop aiming your weapon at me?”
Actually, no. I didn’t. I wanted to keep aiming my gun at him and I might also want to pull the trigger.
I was not wrong last night. That was him in the Expedition.
And I knew it was him watching me at the hotel. It was also his eyes I felt for the last month.
I knew it.
I f**king knew it.
And I didn’t get it.
Even though I preferred to aim my gun at him, I still stood. As I did I reached behind me to re-holster my gun at the same time keeping my eyes on him and asking, “What the f**k?”
He looked to the bed then back to me before he shared, “Pretty cat.”
I looked to the bed to see Gun sitting on her ass, tail sweeping the covers, curious eyes on Tucker Creed. It was the first time since I got her that I lamented my choice of cat over Rottweiler.
I looked back to Creed and when I did it hit me that this f**king ass**le had accepted all I had to give him, everything that was me, he took it then took off and left me to the wolves and pretty much the first thing he said to me was I had a pretty cat.
“Are you shitting me?” I asked.
His face changed and his mouth moved.
“We gotta talk.”
We had to talk?
Sixteen years, out-of-the-blue he’s in my bedroom and he tells me I have a pretty cat and we had to talk.
Oh yeah, he was totally f**king shitting me.
I studied him.
The last time I saw him he was twenty-three. Now, he was thirty-nine. One look and I saw either life had not been kind or it had been full of adventure of the dangerous variety.