Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (27 page)

“WADE’S OUT THERE
waiting to take you home,” Terri said, nodding toward the exit when I came out of my office at the end of the day. She sent a nervous glance out the front doors, no doubt remembering the confrontation that had taken place out there yesterday at quitting time. “Do you want me to take you home like we’d planned, or are you good?”

Wade
was out there waiting for me. Not
Dima
. I couldn’t hide the fact that I deflated at the realization.

I’d been hoping Dima would stick around after the session so we could discuss how it had gone for him. Maybe I could have talked him into coming over for pizza or something, and we could have spent some time getting to know each other with our clothes on. But that wasn’t going to happen if he wasn’t here.

Having Wade stick around instead wasn’t a good sign.

I wasn’t convinced I wanted to hear whatever he might have to say. It had only been twenty-four hours since that blowup, and I doubted he saw things any differently today than he had yesterday.

I glanced out the windows and found him resting his hip against the front bumper of his pickup with his arms crossed in front of him.

Whatever had happened, I had to know. Especially if I needed to run damage control with Dima. “Don’t worry about me,” I said to Terri. “I’ll get Wade to drive me home, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You’re the boss.” She didn’t sound like she thought it was such a hot idea, though.

This was one of the rare moments in life when I wished someone else would take charge and tell me what to do—and that they’d tell me to have Terri take me home instead of finding out what Wade wanted to say.

Now wasn’t the time to be a coward, though. I had to stick to my guns and make sure he understood I wasn’t going to waver.

I drew on my sweater and rolled myself out the front doors.

Wade nodded in acknowledgment once I joined him outside, which was about as close to a smile as I ever got from him. It’d have to do for now.

“I take it you’re my ride home,” I said.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’m not.”

He gave me a look of pure disbelief.

“I’m more confused, if anything,” I clarified. “I thought Dima might stick around…”

Wade snorted. “He didn’t even stay long enough to park his ass in a chair for the session. Chugged some coffee and split so fast I thought his pants must be on fire.”

“What did you do to cause him to bolt like that?”

“Why do you automatically think it’s something I did? I’d barely walked through the door before he was running for the hills.”

I didn’t want to believe Wade because I’d hoped that Dima was finally going to make some progress with coming to terms with his past. But no matter what Wade’s flaws might be, lying to me wasn’t one of them. He had always been unfailingly honest, even when it was to his detriment. I’d have to talk to my counselors tomorrow to see if any of them had a sense of what had freaked Dima out.

Or maybe Dima would tell me later if I called him. It was worth a shot.

I let Wade help me climb into his truck and waited for him to stow my wheelchair in the back. When dealing with his pickup, I was as helpless as I’d been while staying at Dima’s house. There was no way for me to maneuver myself into the seat without assistance, and once I was in, I couldn’t reach to do anything about breaking down my chair or putting it out of the way.

When he climbed into the driver’s seat, he had a strange look in his eye. It was kind of wild and definitely haunted, similar to how he’d so often appeared when we’d first gotten to know each other. Back in those days, PTSD had held him so tightly in its grips that I’d feared he’d never come out on the other side.

“You okay?” I asked cautiously. Every nerve in my body was on high alert, my fight or flight instinct kicking in. My usual MO was to fight; with Wade, it was probably safer to do the opposite. He still hadn’t gotten a good handle on controlling his emotional responses to things, and when he got caught up in something, he was unpredictable, at best.

He started the engine and planted both hands on the steering wheel, staring out ahead at nothing or everything. I could practically see the thoughts spinning around in his mind like a tornado had touched down in his head. White knuckles. Protruding veins on his hands and arms. He was barely keeping a grip on the present.

I reached across and touched the back of his hand.

He flinched and jerked his hand away from me. “How the
fuck
are you more willing to be with him than with me? I told you he’s not good enough for you—”

“It’s not about you versus him—”

“—and I was fucking right. He’s not even close to good enough for you, yet you still want him. You’re willing to throw what we could have away. To throw
me
away—”

“I’m not throwing anything away, Wade.”

“Aren’t you? Because I can’t just stand by and watch you devalue yourself—”

“Whoa,” I said, watching as Terri crossed the parking lot to her car and got in.

I gave her a reassuring wave. She nodded in my direction as she drove off, leaving the two of us alone.

Then I returned my focus to Wade. “Back up,” I said. “It’s bad enough that you’re going to sit here and try to tell me that Dima isn’t good enough for me, but now you’re going after
me
? That’s not going to fly.”

“What the hell else would you call what you’re doing?” Wade shouted.

“I’d call it knowing my own mind. I’d call it having enough respect for myself to make my own decisions. Dima and I aren’t even a thing—”

“He wants to be.”

“—and we won’t
be a thing until and
unless
he can deal with his past. You’ve already proven to me that you’re not ready to do that, which is why we won’t ever be a thing. You know that. You’ve
known
that for a long time, so don’t try to act like your jealousy of Dima is about me at all. It’s about you. Plain and simple.” I was still rational enough to recognize that my reaction was overly defensive, but there wasn’t much I could do about that at the moment.

“You think this is about fucking jealousy?” Wade roared, eyes blazing.

“You think it isn’t? Tell me what it is, then.” I held up my hands in frustration. “Go on. Tell me. I’m waiting for a reasonable explanation that trumps envy. I’m all ears.”

He didn’t say a word, though. Instead, he put the pickup in gear.

“No. Stop,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean stop the damn truck and let me out.”

“Let you out to do what?” He put his foot on the brake and stopped, though, gesturing toward the empty parking lot. “Terri’s gone. You still don’t have a fucking car. No one else is here to drive you home. What are you going to do, London? Just let me take you home.”

“Let me out,” I repeated. “I’ll get Gray to pick me up, or I’ll call a cab if he can’t.”

“Why won’t you let me take you home? You think Nazarenko and I have issues, maybe you should get your own worked out first.”

His words weren’t too far off base—I was coming to see that I didn’t have my life as together as I’d thought I did—but that wasn’t what had me worried. It was the scary way his eyes were bulging out of his head, and the way it seemed like the veins in his neck might burst if he got any more worked up. I’d seen this before. Too many times. And I knew what came next. But he couldn’t stop now that he had a head of steam going.

“Can’t make up your fucking mind. You want to be with me, but you want to be with him, but then you don’t want to be anything but friends with anyone. You refuse to act like an adult—”

“Get my chair out of the back and let me out of the truck,” I demanded, fighting back tears. Not because of the things he was saying to me. I had to get out of bed and put on my big girl panties every single day of my life, and today had been no different. I could take an honest evaluation of my flaws without letting it get to me, but that wasn’t what he was doing.

Whether he realized it or not, Wade was about to lose control over himself again, letting the PTSD rile him up until he wasn’t himself anymore. And if I stayed with him while he was like that, it wouldn’t be good for either of us.

“I’m not listening to any more of this,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you go off the deep end. Not again.”

I’d already witnessed it three times.

Three times that had left me scarred and shaken, internally if not visibly.

Wade screamed a curse, but he slammed the gearshift into park and flung his door open. He put my chair together slamming the pieces around so much that I flinched, while I sat in the cab of the truck and tried to remember how to breathe. All the while, I kept hoping I was doing the right thing. Should he be alone right now? Should I let him drive?

Probably not, but it wasn’t safe for me to stay with him, either. I didn’t know what to do, and that scared me more than anything.

Everything that came to mind seemed wrong. After glancing out the window to be sure he was still busy with my chair, I cautiously opened the glove box to see if he had a gun in there. Nothing but a bunch of papers, thank goodness. Then I bent down to feel for the familiar metal of one of his weapons beneath the seat, hoping—perhaps foolishly—that he didn’t have anything with him.

He ripped the door open before I found anything. I recoiled when he picked me up, an instinctive reaction that left him even more visibly upset than he already was. Still, he set me in my chair as gently as he would handle a newborn baby.

The juxtaposition was too much for me to process, the same as it always was when it came to Wade.

My pulse jackknifed through me, cutting a jagged line of fresh, aching scars on my heart bearing Wade’s signature. Out of instinct, I reached up and brushed the backs of my knuckles along his cheek. I had an innate need to soothe him, even though I knew there was no calming the storm inside him once it got started. The only thing to do was batten down the hatches and pray it passed before causing irrevocable damage.

He grabbed my hand and pried it away from his face, his eyes burning through me like lava. “You don’t get to do that,” he bit off. “You don’t get to rip my heart out, stomp on it, and then try to put the pieces back together again.” Then, without another word, he crossed in front of his truck and climbed back in, driving off before I could warn him to drive carefully.

I watched until he got onto the road. Once I was sure he’d gotten at least that far without causing a wreck, I dug in my purse and pulled out my phone to call Gray for a ride.

My hands were shaking so hard from the confrontation that I dropped the phone on the ground and had to pick it up again. The screen was cracked. I pressed my eyes closed, took a few deep breaths, and punched a few buttons, cutting my finger on the broken glass of the screen.

I sucked the blood from my finger as the phone rang three times.

“Not your fucking pet project,” Dima barked into the phone, jarring me into dropping the phone again. “What’s that fucking noise?” he demanded loudly enough that I could hear him even with the phone on the ground.

I fished around until I could pick it up and press it to my ear, hoping I wouldn’t cut myself on the sharp edges. “Sorry. Dropped the phone.”

“What you want?” he asked, as surly as ever.

“Nothing. I just— I meant to call Gray. My screen is broken, and I guess I didn’t push… Dima, I didn’t mean t—”

“You’re crying. Why you’re fucking crying?”

“I don’t cry,” I countered, even as I sniffled and realized he was right. I
was
crying. Damn it. The whole thing with Wade had gotten to me even worse than I’d imagined. It was like I’d gone back in time to the first time I’d been with him when he lost control, and I’d suddenly felt like I had none. The realization only made me cry harder. “It’s nothing. Listen, I didn’t mean to call you. I need to call my brother for a ride.”

“Where are you?”

“At work. I need—”

“Be there in ten minutes,” he said. Then the line went dead.