The Valentine's Arrangement (17 page)

She pulled away all too quickly. He wasn’t done savoring what he could of her. She looked up at him and smiled slightly, but all he saw was pain in her beautiful brown eyes.

“Goodbye, Kale,” she whispered. Then he watched her walk away.*****

She could feel her mascara clinging to her cheeks as she walked away from the gate terminal. She could feel a singe in her back from the heat of Kale’s stare as he watched her walk away—as she left him.

She pulled her coat closed with her hand and hurried out of the airport. The freezing air mixed with the moist flakes that still drifted from the sky, clung to her hair and her wet eyelashes. She wanted to curse herself as she felt the wind dry the mascara streaks to her cold cheeks. She hated crying, and she hated that she cried in front of Kale, again. But it was as if she had broken down a fucking dam and the waterworks wouldn’t stop coming whenever she was around him. He was a picture perfect reminder of what she didn’t want, what she shouldn’t want, and what she wanted regardless of it all.

He was so different from her, her world so different from his, but they fit together like lock and key. Two pieces that need each other to work.

She reached her car and slid inside, quickly turning the ignition and blasting the heat. She lowered her visor and popped up the cover on the mirror. Her cheeks flushed from the cold, her eyes red from her tears, her red lipstick smeared across her swollen lips—she was a fucking mess. She wiped her lips with her thumb in attempts to remove the smudges but all it did was give phantom sensations of Kale’s lips caressing hers. She sniffled and wiped the wetness away from under her lashes then tried to remove the black streaks that fell from her eyes creating two long lines—evidence of her weakness.

They weren’t coming off. “Get a fucking grip,” she told herself, before she shut the visor and pulled out of the parking garage.

He said he wanted more. He said he wanted her, all of her. She shook her head, clearing the words from her mind. He was gone. He was leaving and now she could get back to her normal existence. She could write this off as a lessoned learned. Fool her once, shame on you. Fool her twice shame on her—she was a fool to think that their arrangement would actually work. Shame on her, yes, definitely shame on her.

Chapter 13

It doesn’t matter if I believe him or not,” Ronnie said wiping the ink off Mic’s back as she finished up the last part of his tattoo.

“It does, Angel. A man deserves to know if he is forgiven.”

“Who are you? Dr. Phil? He knows I forgive him, he didn’t do anything wrong for me to forgive anyway. It still doesn’t change anything,” she said as she rubbed the needle back and forth, as she shaded in the tattoo.

“I don’t understand you. Why are you holding back?”

God, he was seriously getting on her fucking nerves. “You have never been with a soldier. Do you know what it feels like to have the person you care about leave you all the time? Do you know what it feels like to wonder what they are doing or where they are or if they are safe? The military is a great life, sure the men are brave and their families are strong but I can’t fucking do it again. I stuck through it with Brandon because we started this journey together and because I thought he was it for me, but I’m not going to do it again. I’m not interested in falling in love. I’m not interested in getting my heart broken again.” Even though she was pretty sure it already was.

“I blame you, ya know. I should have never let you tell me that I should sleep with him.” Ronnie pulled the tattoo gun away and wiped his back with a little more force than necessary.

Mic sucked in a breath and spoke through his teeth. “Eh, you can’t stay mad at me forever. You will get over it. But you might not get over him.”

“There is nothing to get over,” she said, trying to convince herself more than Mic.

“Keep telling yourself that, Angel. Keep telling yourself that.”

Almost a month had passed since Kale left and Ronnie had received a few emails from him but that was it. She didn’t know how he got her email address, but he did. They were always short and sweet, nothing deep or disheartening. He wrote her about his days and about his men, nothing too detailed or too personal. He would ask questions about her days, about the shop, and about her house. He even would tease her and ask her about her yoga classes. But, they were all questions that would remain unanswered. She never responded back. There was no point to getting tangled farther into this, whatever ‘this’ was. He was gone, and she was selling the house and moving away. A fresh start.

Ronnie was in her room giving a remembrance tattoo to an eighteen-year-old kid who just lost his father in Afghanistan. These ones were the hardest to do. It made her think of Kale and how she embedded the names of his friends on his back. It made her think about the look in his eyes when he indirectly told her about them. Damn it, it made her think about him, and thinking about him was something she was trying hard not to do.

“You got some flowers,” Mic said as he entered the doorway to her room and leaned against the frame, his big beer belly sticking out like a woman nine months pregnant.

Ronnie’s eyes shot up to look at Mic who was holding a small white card in his hands. “More fucking flowers? Send them home with Harold again. I know his wife loves the weekly bouquet of roses. At least all of Brandon’s apology flowers are scoring Harold some major brownie points,” Ronnie laughed, and she was thankful for the distraction.

“Alright,” he said as he turned and walked down the hall. “These aren’t roses though. Hopefully his wife likes lilies.” She could barely hear him as he got farther away from her room. Did he say lilies?

“I’ll be back,” Ronnie told the guy in the chair and she walked out of the room and into the reception area. Sure as shit, a big bouquet of stargazer lilies mixed with calla lilies were sitting on the front desk. She came up beside Mic and snatched the card out of his hand. “Let me see that.” She had a feeling these weren’t from Brandon, and fuck, she was right.

Ronnie,

I don’t know if you haven’t been receiving my emails or if you are just choosing to ignore me. But damn it Ronnie, I miss you. I miss your smart mouth and your bad attitude. I miss your red lips and your sexy ass legs. I miss you calling me out on my shit and I miss you rolling those beautiful brown eyes of yours. You changed something inside me, something I didn’t ever think I would want, or feel—but you did, and now I can’t go back. I want the fluff. I want to give you the flowers and the chocolates. I want to take you out to fancy dinners and buy you gifts. I want you to be my Valentine every day, all day. I want to sweep you off your feet and make love to you every night and wake up to you every morning. I want all of you, not just our arrangement, but all of it. I want all of you.

She read the note one more time, then dropped it in the trash and walked back to her room.

Another few weeks went by. The flowers had long since died, and thankfully because Ronnie was sick to death of looking at them and smelling their disgustingly wonderful sweet scent. She didn’t have the heart to throw them away so they just sat there on the front desk, wilting and shriveling—dying, until Mic eventually threw them out.

She was finally starting to get back to normal, well as normal as normal could be for Ronnie. She had sold her house and was closing on April 4th which was only a few days away. She had everything packed up and loaded on Harold’s flatbed trailer, ready to be moved to where ever Ronnie’s little heart desired. The problem was she didn’t know where. She just knew she couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t stay here and try to move on with her life at the same time. Not with Brandon returning from Afghanistan in a couple months, and not with Kale coming back here either. She may have made amends with Brandon, but that didn’t mean that it was going to be easy seeing him around. Even if she wasn’t in love with him, the wounds were still too fresh—too deep. And Kale, she didn’t have a fucking idea how to handle that one; she just knew that she was weak where he was concerned. If she truly wanted to move on, to put all of this behind her, then she had to leave.

The bad thing about it all was leaving her guys at the shop. Her whole life she wanted a family; she knew now it was the reason she clung to Brandon for all those years, because he was the only family she had. But she was finally realizing she had one here at the tattoo shop with Harold and Mic and even Jordan. Fucking fantastic, now she was turning into one of those sappy females.

Ronnie had finished her last appointment for the day and she was carrying the last of her stuff out to the reception area. Her room was empty. It was like she was never even there. It was haunting, seeing it bare and sterile. Someone new would come in and take her place. They would fill the walls with their own art; cover the room in small pieces of themselves. They would move on without her, now she just needed to move on without them—without Brandon, without anyone.

“Excuse me?” A raspy female voice said as Ronnie walked into the reception area. Harold had opened the front door to the shop to allow the fresh spring air into the room so she didn’t even hear anyone come in.

Ronnie slammed her box down on the front desk and pushed it out of her way so she could see the customer. Her pupils contracted and her brows furrowed. That damn big boobed blonde was even prettier up close. Fucking hell.

Ronnie rested her hands on her hips. “Can I help you?”

“You’re Ronnie, right?”

“Last time I checked.”

The blonde sighed and walked farther into the shop, closer to Ronnie. “Thank God. I have been trying to find you all day.”

Ronnie’s perfectly waxed dark eyebrows reached her hairline. This blonde was the last person Ronnie wanted looking for her. “Okay. What’s your name or should I just call you Stalker?”

The blonde seemed slightly irritated but she planted an indifferent smile on her face anyway. “Sorry, I’m Meagan. I’m friends with—”

“Kale, yes I know.”

“Right.” This chick was really getting irritated, it seemed as though Kale stroked her soft spot. “Look”—she said taking a step closer to Ronnie, her eyes zoning in like a momma bear protecting her cub—“first, I just want to start off by saying that you’re a complete idiot.”

Ronnie’s eyes widened. “Excuse me? Who the hell do you think you are coming in here and running your damn mouth like that?”

“I’m coming in here as Kale’s friend. Kale doesn’t fall in love. He has never been in a single relationship because he has never allowed himself to be in one. Then he falls in love with you and you go and break his heart. Do you know just how amazing he is?”

The thought that this Meagan chick knew just how amazing Kale was, in the bedroom and otherwise, made Ronnie want to jump over the desk and strangle her. Just knowing that she has been with him, and that she has felt his strong hard body above her, made bile rise in the back of Ronnie’s throat.

“I have never met a better man, or a better soldier, than him. Even though we didn’t have a real relationship together, he still treated me better than half of the guys I’ve been with. Don’t waste your chance.”

Was she for real right now? “Did you just come here to tell me what to do or did you need something?

“No, I didn’t come here to tell you what to do. I just thought you should know beforehand.”

“Before what?”

“Before I told you that Kale was home.”

Kale was home. He was here. Her nerve endings came back to life as the blood rushed through her veins. “He’s here?” she asked, just to make sure she heard her right.

Meagan’s eyes shifted to her feet for a brief moment before she raised them back to meet Ronnie’s, and in that small amount of time, Ronnie knew—she knew it wasn’t good.

“He’s hurt,” Meagan said the words strongly, like her strength would somehow make it better, but it didn’t.

At that very moment, Ronnie’s world caved under her feet and she had to brace her hands on the edge of the desk to keep her from crumbling to the ground. Her worst fear just materialized out of her nightmares and into reality. From the first night Brandon left for Afghanistan, she dreamt of him getting hurt, of losing him, of death taking him, of never seeing him again. It was always her greatest fear. Since the day she said goodbye to Kale in Syracuse, his image was the center of every good dream and the new focus of all her nightmares.

Her throat constricted making it almost impossible for her to swallow. Her pulse was racing, and small beads of sweat formed at the back of her neck. “What happened? Is he okay?”

“He’s okay now, but he’s been in the hospital for the last few weeks.”

“What happened?” Ronnie asked impatiently. She needed to know, she needed to know how bad he was.

“His Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. He had shrapnel in his face and thigh. It was pretty bad. They had to perform surgery to remove it and repair some ligaments in his leg. He got back to the States almost a week ago and they released him from the hospital yesterday.”

“He’s been back a week? How do you know all this?” Ronnie asked sounding like a jealous girlfriend but she didn’t give a shit. And if she was honest with herself, she was jealous. Jealous that Meagan has seen him.

“He called me. He needed someone to bring him home when he was released yesterday. Believe me, I was his second choice, but since you have been blowing him off he assumed you wanted nothing to do with him.”

“Where is he now?” Ronnie asked as she grabbed her purse out of the box of her stuff that was still sitting on the desk.

Meagan started toward the door. “He’s at his house. Come on, I’ll drive you.”

“Look, I appreciate you coming here, and telling me, and being the bigger woman and what not, but I’m not ready to jump in the car with you and wear friendship bracelets. I’ll follow you.” Ronnie walked out the door and headed toward her car, Meagan keeping pace next to her.

She laughed. “I can see why he likes you.”

Ronnie turned her head and looked at the woman who cared enough about Kale to come and find her. Fuck, now Ronnie kind of had to like her. Damn it. “I just need to make a quick stop first.”