Wolf, page 22
Her hands slid to my face. There were tears in her eyes, but I knew deep down that it wasn’t because she loved me. It was because she was going to walk away again. She just couldn’t accept who I was, and she would fight her feelings forever.
I kissed her once more on the lips and pulled her into my arms as I laid down beside her. I could feel her tears on my chest and it broke my fucking heart. I didn’t know what more I could say to her. She had made up her mind and there was nothing more I could do.
When I woke in the morning, she was gone. It was the weekend and she didn’t have work. She didn’t want to be with me, so she left. I sighed and stared at the ceiling. I was shocked when I felt a tear slip from my eyes. She was gone, and I was all alone.
💕💕💕💕💕
I sat on the couch, drinking away my sorrows. I didn’t even get a note or anything. She just up and walked out of the house. When I got up, I held out hope that she had just ran out to do some shopping, although, I don’t know many people that going shopping at six in the morning. But all her clothes were gone. I hadn’t even heard her leave.
So, here I was, sitting in this sad, pink house with creepy animals on the walls. It was seriously disturbing. But they were my friends now. Who else did I have? Michael Bublé was crooning on the radio, singing his sad song about kissing a fool. That was me, the fool.
I tossed yet another beer bottle on the ground and snatched another from the cooler that was sitting beside me. I had made a run to the store earlier and practically bought out the beer section. Well, not quite. There were at least twelve cases of beer stacked in the kitchen. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere this weekend.
“Oh my God. Who decorated this place?”
I looked over drunkenly at Alec. He was standing in the doorway with Chance, Jackson, and Gabe. They were staring in disgust at the pink walls.
“And I thought I had bad taste,” Jackson muttered. “Seriously, who decorated this place?”
“Jessica,” I slurred.
“Shit.” Chance’s eyes were wide with shock. “Don’t tell Storm. He’ll go running for the hills.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I stood and walked over to the bathroom, not even bothering to shut the door. I yanked down my zipper and pissed. I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror. Yep, I could still see my face. It was time for another beer. I stumbled back out to the living room where the guys had already grabbed their own beer and sat down. “She only did it to fuck with me.”
“Jessica did?” Gabe asked.
“No, my little pixie. Shhhhe wanted me to freak out about the scary eyes staring at me all night.”
“And the wall?” Chance asked.
“Oh, that’s nothing. You should see the vagina she left on the table. It came with a book and everything.”
“Yeah,” Alec cleared his throat, “we heard about Reese leaving you. We figured we should come over and see how you’re doing.”
“How’d you hear?”
Alec scratched his jaw and glanced at the other guys. “Uh…well, she moved in with her grandma and Brooke called me up to tell me. I guess the grandma is pretty happy that she’s there.”
“That bitch was supposed to be on my side.”
“The grandma?” Alec asked.
I looked at him in confusion. “What grandma?”
“Reese’s grandma.”
“No, that bat hates me.”
“So, who was supposed to be on your side?”
“Brooke,” I shouted. It was like he was fucking deaf. Did I have to repeat everything to him?
“I think if we get drunk too, our minds will work like his,” Jackson suggested.
“Help yourself. I’ve got a gazillion more cases in the kitchen. Bought out the whole fucking store this morning.”
“So, what happened?” Chance asked.
“With what?”
“With Reese,” he stressed.
“She left.”
He sighed. “I know she left. Why did she leave?”
“Fuck if I know. She doesn’t really love me, I guess. I mean, she told me she loved me last night when we were making sweet love, but then she was gone. Why would she do that? Why would she walk out on me when I love her? Is it me? No, it’s God.” I stared up at the ceiling. “Why would you do this to me? Why did you take her from me?” I shouted.
“Craig, you gotta chill,” Jackson said, steadying me with a hand on my arm. “She’s not dead. She’s just not here.”
“I know she’s not here. That’s what I was just fucking telling you!”
They all sat there in silence for a minute. I didn’t care. I grabbed another beer and drank some more.
“So, now that she’s gone, are you gonna redo the place?” Alec asked.
“Redo the place? This is where we lived as man and wife! You want me to throw that all away?”
“You’ve lived here about five days,” Alec pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter. She decorated this place for me,” I cried.
“She decorated it to piss you off,” Gabe said.
I threw my beer bottle at Gabe. “Don’t talk about my wife like that.”
Chance cleared his throat and smiled. “So, you want to hear some good news?”
“Why not? My life’s over. Someone should be happy.”
His smile faltered for a second. “Uh…well, I’m going to ask Morgan to marry me.”
“Seriously? My wife is leaving me and you’re going on about how you’re getting married? That’s so mean!”
“I wasn’t going on about it. I just mentioned it,” Chance explained. “I thought you would be happy for me, man.”
“Sure, I’m fucking delirious with…delirium for you. I’m so fucking deliriously deliriated that I want to throw you a fucking wedding shower. Is that better?”
“Maybe we should just take away the beer,” Alec suggested. “I’ve never seen him like this before.”
“That’s because my wife tore out my heart and stomped all over it, crushing it into little bloody pieces on the ground.”
“Are we not doing this the right way?” Alec asked the guys.
“Hell, I don’t know. This is what all the guys did when someone else got dumped,” Gabe said.
“We need Cazzo,” Chance suggested. “And Ice. They both went through this. They’ll know what to say.”
Twenty minutes later, my house was fucking packed with the guys from Reed Security. Or, at least it seemed that way, but I think I was really just seeing triple of everyone. It looked so fucking crowded in the house.
“Alright, listen up everyone,” Cap shouted. “I’ve got paint for everyone. If we’re all going to be here, we’re going to make this house look normal again. If you don’t have a roller, start hauling animal heads out of here.”
“I can’t believe you want to paint over my wall,” I cried on Alec’s shoulder.
“Believe me, you’ll thank us in the morning.”
I picked up my roller and slowly started painting over the pink wall. But the more I painted, the angrier I got. How could she do this to me? I was a good man and she just walked out like I meant nothing.
“Whoa, easy with that roller.” Gabe put his hand on my wrist. I had been very vigorously painting the wall. “I know you’re angry, but you don’t have to take it out on the wall.”
“I can’t believe she just walked out!”
“Let it out, man.” He handed me a paintbrush. “Here, write it out on the wall.”
I snatched the paintbrush out of his hand and dipped it in paint. “I am a good fucking person,” I wrote on the wall. “I don’t deserve to be shit on.”
“That’s it. Get it all out, man.”
I shrugged Gabe off. I didn’t want sympathy. I wanted to shoot something.
“You know, it’s not like I’m the only one with faults. Do you know, she grinds her fucking teeth at night. It’s fucking irritating as hell, but I’m not walking away over it.”
Gabe nodded and picked up a brush of his own. “I’m with you there. You know, Isa’s been bitching at me about taking out the fucking trash. Like I’m the only one with two functioning hands.”
He wrote on the wall take out your own fucking trash!
“That’s right,” I said in agreement. “But seriously, you should really probably take out the trash.” He nodded. “But yeah, fuck that!”
Alec snatched the paint brush out of my hand. “And why the fuck does the man always have to be the one to initiate sex? I feel like a fucking rapist, the way I’m always pouncing on her.”
Take some fucking initiative, he painted on the wall.
“That’s right! These women, they just don’t get it. We’ll show them. We’ll paint all our fucking complaints on the wall!” I shouted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Reese
I pulled into the driveway at my house. Well, it was my house for about five days. Now, there were like ten trucks in the driveway. I put my car in park and wondered what was going on. I had to grab a few things that I hadn’t taken with me. Anything else could wait until another time. I got out of my car just as a line of trucks pulled into the driveway behind me. What the hell?
A woman with strawberry blonde hair stepped out and rushed over to me. “Are you Reese?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Maggie. I came to collect my husband.”
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you.” I shook her hand and turned for the house.
“So, I’m guessing you’re here to get your things.”
“Um…”
“Word spreads fast in this family. The minute you moved in with your grandma, everyone knew that you left Craig.”
God, this was awkward. I didn’t think I would have to explain myself to people that Craig worked with.
“Of course, we all knew it was going to happen. I mean, stalking only works for a select few women.”
“Is that right.”
“Well, if you met Knight and Kate, you would understand.”
I stopped, wondering why we were having this little chat when I’d only just met her. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to discuss my non-existent relationship with Craig with you.”
“That’s fine.”
“Hey!” A woman came running up, looking really excited. “Is this Reese? Oh my gosh! You’re so lucky that you married Craig. I’m Claire, by the way. He’s super hot. Which you already know because you married him. What’s he like in bed?”
“Claire!” Maggie slapped her on the arm. Claire turned bright red.
“Sorry, it just happens sometimes.”
“Anyway,” Maggie said, “We’re all just here to collect our husbands and we’ll be on our way. Oh, this is Lindsey,” she said pointing to another woman and then she just pointed around the circle of women that had joined us. “Lucy, Vanessa, Cara, Ali, Morgan, Raegan, Ivy, Lola, Emma, Isa, and you know Florrie.”
Florrie glared at me, probably because she was overprotective of Craig. Maggie stepped up to my defense though. Sort of.
“Chill, Florrie. Even though she broke Craig’s heart and can’t see how much he truly loves her, doesn’t mean that we should shit on her. It’s not her fault Craig’s a psycho.”
“Um, thanks.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” Maggie said, waving me off. I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t be around to get used to it, but then she started dragging me to the house. It was so weird. I was going to be entering my house with a bunch of women that would probably be more comfortable walking in there than I was. I used my key to open the door and then stopped, my mouth hanging open in surprise.
All the guys were spread out around the living room, laying on the furniture or the floor. And each of them had one of the animals that had been hanging on the wall. Actually, one of them was laying on top of the life-sized bear that I had put in the study.
“What did they do to the walls?” Lindsey asked.
“It looks like they were complaining,” Emma said, stepping up to the wall to read one of the messages.
“I don’t fluff fucking pillows,” Ivy read. “Whose is that?”
“That has to be Cazzo,” Vanessa replied. “Is it really that big of a deal? Do we have to have flat pillows on the couch?”
“Look at this one,” Ali said. “This has to be Chris. I just want to watch my fucking tv show.”
“Is this normal?” I asked.
“Is what normal?” Ali asked.
“The writing on the walls and the sleepover.”
“It’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this.”
Ivy walked over to the man lying on the bear and shoved him off. He flopped on the ground and then jumped up, looking around the room frantically.
“What! What’s going on? I swear, I didn’t do it!”
“Jules, you said you would be home last night.”
“I…” He rubbed at his eyes and looked around the room at the other men. “I swear-”
“You always swear. Ivy, I’ll be home to take Johnny out. But you’re never home when you say you’ll be.”
“No,” he said, a tinge of anxiety in his voice. “You don’t understand. This isn’t what it looks like.”
“You mean, it’s not all of you getting together and bitching about your wives and then not coming home to us?”
He laughed nervously. “Not at all. You see, we were doing that yoga thing the other day and…”
“And we thought we needed to clear our minds,” Hunter stepped in. “With everything that’s happened over the past few years, we were all feeling like there was too much chaos in our heads.”
“He’s right.” Chance stood up and walked over to Hunter, squeezing his shoulder. “Some of us had more to deal with than others. Hunter and I were talking about how we just weren’t the same as we used to be.”
“Right,” Hunter grinned. “So, we figured that if we did yoga to get our bodies and minds in order, then we could be better husbands for the women that support us without reservation.”
I was confused though. What did this have to do with what they painted on the walls? Not that I was buying this load of crap, but I was interested to see how they tried to talk their way out of it.
“So, what does yoga have to do with all the complaints on the walls?”
“Uh…” Hunter looked to Chance for help, but neither of them had any answers.
“It’s to be more at peace with…our…family,” Cap tried. “You know, if you’re angry about stuff that’s basically insignificant, then you can’t be the best version of yourself.”
“So you complained that My wife is responsible for taking care of the kids. I have a job to do,” Maggie read off the wall, then looked to Cap. He swallowed hard and shook his head.
“That wasn’t me. That was Jackson.”
“Jackson doesn’t have any kids,” Maggie shot back.
“Okay, look, I know that I complained about that, but like I said, it’s to get rid of those negative thoughts and move myself into a peaceful state of mind.”
Maggie walked forward slowly. I watched in awe as she snatched her husband’s testicles and twisted them painfully all with her eyes. Yeah, she had some voodoo power there. I felt bad for Cap. I could feel the fear radiating off him as Maggie stepped right up to him. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear. His eyes went wide just before she brought her knee up and nailed him in the balls. He bent over, gasping for air.
“How’s your state of mind now?” She looked around the room, raising an eyebrow at the other guys. “Anyone else have any creative explanations for us?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Craig
“Reese, wait!”
I ran outside in just my underwear. I didn’t have time to stop and put on something decent. My wife was walking out on me. Again. I had to figure out someway to get her to understand, to just fucking listen.
“What?”
“You came back. Don’t just leave.”
“I just came to grab a few things.”
I shook my head, not willing to believe that she was really walking away. I was so close. I knew it. She admitted she loved me, so why wouldn’t she just stay and try?
“Look, just give me some time. You told me you love me and I know that wasn’t a lie.”
She sighed and took a step toward me. “Craig, I do love you. There’s a part of me that knows what a great man you are and wants to see where this goes.”
“Then listen to that part of you,” I urged her.
She shook her head sadly. “There’s a bigger part of me that knows that your life is not what I want.”
“We’ve been through all this a million times. But have you gotten hurt yet because of my job?”
“Me? It’s not about me. I’m not worried that I’m going to get hurt. I’m worried that you’re going to. I’m worried that I’ll fall even harder for you and then you’ll be gone. You already told me that your company was attacked. You said that people got hurt. How bad was it?”
Shit. If I told her how bad it really was, there was no way she would stay with me. But I couldn’t lie to her either. “It was bad.”
“How. Bad.”
I gritted my teeth and gave in. “Hunter was shot in the neck. He almost died. Ice was shot in the heart.” She gasped, but I kept going. She needed to hear it. “He just barely survived. Gabe had a severe concussion. Morgan and Chance were both taken. We didn’t get them back for a year.”
“What happened to them?”
I shrugged. I didn’t have the whole story. “I don’t know for sure. Chance was tortured.”
Her whole face paled and she reached out to grab the door. “And what about you? You said that something happened and nobody trusted you. Why?”
“I didn’t get out of the building with everyone else,” I said after a moment. “Some of the guys that attacked us captured me. I was taken for information. They didn’t get anything out of me, but they tried. Storm wasn’t in the building, but he saw me being taken and he found me. It took a few days.”
