Oxygen Deprived (Kilgore Fire Book 3) (13 page)

I bit my lip.

“My brother’s not going to agree to chaperone me so I can go out,” I told him. “He doesn’t particularly like me and avoids spending time with me.”

“That’s up to you and him to work out,” he said. “But I wouldn’t count your brother out just yet. Just…trust me.”

I got the feeling he knew something I didn’t. But it wouldn’t be until the next week that I learned what that was.

And to say I was surprised would be an understatement.

I lost one pound this week. Time to reward myself with a hamburger.

-Aspen’s secret thoughts

Drew

“Remember to take your sister out tomorrow,” I told Downy.

Downy nodded. “I’m not going to forget, you fucker.”

I flipped him off and got into the fire truck.

We’d been on our way to go get something to eat when I saw Downy getting out of his SUV, his K-9 officer at his side.

After giving Mocha a scratch between the ears, I turned my attention to Aspen’s wayward brother, who had forgotten about his sister earlier in the day, and I had to call my sister to have her change Aspen’s day from today to tomorrow.

“Seriously, man,” I said. “If you forget tomorrow, she’ll be stuck in that house for another week. My sister can only pull so many strings here.”

Downy nodded and turned his back on me without another word, and I jogged to the engine and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“What was that about?” PD asked me.

I sighed.

“Downy and his avoidance of anything to do with his sister,” I muttered darkly as I pulled out into traffic.

I made my way into the left lane, which was where we were supposed to drive at all times, and headed to Chili’s, the one and only place that was open at this time on a Friday night.

We were in the middle of cooking dinner at the firehouse when we had to abandon it to go out on a call. When we came back five hours later, it was a congealed mess and no one was up to cooking anymore.

So, instead of hitting the grocery store for more food to cook, we were on our way out for dinner.

“He forgot about her?” PD asked
incredulously.

I shrugged.

“I don’t know for sure,” I hesitated. “He got a SWAT call about two hours before he was supposed to pick her up, and it ran into her scheduled time by a couple of hours. Then, when he was done, I think he forgot, but he blew me off when I asked him about it just a minute ago.”

“Maybe he was stuck doing paperwork,” Tai chimed in from the back seat.

I tossed him a look over my shoulder that clearly said, ‘I don’t think so.’

Tai grinned.

“My wife wants to meet your woman,” Tai mentioned. “She’s apparently a legend, you know.”

My brows rose.

“Why?” I asked.

“Everyone in town’s been talking about the scorned cop’s girlfriend who went all Carrie Underwood on his car. When Mia heard you were dating her, she told Masen, and that’s all I’ve been hearing about since,” he explained.

Masen was Mia’s best friend, and Booth’s wife.

The two of them together were twin tornados. Add Aspen into that mix, and I feared for the safety of everyone in this town with the antics I could see them pulling if they,
and we
, weren’t careful.

“She still mad at you?” PD asked, his eyes going over to Naomi who’d been sitting quietly the entire time.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Won’t even give me the chance to get close to her before she shies away.”

My eyes went to Naomi’s, who quickly looked away before she could make contact too long.

“That’s understandable,” PD said. “She didn’t know you were married.”

“I’m not fucking married,” I spat. “I’m fucking divorced. My ex just likes torture me by prolonging the inevitable.”

“No,” Naomi said quietly from the backseat. “You just reminded her of the very thing that her parents did. If my memory serves me right, she told you that Danny cheated on her. She also told me she told you about her mother and the situation with her father. She doesn’t do cheating, and you let her do that without her even knowing it, whether you see yourself as divorced or not.”

I blinked, surprised that she’d made sense out of it so easily.

Now that she’d pointed it out, it all made sense.

And Naomi was right.

I
had
done that to her.

Despite the fact that I considered myself divorced, I technically wasn’t, and I’d taken her choice in the matter away.

She might’ve made the same choice regardless of whether I’d given her all the details or not, but the fact that I hadn’t given it to her was clearly upsetting her.

I hadn’t considered how she might view it

Yes, I’d known she was upset, but now that I looked at it from her point of view…

“Shit,” I muttered softly.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “If it makes you feel better, I told her to sleep with you again, but she told me she couldn’t do it until she was sure you were divorced.”

When we pulled up to Chili’s, I held back, waiting for everyone to go inside, and then I called my lawyer.

If she wanted me divorced, then I was getting fucking divorced.

She was worth it.

The papers were signed a few days later.

It would be official, and I’d spent damn near my whole life savings to make it so.

I felt not one single regret as I signed my name at all the flagged spots, then handed the papers back to my lawyer.

“She’s happy with the settlement?” I asked Todd Masterson, my lawyer.

“She’s as happy as she’s going to get,” he corrected. “I wouldn’t have given her what you did, either, and I’m willing to bet that she would’ve settled for a lot less.”

I nodded.

“I know,” I said. “I was hoping she wouldn’t balk this way.”

He nodded.

“Well, I would say she was quite happy. She knew it was going to happen, and she was just waiting for you to up the ante, so to speak. And up it you did. By way too much,” Todd muttered.

He hadn’t been happy about all the money I’d given Constance.

Not that I’d given it to her, per se.

It was all conditional. Something that I likely wouldn’t have accomplished if it wasn’t for Constance’s ignorance, and her haste in signing once she saw all the money I was throwing at her.

She had to spend all the money on living. She couldn’t use it to buy clothes or frivolities. She had to use it to pay her bills, or anything that had to do with Attie. She couldn’t just spend it wherever the fuck she wanted.

And if she broke the rules, she got it taken away with no chance on getting it back.

It also only stayed in her name for two years before it was transferred to Attie’s college fund. Once Attie graduated college, she’d get the rest put into a bank account which she’d get a stipend each and every month.

Although it wasn’t much, a measly fifty grand in the grand scheme of things, it was all the money I’d had to my name.

Now the only things I had left that were mine were the clothes in my house, my house, and my truck.

I’d be working for the next twenty years, and would have no chance at retiring any time soon, that was for sure.

But I was free.

And it was oddly sad.

Not that I was divorcing my ex-wife, but that I viewed it as a failure on my part.

I didn’t like to fail. Hell,
no one
does.

But somehow knowing that I’d promised to spend my life with that woman, and it had fallen apart somewhere along the way, made me feel a bit sad and a whole lot confused.

Adding to my confusion were my feelings for Aspen. I cared about her, and I wanted to be with her. Hell, I was even willing to do it again and that scared the absolute hell out of me.

If I couldn’t make it work the first time, what made me think I could make it work the second?

All of those questions followed me out of the lawyer’s office and swirled in my head the entire way home.

I was so lost in those thoughts, I was actually a bit surprised when I pulled into my driveway.

The entire ride home was a blur.

I shut the engine of the truck off and got out, staring up at the house that would be mine for a long time to come.

My phone rang, and I groaned when I saw it was my ex-wife.

“Hello?” I answered tiredly.

“I can’t believe you did it. You quit us.”

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because I didn’t end your miserable existence like I wanted to, bitch.

-Aspen’s secret thoughts

Aspen

I took the dildo out of the box and was surprised to see all the other items in there.

“Jesus,” Naomi said from the phone I was holding. “Why did they send you more?”

I smiled, even though she couldn’t see me.

I was pointing the phone at all the goodies that’d come in the mail.

“There’s a shop in Uncertain, Texas called Uncertain Pleasures. They really liked my reviews of their products and wanted me to try a few of their other product lines,” I explained. “But they sent half their store.”

“What’s that one sticking to the window?” She asked. “What’s the purpose of the suction cup?”

I heard the door open behind me but didn’t bother to stop explaining.

I was mad at Downy, and he was four hours late…for the second day in a row.

I wasn’t really seeing the point of doing anything with him this late in the day, either. It was now twelve o’clock PM on one of my ankle monitor free days. I had things to do and he’d promised to take me. It wasn’t enough time to get back by five, no matter what I did.

I needed to go to Longview and get a new computer. Mine was acting wonky.

I wasn’t sure how long that would take me, either, and I didn’t want to be too long.

“Oh, my God.”
Naomi exclaimed. “What is
that
?”

I looked where the phone was now pointing and smiled.

“That, according to my master list, is the…” I pulled out my sheet of paper. “Monster Marcus nine-inch realistic dildo with balls,” I read to her. “And it feels like real skin.”

I heard an amused snort behind me that most certainly did not sound like my brother, causing me to whirl around.

“What are you doing here?” I asked my ex, Danny.

“I’m here to see if you’ve seen the paperwork I left here the week before your…meltdown,” he replied sweetly.

Without even thinking about it, I hung up on Naomi and turned to face Danny, not happy in the slightest that he was here.

And that he’d just walked into my house without knocking.

That privilege had been revoked when he’d stuffed his cock into his partner while he was still with me.

“Well…” I said slowly. “I threw out everything of yours that was left here. I’m pretty sure your passport was one of those things, as well as your car tag renewals.”

Danny’s eyes narrowed. “You stupid bitch,” he took a threatening step forward.

I held the dildo up like a sword and pointed it at him.

“Don’t you fucking think about it,” I ordered him.

He stopped, looking from me to the dildo then back again.

“And you think that’s going to stop me?” He asked, slapping the dildo aside before he advanced on me.

I’d never in my life been scared of Danny.

Never once had he shown me anything that I would even consider as abusive tendencies. But, right then, with the look of pure hate in his eyes, I knew he was willing to hit me.

I’d pissed him off, and this had nothing to do with the papers I’d thrown away.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked semi-worriedly.

I say semi, because instead of backing up like I should’ve been doing, I was advancing and I could see that Danny was pissed.

I didn’t have any God-given sense, apparently.

And he was about to take his anger out on me.

His hand advanced and before I could step back, it was resting around my throat. Not tight, but definitely not lightly, either.

My eyes widened, and my breath froze in my lungs.

Never once had I had anyone’s hands on my neck.

Not like this.

My hands automatically came up to hold onto Danny’s wrist, and I felt the pure strength pulsing through it.

“So, what were you saying, Aspen?” He hissed.

I pushed at his chest, but his hand tightened around my throat, hampering my ability to breathe and triggering my need to fight.

And that’s what I did.

I fought him.

My nails dug into his hand while my knee kicked up.

He held onto my neck, but stepped back, leaving my body at an awkward angle as he took me with him.

His other hand came up, the palm flat, to slap me across the face.

He would have, too, had my brother and Drew not come in before he did it.

“Let her go!” Downy roared, his hand automatically coming up, sweeping in a round house punch to Danny’s face.

Danny saw it coming, though, and stepped back, placing me in front of the punch.

Luckily, my brother was able to stop himself from hitting me square in the face, but he couldn’t stop his fist from making contact completely.

It hit me in the shoulder, knocking me forward and down before I even knew what hit me.

Danny released my throat, causing me to fall.

I was sure that was largely due to the fact that he needed them to defend himself against Downy who was now actively beating the shit out of him.

Drew picked me up off the floor, his eyes scanning my face and neck before he said, “You okay?”

I nodded, my throat working as my heart beat frantically.

He gave one quick nod, then helped me to the kitchen where he sat me on the kitchen counter.

He pulled out a butcher knife from the knife block and said, “Hold this.”

I held it, then watched in amusement as he walked carefully around the kitchen island, straight up to Danny who was preoccupied holding off my brother, and promptly pulled him back by the collar of his shirt.

Then, with hilarious ease, he began his own beat-down of Danny while my brother watched with a satisfied smirk on his face.