Burn in Hail(30)

My brows rose at hearing all that.

"Then you get to eat. Get some shit done after lunch. Possibly run two  more miles," he continued. "Then you do a hike that can range from ten  to twenty miles in full gear."

"How much does your gear weigh?" I interrupted him.

He shrugged. "Eighty pounds or so."

"You're kidding, right?"

He looked at me, saw the surprise on my face, then promptly laughed in it.

"Wish I was," he said. "But that's not even half of it. And that was every day of boot camp, no joking."

I shook my head. There would be no way in hell I'd make it through that.  Hell, I couldn't even tell you the last time I'd run a mile, let alone  six. Twice, at that.

"By the time your head hits the bed that first day, you're out. And when  you get up, still tired from the day before, there's no way not to go  to sleep that fast any more. You're exhausted times two. It only gets  easier from there," he finished.

I laughed incredulously. "I tried to run a mile a few weeks ago when I  first got the office set up. I got about a quarter of a lap around the  track and stopped. I don't think running is for me. Or the military."

"That doesn't surprise me," he said. "Most women can't hack it."

I felt my back stiffen.

"You going to leave anytime soon?" he asked, not aware of what his comment has done to me.

I put the car into drive and slowly nosed my way into the intersection, and accelerated out of the South Side.

"Once we get back onto Main Street, I want you to go to the vet clinic  on the right," he said. "I'll run him in there, and then we can be on  our way."

I didn't reply.

My mind was elsewhere.

When I was twelve, my father told me that girls couldn't play baseball because it was a man's sport.

When I was thirteen, my father told me that I had to learn how to do  ‘women things' so I could make some man a good wife someday.

When I was fourteen, he told me that I needed to slim down because men didn't like fat women.

When I was sixteen, my father told me to dress conservatively because  girls that dressed like sluts were asking for men to treat them as such.

And that wasn't even the half of it.

I could probably recite hundreds of edicts that my father had spouted  off during a conversation we'd had, and none of them were good.

In fact, I would venture to say that all of them were bad, and that the  majority of them were about how women were the inferior race.

"Here's the turn," Tate, the asshole, said.

I gritted my teeth and pulled into the parking lot, pulling up to the first spot that was nearest to the door.

"Be right back," he said, pushing the door open and getting out.

I waited for him to get the dog, and walk into the building before I backed out of the parking spot and headed home.

Fuck him.

Doing this-making sure he was taken care of and out of my life-was for  the best. I couldn't live with another man that was exactly like the man  that had made my younger years unbearable.

I just couldn't.





Chapter 19


If only sarcasm burned calories.

-T-shirt

Tate

I was angry.

Very, very angry.

Today had been shit.

First learning about Ariya and her daughter. Then going into a situation  that nearly had me getting killed. Then, I'd taken the dog to the vet  and heard that it was likely he wouldn't survive because not only was he  malnourished, but he also had heartworms. It was so severe that if he'd  been left there like he had been, he would've died in a matter of days.

After paying the vet and making sure they did what they could, I walked out and found that I'd been left.         

     



 

Which wasn't even that bad, to be honest. I'd been in the vet for an  hour. I'd expected to find her in the waiting room, but she hadn't been.  Then, I'd decided that it was unfair to ask her to wait when she'd  already taken me all the way over there.

Though, I hadn't thought that she'd do that.

I'd thought, for sure, that she'd still be there waiting.

So I'd gone in search of her once I'd gotten a ride from Travis of all people.

Once he'd dropped me off, I'd gone directly to Hennessy's house only to  find her not there, but a fucking For Rent sign out front.

Pairing that with the fact that I'd gotten new patient papers from  another psychologist a couple of towns over, I was fit to be tied.

Seriously, if she were there right then, I'd demand to know what in the  hell had happened in the last twenty-four hours to cause her to lose her  damn mind.

I started to work on the house, and lost track of time. In fact, it was  nearly two in the morning before I realized that I'd been at it all  night, and hadn't stopped for food or anything to drink in nearly eight  hours.

Once I'd made it to the kitchen, I looked out the window over the sink  as I downed a glass of tap water, and my eyes narrowed when I saw her  car.

It wasn't parked in the normal spot. It was parked on the side of her  house, nearly hidden unless you were standing exactly where I was  standing.

My jaw went tight as I narrowed my eyes.

That little shit.

I slammed my empty glass on the counter with a thud and exited the house seconds later.

The moment my boots hit the front porch, I tried the knob.

Locked.

Pulling out my lock picking kit-a handy tool that I'd found worked great  when I was trying to get through locks and gates to get to a car-and  deftly opened her door without a second thought.

The lights were all out when I entered, and I paused at the door as I relocked it to help my eyes adjust.

The moment I saw all the packing boxes, my anger returned ten fold.

How was she just going to leave, when I knew for a fact she loved this fucking house, as well as the area?

Which blinded me to the fact that the moment that I'd locked the door,  Hennessy had started toward me with a freakin' baseball bat of all  things.

She swung, I heard the whistle of the wood in the air as it tried to  connect with my head, and turned at the last moment so that it connected  with my shoulder rather than my head.

"What the fuck, Hennessy?" I cried out.

The wood bat hit the floor.

"Tate?" she asked in confusion. "God, what are you doing breaking into my house?"

I didn't answer her, instead shooting back a question of my own. "Why do you have a ‘For Rent' sign in your front yard?"

She hissed at me. "You can't just walk in here like you own the place!"

I ground my teeth together. "You left me at the vet's office, too. Made me hitchhike home."

"I didn't make you do anything. You're a grown man. You could've called a cab," she sneered.

Where was all this anger coming from? What had I done to her to make her this pissed off?

"Is this because of Ariya?"

She inhaled loudly. "No."

"Liar," I countered back.

She growled under her breath. "You're so freakin' annoying. Though  knowing you have a daughter with some other person that isn't me kind of  sucks, I'll get over it. It's not like we had anything going on  anyway."

"It's not like we … " I paused. "We did have something going."

"Well, it doesn't matter now, does it?" she countered.

I gritted my teeth. "Yes, it fucking matters. You and me aren't done. And you're not moving out of your house."

She laughed in my face and bent over to pick up the baseball bat. "Get  out of my house. Oh, and stop using your goddamn saw in the middle of  the night."

I froze, surprised to hear her let a curse word past those lovely lips.

"You cursed," I pointed out.

She laughed humorlessly. "Go away."

Instead of going away, I moved forward, snatched her up by the waist,  and moved her until her entire body was flattened between mine and the  wall.

"How about you check the attitude and tell me what's going through that crazy head of yours," I snapped.

My cock started to stiffen at feeling her lush ass so close, and it took me a moment to realize that she'd spoken.

"What?" I asked, unsure of what she said.

"You heard me, dammit. I told you that I can do anything you can do."

I blinked. "Okay."         

     



 

What was I supposed to say to that?

"Okay?" she shrieked. "Just okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "Okay."

She growled. "You don't think I can do the things you do, do you?"

Well, no. But that's just because she'd never done them before. I had no  doubt that if she put her mind to it, she could do anything she wanted.

"That's not what I said," I started. "What I said was … "

"What you said was that you think that I'm inferior, useless, and a waste of space."

My entire being stilled, and I realized instantly that what I was  dealing with now was a wound not made by me, but by a man that was  supposed to protect the heart he had control of. By a man that you were  supposed to trust with everything.

Hennessy, however, couldn't. She didn't even realize that what she had was rotten, and I wasn't sure if she still understood it.

I did.

I could see that she was ready to fight me over something imaginary that  she heard, and that imaginary thing only solidified what she'd already  been leaning towards since she'd found out about my fictitious child.