Taking the Leap (River Rain 3)

Further, he’d never realized how she was a lot like him, active, outdoorsy, happier on the road to somewhere, a trail to nowhere in particular, or best of all, smack in the middle of nothing that was everything than she was being anywhere else.

He was taken out of this thought, and how aggravating it was they were finally getting to know one another, and then she pulled an Alex, started acting strange and ditched him, when the person behind him in the drive-through tooted their horn.

Rix felt his eyes narrow as he looked to his rearview mirror, because whoever it was needed to chill. He couldn’t exactly get out of their way, driving off without his coffee.

When his gaze hit the mirror, he saw the hood of a bright yellow Jeep, and before he’d even looked to the windshield, his throat had constricted.

But he looked to the windshield, knowing what he would see.

She wasn’t the only one with a bright yellow Jeep in Prescott, but she was the only one who would toot her horn at him in Scooters’ drive-through.

Peri.

His ex.

As in, ex-they-lost-money-on-deposits-after-she-dumped-him-when-he-lost-his-legs-fiancée.

Shit.

She waved at him, her hand moving fast, a smile on her face under her Oakley Split Times.

Jesus.

Smiling and waving like she hadn’t completely gutted him when he was at his absolute lowest.

He lifted his own hand and flicked a couple fingers out, thankful the Scooter’s kid was leaning through the window with his coffee.

Rix took it, put it in his cupholder, and moved to his hand control to go for the accelerator, stupidly happy that he’d put his legs on that day, rather than doing what he normally would do when he went to work, using his chair.

His truck had been retrofitted with controls so he could use his hands to drive. But today, Peri in his rearview—and shit you not, that was apt—he was glad he’d put on his legs, even if she couldn’t see them.

Though, the minute he started to pull away, she hit her horn again, three quick beeps.

Rix slowed and glanced at his mirror in time to see her sticking her head out the window, her long blonde hair falling to the side.

“Hang on a second, Rix!” she shouted.

“Shit,” he hissed to himself.

He should just go. Except seeing her going somewhere in her Jeep when he was out in his truck, and a couple of times noticing her in a place where he was (so he’d usually then leave that place so he didn’t have to deal with an uncomfortable conversation, like this one was undoubtedly gonna be), he hadn’t seen her since it all went down, and the fact it went down at all, she didn’t deserve his time.

He didn’t go.

He pulled off to the side.

She didn’t glide to the window and get her coffee, she pulled off beside him.

When she got out, something drove him to do the same.

No, not something.

He was on his legs. When they did whatever she was angling for them to do right then, he would stand in front of her and look down at her to remind her of the them they used to be.

The them she threw away.

Because one of the parts of them she said she loved, since she was nearly five ten, was that he was six two, and she’d had a lot of boyfriends before him, but she hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to tip her head back when she kissed a man.

She got off on him being dominant in a number of ways, not just that one.

Until she didn’t.

When she was at the back of her Jeep, she peered around to him, her body jolting.

Yeah.

There he was, standing.

Half of the them they used to be.

Not the man in the chair she’d left behind.

And she was the other half, unchanged, sunshiny and exuding energy.

She quickly recovered from her surprise at seeing him on his feet.

“I’d heard you got your prosthetics,” she noted.

Yeah, with the help of some parallel bars, a righteous physical therapist, and family and friends who took his back, he’d first gotten up on those mothers nearly two fucking years ago.

“You heard right,” he unnecessarily confirmed.

“Can you wait a second?” she asked. “I’m just gonna go grab my coffee.”

Only Peri would think, with a line that was four cars deep, she could drive off, park and walk up to the window to deal with her order like the world revolved around her shit and how she wanted it to go.

But even with this thought, he jutted out his chin to agree.

She turned and strutted back to the coffee joint, and Rix watched as she tossed her bright smile to the driver of the car at the window and scooted her slender body between that car and the building to get to the window.

The driver was a woman. She appeared peeved.