One Bossy Proposal: Enemies to Lovers Romance

“Wyatt should’ve been okay. Our unit ran into a trap, a buried bomb,” I tell her slowly. “The armored carrier was ripped open like a tin can. I was pinned under something—” I shake my head. “A huge piece of steel, I think. I don’t know how it never crushed me, but there was an opening, and he still had his wits. Wyatt dragged it off me and carried me out. We were almost to safety when the second explosion went off. Another fucking bomb, hidden just a few paces away like a landmine. He lost his leg because he was ahead of me. A few bruises and a concussion aside, I walked away fine. The leg wasn’t the worst part, though. For saving my life, he lost his own...”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, folding into me like melted butter.

“The rest, it’s a long story,” I whisper.

“It’s okay. I get it now. He saved you, so you keep him in cinnamon rolls and prosthetics...”

“I’m trying to keep him alive. Everyone else gave up on him a long time ago. The leg was just the trigger for what Wyatt lost later.” I pause, inhaling slowly. “Some of it was his fault. A lot of it wasn’t. Regardless, he loved his wife so much. He...he almost bled the fuck out that day. I kept telling him to stay, to pull through for Olivia and their boy. I’ve never seen anybody fight so hard in physical therapy, but he came through it.”

I lose my train of thought. Or maybe just my words.

Nevermore watches me softly, her green eyes twinkling in the night, all moon and stars and roaming questions.

“Olivia left him broken. She blamed his addictions, but she was cheating long before that. Before the accident,” I tell her slowly. “She filed for divorce and won custody of the kid easily. She said he had PTSD, and technically, she wasn’t wrong, even though he was getting treatment. She said he couldn’t be around their son unsupervised.”

“That’s brutal,” Dakota whispers, bowing her head.

“Yeah, well, the judge went by the book and threw out any context, so that was that.” I have to stop because it still puts me in a blinding rage. “Right? Wrong? Who the fuck knows. I’m not here to play social worker or argue morals. I just know Olivia Emory kept the kid, the house, and a lot of their shit. Wyatt was cleaned out, left homeless with no job and no people. It’s a damn miracle he got off the opiates when he hit the streets. I helped him with that, before he left my place after crashing a few weeks. Even now, I have plenty of room, but he’s a hard-nosed fuck. I can’t make him stay with me.”

“It’s sweet of you to try. It’s really kind how you care for him.” Her fingers find my brow.

She’s stroking me.

Touching me like a big, angry animal needing to be soothed.

For fuck’s sake, she’s not wrong.

Maybe I am tonight, as hard as that is to admit.

“It’s not sweet. It’s responsible, and I owe him my life. Bringing him his daily sugar rush and making sure he can walk is the least I can do. That divorce annihilated him. It drove him to drinking, bad habits, and took what little hope he ever had. He’s basically an alcoholic wreck, and I can only do so much.”

I glance away sharply. It’s not her problem, but putting this shit into words makes it feel like she should share it.

I don’t want that.

I don’t want her to shoulder this boulder I’ve been heaving back and forth for years, a task that feels like it’ll only end when the very thing I’m trying so hard to stop finally happens. When I walk into the camp one day and find Wyatt’s cold, stiff body.

“I understand. I...I wanted to die after my wedding. I didn’t get out of bed for days,” Dakota admits with a sad sigh. “My mom finally threatened to send me to the Larkin’s farm to clean stables if I didn’t start moving and doing normal things.” She pauses and smiles. “I wouldn’t have minded cleaning horse poop so much. My town is kinda famous for animals, and there was this old horse named Edison. He’d always escape and drive his owners crazy, but it was always entertaining for everybody else. One time this tiger got loose, and Edison even helped track it down—”

“Tiger? What the fuck?” I wonder if I heard her right.

She just smiles sheepishly.

“Nevermore, you come from a weird place,” I grind out. “Is it a coming-of-age rite for every Poe to grow up in The Twilight Zone? I’m surprised you didn’t stay.”

“It wasn’t an easy choice, but...if I had to rejoin the living, I decided it couldn’t be in that little town. It couldn’t be Dallas anymore no matter how lovely the people were to me,” she tells me, her eyes misted with memories. “They saw my worst humiliation. Plus, cool animals aside, I never totally meshed with small-town life. I started applying for jobs everywhere after that mess, and a shipping company in Seattle was the first place that called me back for a marketing gig.”