“I said leave.”
“Leave what?”
“Here. Leave.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone is sick of you being surly and snapping all the time.”
“I’m always surly,” I countered, waving off her comments.
“True. But this is a new extreme. I don’t know what happened between you and pretty Blythe-Meuller. And,” she talked over me when I went to interrupt, “I don’t want to know. But I do know that whatever went down is making you pissier than usual. And while everyone else seems to just be ignoring it, or avoiding you, I do not get such a luxury. I have to deal with you. So do us both a favor… and leave.”
“I need to work.”
“You have no cases. Everyone else has been handling their own cases just fine without you. Take a vacation. Or just sit in your place being miserable. I don’t care. Just don’t be here.”
To be fair, Jules wasn’t being a bitch.
I actually was being that much of a dick.
I recognized it.
I just couldn’t seem to curb it.
“Fine,” I growled, slamming the file I was glancing at shut, grabbing my cell, and moving out of my office.
“Jules,” Kai said to her as she walked out behind me, his voice almost chastening, a tone you rarely heard him use on anyone, let alone Jules.
“I know, I know,” she said, shrugging at him. “I was supposed to keep my mouth shut.”
“Yes,” he agreed, but his lips were tipped up, “you were.”
“You done talking about me like I’m not here?” I asked, grabbing my jacket from the rack by the door.
“Hey, you know… you still haven’t checked out the barns and animals. It’s good to unplug, and get away sometimes,” Kai told me, giving me a direction I so clearly needed.
“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding as I shrugged into my jacket, making my way out the door.
I fucked around at home, unable to stop thinking about it.
About her.
About what must have happened when she woke up.
Alone.
Would she have realized the reality immediately? Felt the empty side of the bed where I had been, and known I was gone? Or would she stumble out of bed, climb into that silk robe of hers that shouldn’t have been sexy, but undeniably was, wander out into the apartment looking for me, maybe hoping I was brewing coffee, or making breakfast, thinking about sharing another meal, talking at the table, taking it back to the bed, or right there in the living room.
It was hard to imagine her reaction, how she would let herself react to it. Sometimes, she just let it out there, openly showed what was going on inside. Other times, she shut everything down tight, locked it up, wouldn’t let it out.
Sure, we both knew this day would come, but would she be even more bothered by it because it came the morning after we went to bed?
Or was it smarter to cut the ties before they could wrap us up any tighter?
Would she be able to rationalize it that way?
Or would she just feel used?
The latter thought turned my spit sour, making me have to choke it back.
I didn’t want her to think that. That I had used her. That she was just a convenient lay. I could get that anywhere. I actually preferred women who were practically strangers to go to bed with, not ones I had spent almost every waking moment with for a week, not one that I had gotten to know better than I even knew some of my coworkers that had been like my family for years.
Generally, I stuck around a couple days. Once they were settled. Not always at their side, but in the same town, checking in, making sure they were adjusting, and not calling old contacts or shit like that.
Not that Sloane really had any.
I wondered as I packed a new bag and threw it in my car, if that fact would make the transition easier or harder on her. Would she feel like it was just the same old thing, but in a new town with new faces? Or would this make her all the more acutely aware how alone she had always been, how empty her life could have been called by an outsider.
The drive down Jersey was one I could do on autopilot. Same roads. Same sights. An hour where my mind could do nothing but work in endless circles.
It wasn’t until I saw the signs for them that I had to stop and focus.
The Pine Barrens.
One-point-one million acres of reserved land densely populated by trees, and next to no human inhabitants.
Unless you were like Ranger.
Holding up a finger to the law.
Building his place right in the middle of them somewhere.
The somewhere part was what had me idling on one of the sandy makeshift roads, looking in all directions, trying to remember the way to his place.
With a shrug, knowing my phone wasn’t going to work even if I could call him and get an answer, I took the road to the end, like I seemed to remember having to do, then drove it in to park it between trees, grabbed my shit, and decided to take it on foot.