Curvy Valentine Match

“I am happy, Helen.”

She arched a brow. “Happy being stuck?”

I shrugged. “Falling in love won’t make me not stuck, if anything it’ll make it worse when things don’t work out in love, then I’ll be forced to stand by and watch some guy move on because I can’t just pack up and head for greener pastures.” Another reason to leave well enough alone with Xander.

“You mean if. If things don’t work out.” Helen looked at me with a mixture of shock and pity that I didn’t like, couldn’t tolerate. Yeah, the past had screwed me up a little, but it was my choice.

“If. When.” I shrugged off the words. “If is nice, but when is more likely.”

“You have a lot of answers Mara, but I gotta say, they sound a lot like excuses to me.” There was laughter in her eyes, daring me to come up with another excuse.

“Did somebody say food?” Her laughter followed me into the kitchen.

Xander

I stared at her like a creepy stalker, looking between the wooden shutters that were merely decoration for the windows on the front of The Mayflower. She sat at the bar with a tall glass of dark beer in front of her, an empty shot glass beside it. Mara wore a blank expression as she stared up at the television but she didn’t really see it, only no one else seemed to notice. A couple flirted on one side of her and Mara was oblivious, on the other side was an empty seat and then two old timers, probably yucking it up about the good ol’ days.

I watched her for far too long before I grabbed the oversized metal door handle and pulled it open, stepping into the welcome dimness of The Mayflower, the lower hum of dozens of conversations and the familiar stench of beer and cigarettes. None of that mattered, though.

Just Mara.

As casually as I could manage, I slid onto the stool beside her with a smile that I didn’t feel pasted on my face. Only the smallest hint of recognition showed with a flare of her nostrils, but Mara’s gaze was fixed on the television. “Hey.”

She blinked slowly and turned to me even slower, an exhausted expression taking over her features. “Sheriff.” Her brown gaze went right back to the sports recap playing on the big screen.

I let out a low sigh and leaned against the bar, fully facing the stubborn woman beside me. “Mara. How can I apologize if you’re too stubborn to even talk to me?”

“I don’t want and I don’t need an apology, Sheriff. You did what you felt you had to do and so did I.” She said the words but she believed them even less than I did.

“Bullshit, Mara.”

She shrugged. “Believe what you want. You will anyway.”

“So you don’t want me to be sorry?”

“I don’t want you to be anything, Xander. You have no problem with the way the system works because you are a part of that system and I accept that. If you don’t, that’s your problem.” She picked up her beer and took a long sip, drawing my gaze to the smooth column of her neck, the muscles in her throat, reminding me of her sharp, overworked tongue. “Are we done here?”

I sighed again, growing more annoyed than desperate even though I did feel a deep sense of desperation that I was losing her again, possibly forever, this time. “No Mara, we’re not done. Don’t you see? We will never be done. Ever. You’re in my blood as much as I’m in yours, that’s why you’re so damn angry with me.” The worst part was that Mara knew this, deep in her heart she knew it, but she was too stubborn to admit it, even to herself.

“No Xander, I’m angry at the system of which you are a willing participant. I’m angry that you were happy to let a teenage girl sit in jail while her older conspirator got to go home to his mommy and daddy. I’m angry that you were just doing your job.” She turned to me then and I could see the hurt and the anger and the disappointment that darkened her brown eyes. “Even with your own history of getting off scot-free, you were still willing to let her take the fall.”

I growled as my anger bubbled to the surface. “No one has gotten off scot-free or taken the fall for anything, and you damn well know it.”

“Not yet, but Lonnie told me how you found them. Seems eerily familiar. Too familiar.”

“No, you don’t get to use these kids to keep hold our past, a past I didn’t even know about until recently, against me, Mara. I don’t make the rules, I enforce them, which I did. And it all seemed to work out so why am I the bad guy?”