Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)(9)

“You did that today, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Raj was gonna flip his shit when I told him.

“You don’t know where you’ll be going to school?”

“I doubt it’ll be a traditional campus setting like you’re in. Especially since the Phoenix VA is a teaching hospital and affiliated with over a hundred colleges. I just hope the hours I spend in the classroom every week count toward my required duty hours. It’d blow if I had eighteen credit hours of instruction, plus I had to work a full forty.” I shrugged. “But it’s a possibility.”

“Will you tell Sierra you’ll probably be here for longer than two weeks?”

I shook my head and walked to the fridge for a bottle of Gatorade. “Not until I figure out what to do next.”

Kyler snorted. “You know what you need to do, West.”

Kiss her stupid and beg her forgiveness? Like that’d work. “What?”

“Approach her on a professional level. Show up at her office tomorrow and pile on the guilt that she’d thrown you out before you could explain you were trying to hire her. Then tell her you’d like to look at rental properties since you’ll be around a while.”

Ideas raced through my head—a variation on Ky’s suggestion because I didn’t want to tip my hand too soon. I needed to get her to spend time with me. I’d deal with any backlash of what I had to do to make that happen after the primary goal had been achieved. Wasn’t it better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission anyway? “Quick thinking, Ky. Damn. You’re good.”

He grinned. “It’s what I do—learn to think on my feet and adapt fast.”

The doorbell rang.

Ky glanced at his phone and said, “Shit.” He stood, whipped off his sweat-stained wife-beater and tossed it aside. He yanked on a Sun Devils Football T-shirt and looked at me. “You have all your stuff?”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Hell yes. The teaching assistant—I mean my tutor—is here.”

I said, “Tutor? I thought I was the only one who needed extra help.”

Kyler blushed. Then he disappeared around the corner.

I scanned the living room to make sure I hadn’t left anything before I hoisted my duffel bag and entered the foyer.

A tall, gorgeous redhead dropped her hand from Ky’s crotch when she saw me and seemed nervous that Ky would introduce us.

He didn’t.

McKay, you dog. Nailing the teacher’s assistant. She could teach him all sorts of new tricks.

“If for some reason Raj gets delayed tonight, you’re welcome to stay here again,” Ky offered.

“I appreciate it.” I maintained a straight face when I said, “Study hard, but a word of advice. Staying in one position too long will cause back and neck problems. Change positions frequently.”



Late afternoon I paused in the lobby of the apartment building, looking for the buzzer marked Ramos. I pushed #220 and immediately heard a static-filled, “Yo.”

“It’s West.”

The door lock buzzed.

I took the stairs to the second floor.

Raj had left the door cracked open. The instant I stepped inside, I wished I’d left my sunglasses on. The walls and the ceiling were so goddamned pink it felt like swimming in a bottle of Kinky Pink.

“In here,” Raj called out.

I stepped through a doorway into the combination living room and kitchen.

Raj grinned at me. “Welcome to the pink palace.”

“How old is your sister? Don’t most girls grow out of the pink phase at like thirteen?”

“Not T’Quelle. I expected she’d repaint after I mentioned it was like being inside a vagina, but she just called me a pig.” Raj indicated the floral couch. “You’re crashing on the sofa bed.”

“Great.” I dropped my duffel on the floor. “Tell me you picked up beer.”

“In the fridge.”

“Thank you, Jesus.” I popped the top and snagged the chair across from him. The miniature dining table was covered in a frilly pink lace tablecloth. “How was the drive?”

“Long. I hate driving by myself.”

“You hate doing anything by yourself.”

“The result of having two older brothers and two younger sisters. I was always surrounded.” Raj swigged his beer. “Only things surrounding a white boy like you growing up in Wyoming were fences and tumbleweeds, amirite?”

“Pretty much.” I picked up a picture frame and peered at the two cute college-aged girls, one with dreadlocks and one with cornrows. “Which one of these bikini-wearing hotties is your sister?”

“They’re both my sisters, *. Quick genetics update; when a black woman marries a Mexican man—none of their offspring look like them or each other.”

Raj joked about his mixed heritage all the time. His genetics seemed evenly split. He had the height and hair from his African-American side, but he had lighter skin and hazel eyes from his Mexican side. We’d gone through basic training together. We’d attended every medical seminar, every college course, every advanced training class together. We even shared an apartment in Fort Hood. Some of our supervisors swore we shared a brain. So the army f*ck-up affected us both.