Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(40)

“Greyson?” he called louder as he came up the stairs. I was punching my hands into my coat sleeves when he appeared from the living room. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t do this. Not today. And I can’t be in this house with you right now.”

“I should say I’m sorry now.”

“I’ll accept that as the best apology you can deliver in this state.”

A flicker passed over his face. A lake perfectly reflecting a statue, then rippling. Was it regret? A rethinking of his assumptions? A change in strategy? All of them?

“I keep thinking about you first,” I said. “I keep asking myself what you need, and I’m happy to give it to you. I love you. But today? It’s about me and what I need. You can’t give it to me. Fine. I get it. But I have nothing to give right now.”

I opened the front door, and he came for me, grabbing me at my new favorite spot. The hair on the back of my head. I gasped.

“When are you coming back?”

“Stop.”

The flicker again. The ripple in the cold lake. My Caden was in there.

He let me go, dropping his hand completely. His body was still. No nervous tics. No tells for displeasure or discomfort.

I’d married a fucking robot.

“I’ll come back when I do.”

I walked out, closing the door behind me.

I breathed the outside air, exhaled a wintry cloud, and went down the steps onto 87th Street with no destination except relief.



* * *



Colin met me for a movie. It was loud and fast. The sensory overload pushed my sadness and anxiety into a corner but didn’t eradicate it.

“Wasn’t that better than the depressing French thing?” Colin asked outside the theater as he wrapped his scarf around his neck.

“Sure.”

“So,” he said, hands in his pockets, looking up the street for a free cab. “What’s going on with the man of the house?”

“How do you mean?”

“You called me for a spur-of-the-moment movie. You don’t do that. If I want to see you, I have to make plans a month in advance.”

I bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to find the happiness I’d earned. “The proposal I told you about? For Mt. Sinai? I finished it.”

“All right! Congratulations! Are we getting a drink?”

A drink was so much more appealing than dealing with Doctor Robot.



* * *



The lighting was minimal and the patrons were all in the hippest years of their twenties. Colin had unbuttoned his coat, exposing his neck. The bartender, a young woman with the flattest, smoothest stomach I’d seen on anyone since treating Iraqi refugees, couldn’t keep her eyes off it. I held my credit card out for her, but my brother pushed my hand away and held out his card. The bartender pursed her lips and eyed his hand, then his face, holding back a smile.

“Oh, for Chrissakes.” My grumble was drowned out by the music.

When she took his card, she touched his hand.

“I could be your girlfriend, you know,” I said.

“You used a card to buy the last round. Same name.” He brought his drink to his smiling lips.

“I could be your wife.”

He waved his bare left ring finger at me with a devilish wink.

“Remember when I had to be your prom date?” I asked. “You asked three girls and they all said yes?”

“You were a fun date.”

“And you made out with all three of them anyway.”

“You were dancing with… what’s his name?”

“I had one foot in a recruitment office, so I was dancing with everyone.”

“Thanks for taking one for the team.” Colin still thought my entry into the military had spared him the pressure to do the same. I wasn’t sure Dad wasn’t aware Colin wasn’t cut out to be bossed around all day. “Mom hasn’t seen you since you came back.”

I sipped my drink. Not bad. They didn’t have wine, so I’d ended up with a whiskey and mint concoction, and Colin had gotten something with a vanilla bean sticking out of it. The bartender dropped the check in front of us with his card on top.

“I’m waiting for Dad to get back. She knows that.”

Dad was in Japan, and Mom was doing what she did—waiting for him to come back. It was the gender-reversed version of the life I’d avoided by retiring with Caden.

“Well, she’s not telling you, but she’s talking about coming here.” He signed the receipt before showing me that his copy had her number on it.

“Jake was in North Carolina for how long before he saw them? Was she chewing off your ear then?”

“You’re the baby girl. You weren’t supposed to be in the military at all.”

“I wasn’t supposed to have my own life at all.”

“And she’s wound up about you guys being in Medical Corps. From what Dad says, the surge is still going and they’re deploying doctors and nurses whether they like it or not. He said you guys dodged a bullet leaving when you did. Anyone with a medical license and a pair of boots is getting stop-lossed.”

“I’m not going back. Neither is Caden. We’re both done.” I slapped my hands together to illustrate the done-ness of our service obligations.