Page 54 of Chasing the Other Woman

Well.

If that came from anyone other than Tom, I'd say it was rude. With Tom, it's just truth.

Across the street, Brooks lowers a huge sheet of wood onto the sidewalk. Someone says something to him. He answers, but his gaze cuts back toward me again, quick and helpless, like checking my position is built into his muscles.

For two years, I thought I had become something he looked past. Something he moved around. A problem he managed from the corner of his eye while Luci sat beside him in the truck and the world decided she belonged there.

But Tom doesn’t say Brooks loves me. He doesn’t make it pretty. He simply hands me an observation like a weather reading.

Pressure falling. Wind shifting. Husband watching.

It doesn’t fix anything.

But it does make the sky look different.

By late afternoon, I've moved from SAM to inside The Funnel Cloud, taking up residence at the bar while I update the increasingly weathered notebook that's become my most used fashion accessory. Bonnie Raitt is on the jukebox, and, in all honesty, that should have been my first clue that things were about to go sideways.

I’m at the end of the bar updating the check-in list when Luci appears beside me.

She looks less polished than usual. Still pretty. Still blonde. Still wearing her storm-team jacket like it means something more than employment. But there’s a tightness around her mouth that wasn’t there yesterday.

“Sam,” she says.

"Whatever you're about to say, don't."

Her eyes narrow. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

"I'd prefer to keep it that way."

“This is important.”

"However important you think it is, I suspect that there's a hundred other issues that are more important. Like storm recovery and cat memes."

She steps closer. “Brooks and I need you to stop making this harder than it has to be.”

My fingers curl. It's not that I'm really thinking about punching her. As far as I recall, I've never punched anyone.

It's just that my hand wants something to do.

I turn to her. “Brooks and you.”

Her chin lifts. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t, but I have a feeling you’re dying to explain.”

A few people nearby keep talking, but quieter now. Petra’s eyes flick to us from behind the bar.

Luci lowers her voice. “You left him long before you packed a bag. You know that, right? He talked to me, Sam. After the accident. After you shut down. After you kept trying to force your way back into a field that almost destroyed both of you.”

My stomach gives one hard twist.

She sees it. Her eyes sharpen.

“He was lonely,” she says softly. “You made him feel like the villain for wanting you safe. Do you know how much guilt he carried? Do you know how many nights he stayed awake because he couldn’t talk to you?”

I think of the SAM rig humming behind the bar. Brooks’s hands designing something with my name on it. Tom’s voice. He tracks you like radar.

I think of Brooks standing in this very room, telling Tony not to touch me. Telling Luci not to touch him.