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“That’s what I said,” she confirmed. “Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Captain Cynthia Lawless will touch ground in Blue Creek.”
“Captain?” I asked, amazed. She’d made fuckingcaptain?Not that I was surprised. I was thrilled for her. I also envied the fuck out of her.“Um, will you be bringing her to the bar or something? Will she be, like,around?”
Stephanie crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me.
“Luke Kane, if you want to talk to my sister, you know where to find her,” she said before heading off to find her girlfriend.
That much was true. Once Cindy Lawless was back in Blue Creek, I could figure out where to find her.
The question was… did she want me to?
Four
Cindy
It was weird having free time. It was about eleven o’clock on a Monday morning and I was lying in bed, staring at my ceiling doing absolutely nothing. I closed my eyes and willed myself to go back to sleep. This was what normal people did, right? Slept in? This was useless. Free time was overrated. It was driving me crazy.
I forced myself up and into some running clothes, wrangling my hair into a messy bun. I’d kept it short, just under chin-length while I was in the Army, but after getting injured and working a desk, I’d let it grow. Now, it was totally out of control, a mess of split ends and scraggle hitting my midback.
Stephanie barged into my room without knocking, looking like she’d just returned from the salon. She might have. My sister never left the house looking like anything less than perfection. The hair, the makeup, the outfit, the shoes… It was all justright.My eighteen-year-old self would have been jealous of her. My twenty-nine-year-old self was exhausted just looking at her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
“Running.”
“You know you don’t have to do that anymore, right? No one’s going to force you out of bed at oh-five-hundred hours and make you sprint ten miles through the desert or something.”
“I know. I just like running.”
She shuddered. The horror.
“I have a better idea,” Steph said. “Let’s go to brunch.”
“Huh?”
“Brunch. You know, maybe breakfast, maybe lunch, but mimosas either way?” she explained.
“But I was going running.”
“Yes, but you don’t have to,” she said slowly. “You don’t have to do Army things anymore. You can come eat pancakes and drink mimosas with me.”
“It’s Monday.”
I couldn’t imagine shrugging off everything and justgoing to brunchin the middle of a Monday.
“So? I’m off and you have nowhere to be. Go shower and change into something cute and we’ll go to the diner. Ooh, maybe we can get mani/pedis after,” she squealed.
I forced myself to smile, but if I was being honest, brunch with my sister followed by a trip to a nail salon sounded like hell. I loved my sister, and I was beyond grateful that she was putting me up in her spare bedroom while I figured out what to do next with myself, but the last thing I wanted to do was roam around town, interact with strangers, and havegirl talkwith my sister.
It was just sonormal. And I wasn’t ready for normal yet.
“Please, Cindy,” she said, her smile fading and turning concerned. “It’s been almost three days and all you’ve done is hang around the apartment and go running.”
“I know.”
“I just… I’m so proud of you, of course, but I’ve missed out on ten years with my older sister. I want some of that time back. Please.”
She looked so genuine that I smiled again, this time considerably less forced.
