* * *

Truth! I’d planned to fuck the shit out of her on sight, give her what she’d been asking for all those years ago. But that fear in her eyes gave me pause. I could never hurt a wounded animal, then again… no never mind. I had to figure out this new wrinkle, the fear that I’d dismissed long ago shouldn’t still be there in her eyes. Shit!

Okay, so things hadn’t gone quite like I’d planned, but maybe that was for the better.

Plan A, come to think of it, just bulldozing my way in and taking what the fuck she’d stolen my life over, some might have seen as an attack. I see it as justice. But sure as fuck that shit would’ve got Jordan’s ass banned on amazon because fuckwit assholes like to play keyboard judge and jury from their grandmother’s basement, while committing every sin known to man with their sanctimonious bullshit. Fucking spawns from the bowels of hell. Yeah, maybe it was better that I move on to plan B or was it C?

I guess I still have a bit of human decency left in me after all if the fear in her eyes could stop me in my tracks. I always did prefer my opponents to have an even chance and the girl I’d just left sitting at her kitchen table was nowhere near ready to take me on.

No worries, it might just take some more time and finesse on my part but as long as the end result was the same. No way was I letting her off the hook. But the fear, I needed an explanation for the fear.

I played around with this new hiccup and what it could mean, but no matter which angle I looked at, I couldn’t see it. Then I put that away for now and focused on the other. Maybe this way was better. I can play with her even more, like a cat with a mouse before he pounced. Oh yeah!

As I fixed myself a sandwich before making a drink to wash it down, I saw the merit in my new plan. A bit less diabolical than the first, but the result would be the same. Game on.

* * *

As I sat and chewed I thought of our first meeting. In prison you spend a lot of time delving into shit that you would have no time for on the outside. I’d learned to study myself and the people around me, read them until you knew them inside out. That shit was easier than you may think. Human beings tend to be repetitive in their habits. Very rarely does our make-up change that drastically from one situation to the next.

She’d changed that’s for sure, but not enough to make me give up my need to see her pay for fucking me over. In some ways she was still that spoilt little bitch who’d disrupted my otherwise serene existence. I could still see that in her when she wasn’t looking at me with scared eyes. Whatever she was afraid of, it hadn’t stopped her from doing what she did and then moving on. Not once has she ever tried to set that shit right.

The mere fact that she thought she could just move on with her life as though nothing happened pisses me off. But I would admit that she had lost some of that sassy gleam in her eye that she’d had back then. Maybe it was remorse but who knows? Whether or not she felt that shit was still left to be seen.

I sat with my sandwich and watched her on the monitor as I waited for the fiancé to come home. My movements were mechanical even as my mind moved shit around in my head to formulate my new plan of action.

I grinned to myself as the scenes unfolded in my mind’s eye. Yes indeed this was way better. As I watched her, her nervousness came through the screen loud and clear and it was obvious that I had rattled her; she has no idea.

I didn’t much care for the sadness that lingered in her though. Somehow I’d expected her to be, I don’t know, a fighter. I’d told myself time and again that it was an act, that she was hiding her true colors from everyone else and only I had seen her true underbelly. This was no act. Some fuck was going on behind those eyes.

I pulled my hand back when I caught myself tracing her face through the damn screen. What the fuck? Granted I hadn’t fucked anything in a long fucking time, not even my hand. Somehow tugging one out in prison just never sat right with me though other motherfuckers had no qualms about doing that shit and worse out in the open for all the world to see.

Thank fuck I had more control and discipline than that, and though sometimes it was touch and go, I’d stayed the course. Ain’t fuck to get hot for in that hellhole any damn way. Nothing like the loss of freedom to kill the usual morning wood that had plagued me since my early teens. I’m fucked if I’d ever be hard up enough to actually want this one though. Nope, when I hit that it will be for purely selfish and vengeful reasons. To bring her as low as she she’d brought me.

Fuck, make sure the fiancé finds out for sure, then bounce. Same plan as plan A, but with a little more time needed since I seem to have gone soft in the last hour or so. Do I feel even a little hint of remorse for what I was about to do? Nope. Maybe for the guy a little bit. He had nothing to do with this shit, but then again I really don’t give a fuck. Vengeance takes no prisoners.

I have no doubt he’d leave her when I was through with her, didn’t care one fuck. Maybe it will take her five years to get her shit back in order, that’s only fair. What I do not need is to be checking her ass out, or worrying about why she looks scared and sad in turns.

Even in the bed sheet she wore there was no hiding her body. I’ve avoided watching her in states of undress because that shit just felt wrong. But I’d seen it in the little knee length fitted skirt she’d worn down the street earlier on her way home from work. Her car was in the shop for the past two weeks, or so I’d heard them say in one of their boring ass conversations.

These two were the most insipid twenty-somethings I’d ever had the misfortune of spying on. I also knew they hadn’t had sex in the last three days, which hadn’t meant shit to me before but now for some fucked up reason was making itself known.

I wasn’t trying to marry her ass so what the fuck do I care if she fucks that hump? I guess from the sudden knot in my gut that I needed to give that shit some more thought, because now the shit was not sitting well with me. For fuck sake!

* * *

It was another forty-five minutes before he showed up. I found myself cringing at the hello kiss they shared, but stashed that shit away in the farthest recesses of my mind for later. In the last few days since I’d moved in I’d seen plenty of those and they hadn’t bothered me then why should they now?

“You’re not doing this shit Todd, fuck that.” I don’t give a fuck how pretty she is, that snake will never mean more to me than a vengeance fuck. Though after seeing her the prospect of getting between her thighs have taken on new meaning. Like fuck!

It was the fear and the sadness I knew that had gotten under my skin. Seeing that shit through a computer screen and second guessing it was one thing. It had a whole different look in the flesh. I always was a sucker for a damsel in distress. It’s the marine in me, we’re just a few steps above a knight in shining armor. On that note…

I stood up, grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack, gave my arms the sniff test and headed for the front door this time. There were a few neighbors out and about across the street and a few houses down as I made my way to her front door.

I saw dude through the little diamond shaped pane of glass in the top of the door and wondered what the hell was up with these people and advertising. I guess my stint in the corps and made me sensitive to such things. I’m putting titanium on my shit when I build it, backed by reinforced steel. Motherfuckers are getting grimy in this bitch.

He opened the door with a ready smile, still didn’t ask who was calling. He deserved the fucking burn. Asshole! Okay Todd cool your jets there; this guy is not the enemy. Fuck he ain’t he’s been fucking my…whoa- whoa-whoa. I’m sure I wasn’t about to think ‘woman’ but wasn’t exactly sure how that sentence was going to end.

“Oh hello.” He gave me a squinty ‘I’m trying to place you’ look.

“Hi, I’m your new neighbor. Just thought I’d come over and introduce myself.” His face broke into a smile as he held out his hand. “Welcome to the neighborhood, come on in. We were just about to sit down to dinner but I’m sure my lady made more than enough to share.”

This was too fucking easy. Where the fuck does this guy think he is? For sure we were in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but still. Didn’t he own a television set? You’d think with that welcome I’d take pity on him and put the brakes on. He seemed so damn nice. Not a chance.

“The name’s Todd, Todd Rogers.” I took a risk putting my name out there to him like that, but there was no recognition in his tone when he answered.

“Bryan Gopher.” You have got to be fucking kidding me. I’d never got the last name before and now I know why. I followed him into the kitchen where she damn near had a heart attack when she turned from the stove and saw me trailing him.

“Honey, this is our new neighbor, Todd. Todd this is my fiancée Mallory.” Her eyes spoke volumes. I could fuck her shit up right here and now but where was the fun in that? I lifted my hand and took her trembling one.

“Hello Mallory it’s nice to meet you. I hope you don’t mind me dropping in on you like this. I had no idea it was dinner time.” Lying ass, these two could hit every early bird special between here and the border as early as they eat.

She stumbled over the introductions and hurried back to the stove. She dropped the spoon in her haste and her boy teased her about her clumsiness. I gave him a look but had to remind myself that in the last couple days of spying I hadn’t seen him touch her in anger. I’ve been around enough closet abusers to know that that smarmy pseudo joking tone usually hid an asshole behind closed doors. I’ll keep my eyes on him.

She made an excuse and went back to what she was doing while Bryan got us some glasses and opened the wine to let it breathe. “This is perfect, we’re having spaghetti for dinner.” He sniffed the cork and I wanted to clock him. What the fuck was she doing with this crotch lint?

He started up a conversation about the neighborhood and the best places to do who the fuck knows since I wasn’t listening. I gave him an abridged version of my life erasing the last five years at least. So for all Bryan knows I just made it back from deployment. Mallory was as jumpy as a beaver trapped in a dynamited dam before she took her place at the table.