“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” she pressed on. “I don’t know if you met someone else while you were deployed or you decided I wasn’t what you wanted. But either way, you owe me the courtesy of an explanation. I deserve better than you having your mother slam the door in my face or you yelling at me when all I did was something nice for you. I expect you to be brave enough, man enough, to tell me why I’m not what you want.”

She chanced a glance over her shoulder and found Aldo covered from the waist down in the sheets she’d washed for him. He was looking appropriately shamed, refusing to meet her gaze.

“Aldo,” she continued softly. “You made me feel like I was nothing to you.”

The sigh that rose from his chest seemed to take all his effort. “You’re not nothing.” He gritted out the words like they caused him pain.

“I’m done letting people do that. I’m not nothing. You’d be damn lucky to have me. Anyone would.” She choked on the last word and cursed herself. She would not cry. She wouldn’t be the victim here. Nope. She would go home and blubber like a baby. But she would not give Aldo a glimpse of the fresh hurt he’d caused her. Her newly rediscovered pride wouldn’t allow it.

“What do you want me to do? Hop after you?” The bitterness in his words arrowed straight to her heart and broke a piece off.

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Gloria snapped, and good Lord did it feel good to finally speak her mind. He didn’t need her pity. He needed someone to slap him upside the head, give him a good shake.

He brought his head up.

“You don’t know anything, Gloria.” He spoke quietly and without heat.

She absorbed the words the way she would a blow. Waited for the burn of shame. But her anger, bright and sharp, shielded her.

Gloria looked down pointedly at where the sheet covered his left leg. “I know a lot more about wounds and healing than you might think. And I know they don’t give anyone a license to be a dick—” An image of Aldo’s appendage appeared before her eyes. “An asshole, I mean.”

Those brown eyes of his flashed with anger, and Gloria patted herself on the back. At least there was something else besides self-pity there now.

“You owe me an explanation and an apology,” she repeated. “I’ll be waiting for both.” On those victorious words, she shut his bedroom door behind her with a mid-grade slam and stomped out of his house. But not before leaving his house key front and center on his dining table.

* * *