What the hell was Gail up to? And just who did she think she was fooling? How could she do this to him? How! Nick wondered as he watched Gail chewing on the cap of her pen across the room. Her eyebrows were creased in concentration as she filled out the last report of today’s log. She was no Lesbian! This he knew, just as certainly as he knew his own name. This, he decided was, at least in part, just another tactic in their decade long war. Payback for Andy? Maybe.

He had met her in the summer of his nineteenth year. She had been a waitress at the diner with a bad reputation for being as wild as she was beautiful. In-fact it was rumored that the only thing keeping her out of jail was her parents’ prestigious positions with in the Toronto Police force. He was smitten and could not be deterred, even after she had dumped an entire pitcher of ice water into his lap just for asking her out. Soon they had become inseparable, drinking, and fighting, and fucking their way through the next three years. There had been good times, like the time he had taken her ice fishing out on the lake, and she had driven his snowmobile out onto the ice as fast as it would go, laughing with glee. It had been so cold, she had broken into her family’s summer lake house, where they spent the night lying naked in front of the grand stone fireplace drinking cheap strawberry wine and simply enjoying each other’s company and letting their wet clothes dry.

Sure, she was angry with him now, but that was nothing new either. Gail was always angry, or so it seemed. They had some of the best sex when she was angry. During the course of their relationship, they had smashed furniture, broken mirrors, and wrecked hotel rooms. Once, she had even shot out the brand new tires on his truck with her father’s spare pistol in a fit of rage, as he had left her once again for another woman in hopes of finding some peace; only to be drawn back into her orbit, like a comet to the sun. On those nights, she would impale herself on him like a storm, tearing at his flesh in a furry of tears, and nails, and teeth. His body still bore the proof of their passion in the thin white lines running down his back that bloody scratch marks left behind. And he would burry himself in her, battering her body like a hurricane until release came screaming from his chest in a single wordless howl. And yes, she had cheated on him, but it was not like he had been the perfect example of fidelity over the years. Besides that had been with a guy. And THAT he knew how to deal with.