I grumbled.
“So...”Carter drawled.
Here it comes.
“You and Jocelyn, huh?”
Slowly, I turned my head. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, what?” Jocelyn asked into the earpiece.
“Nothing,” I said, staring him in the eyes. “Carter’s talking shit.”
He smirked and shrugged. “All that shit you gave us when we were falling in love? Don’t think for a second you won’t get it back tenfold.”
I dipped my eyebrows. “Falling in lo—”
“He’s here,” came Jocelyn’s voice.
“Is he alone?” I asked, turning away from Carter.
“Yeah. He’s sitting by himself at the bar. I’m going in.”
I tightened and flexed my hands in my lap, reminding myself that this was necessary, and Jocelyn was capable of handling herself.
“Yeah, I’d respond the same way if it were Michelle in there,” Carter said, capturing my attention again.
“That’s not Michelle in there.”
“Damn straight, it’s not. I’d turn that place upside down if it were.”
He’d said it with a conviction in his voice I’d grown accustomed to whenever he spoke about his wife.
“But Michelle’s not a trained officer with years of undercover work under her belt,” he reminded me. “Jocelyn can do this.”
He was trying to calm me down. To keep me from saying fuck it and bum-rushing the building and carrying her ass out of there.
“I know she can,” I admitted. I glanced back over at Carter, pulled the earpiece from my ear, and covered it with my hand to muffle the sound. “I haven’t told Corey yet.”
Guilt welled up in my stomach.
“He’s still not answering?”
I shook my head and peered back out at the club. “Nah. Calls always go to voicemail, and this isn’t something I want to leave on a voicemail. She’s not…”
I trailed off because I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to say.
She wasn’t just some woman I was working this investigation with.
She wasn’t simply a chick I’d brought home from the club one night or a woman I used to fill my time with.
Jocelyn wasn’t just a warm body to keep next to me in bed.
“She’s so much more.”
“The right ones always are.”
I turned to Carter, realizing I’d said that last thought out loud. Funny enough, it didn’t bother me at all that he’d heard it.
