Chapter 7
Dean
Islept like shit.
Tossing. Turning. Waking up in a cold sweat. I kept hearing Liv’s voice, smooth and sexy, telling me I wasn’t alone.
It had been a long time since someone sincerely wanted to know about me. Pushing her away wasn’t easy. We both wanted each other. The tension between us was thick; you could smell it in the air, hear it crackle like electricity over our skin. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t like I could offer her more than something physical. I didn’t need to have someone depending on me to come home safe. I didn’t need to be afraid I would be letting someone down who was worried about mebeingsafe. I’ve watched cops’ relationships with their significant others. They explode like shooting stars, and then burn out just as quick. I saw it in Sergeant Kannon’s wife’s eyes. The loneliness. The absolute terrifying feeling of never being in control of the safety of the people you love the most. I didn’t want to put that on anybody else.
Liv was so innocent.
She deserved more than anything I could give her. I wasn’t ready for a relationship, so why offer anything else? I wasn’t selfish. But God, she was beautiful. So beautiful that I wished I could just stop this life, just for a moment, step off the roller coaster and plant my feet on solid grown. A few minutes of her, of that sweetness—that innocence—and I would drown myself in it.
I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt. It was her heart I wasn’t willing to put on the line. My job was all I knew. Being with someone working on this job would change her,harden her. Just like it did to my mother, like it did to my sister. Liv didn’t need that in her already-messed up life. She needed stability. She needed someone who could promise he’d come home every night. Someone who wouldn’t run out on her because of phone calls in the middle of the night.
Anyway, there was no way I was in the right frame of mind to get into a relationship—or a bed with her. She wasn’t even staying here—so it was all a stupid waste of time to think about it. But it did take up a lot of my thoughts, which was the only relief I got from the instant replays of walking in on my best friend, dead.
That was how I spent the night—toggling back and forth between images in my mind—Thomas’s cold dead body and Liv’s warm, living one. My thoughts were obsessive and uncontrollable. I pictured myself standing next to Liv and leaning down close to her as if I were going to whisper something in her ear. My lips pressed down into the curve of her neck, and I tasted the hot salt of her skin on my tongue. I moved closer and licked at the small indentation at the base of her throat; her shoulders shivered in response. She tilted her head and smiled at me, a little shy, a little uncertain. My eyes would close when she’d moan and softly call my name. But when I opened them again, we were in Thomas’s basement, his body lying cold and stiff next to us, his eyes glazed over and his hands clutching onto whatever secrets he kept from me.
I couldn’t stay in bed a second longer.
I ended up eating breakfast in a small diner before sunrise, watching the cars outside the window driving through the first streams of sunlight that hit the ground.
After my fourth cup of coffee, I found myself knocking on Thomas’ wife’s door. I hadn’t called ahead or anything, and I knew it was going to be hard for Lucy to see me, but I felt I needed to see her. I guess it was selfish maybe, but I was hoping something good could come out of it.
A long span of unease fell over me as I waited for someone to answer.
Then, I heard the lock slide open.
A pair of tear-filled, blood-shot brown eyes regarded me through a small opening in the door. “Dean?” the voice croaked in a sniffle.
“Yeah, Luce. It’s me,” I said, trying hard not to crumble in front of her. The bridge of my nose stung with needles from holding back my tears, but my eyes blurred anyway.
She stepped back slowly and crumpled onto the hallway rug. Before I could close the door and reach her, she was hiccupping and sobbing, folding herself into fetal position. Watching it gutted me.
Sinking to my knees, I wrapped my arms around her. “I know, Luce. I know, Babe. I miss him too.” My voice trembled.
“The job killed him,” she wailed, fisting my shirt in her hands. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t,” she cried. She pulled back her head and looked at me through hazy grief-stricken eyes. “Did he tell you anything? Why would he do this to me?” Her hair was pulled back tight into a messy ponytail, and wild strands of it knotted around her neck. “You saw him last. What did he say? What happened?” She sniffed, wiping her hands fast across her nose.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, holding her closer. “We just had dinner, like we always did. He didn’t say anything to make me think he could…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Not sitting in front of her. I couldn’t say the words out loud.
Her fists pounded into my chest. I just let her hit me over and over again—until she ran out of energy. I just let her.
When she was spent, she slumped down against my chest and gradually quieted. “Something was up with him,” she hiccupped, “I just don’t know what. Do you think it was me? Do you think he was unhappy with me?”
“No, Lucy,” I said, kissing her mop of hair, “You and Chase were everything to him. He loved you both so much.” The words left a sour taste in my mouth—if they were true—why wouldn’t he want to be here? Thomas and I were close, but after his suicide I felt like I hadn’t known him at all. She knew him better than me. She had to know something. Thomas was older than me, had been on the job since 2000, seventeen years—he could have retired in three years. His next birthday would have been his thirty-eighth. Lucy and him were college sweethearts. His son was only four. He owned a house, had no debt. You could always find him smiling or telling awful jokes. He had, what I always believed, to be a great life.What the fuck went so horribly wrong?
“What was going on that he rather be dead than watch his son grow up, huh? What trouble was he in?” she asked, ripping into my thoughts.
Why did everyone think he had to have been in trouble? Why couldn’t he just be tired of giving pieces of himself to everyone until he was empty inside? Why couldn’t anyone else see how fucking lonely this life was? What a burden it was to know the evil that lives inside everyone, and you’re the one who has to try and protect them all. Even the shittiest, evilest ones.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
She pulled back and climbed to her feet, wiping snot across her cheeks. “Did you know a Katherine Meyers?” she demanded on a choked sob. “Who is she Dean? I know that stupid blue code of brotherhood you have, but I have his phone. Was he cheating on me?”
What the hell?
I jumped to my feet and grabbed for her hands, but she slapped them away. “Tell me the truth! You were single, and he was stuck with me. Is that what happened? Did you let him cheat on me? All those weekends away you and him in the last month!”
Weekends away? What the fuck was she talking about?I didn’t ask her, didn’t want to fuel the fire.
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.” It was the truth. “And what time did he have to cheat on you? Lucy, I know you’re grieving, but this is Thomas we’re talking about. He’d never cheat on you.”
“I never thought he’d kill himself, either,” she whispered, through tear-drenched lips. “But he did.”
