“I’m sorry, baby, I’m tired tonight.” I gently shouldered away from my fiancé, stepping around him to make my way to the kitchen for a beer to keep the buzz going. Jeremy followed, silent and hunched over, brooding, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Tomorrow would be my first real shift, 24 hours straight with a houseful of men who couldn’t stand the mere sight of me. Tonight, his sexual frustrations were the least of my worries.
“That’s never a good sign,” Jeremy remarked as I popped the top of a beer bottle and took a long drink. “Did you not drink enough at the ceremony?” He was already dressed in plaid pajama pants and a tee shirt, wearing the slippers I’d given him for Christmas a year before. His reading glasses sat perched in the middle of his nose, making him look like a full-grown Harry Potter. Shaggy dark hair was approaching a need for a trim, and the prickly shadow on his chin was closer to seven ‘o’clock than it was five ‘o clock.
“I drank as much as I wanted, and now I’m drinking more,” I said steadily, forcing myself to hold onto his gaze. “Is there an issue with that?”
“Nope.” Jeremy raised his hands in the air in surrender, smiling. It wasn’t his genuine smile. It was hisif you want to act like a child, I will treat you like a childexpression. I ignored it. It was getting easier to ignore what he did to piss me off. I felt like I no longer cared, which wasn’t good.
“I wish you’d been able to make it,” I said, trying to ease the tension in the air as I settled onto the couch. I tucked my legs under me, taking another long sip of my beer. Jeremy joined me, reaching for the remote to mute the noise on the TV. I knew damn well I should have just let it go, and not even brought it up, but the truth was that his absence had been more hurtful than I expected. Jeremy was the man I was engaged to marry, which was essential to me. Shouldn’t he have been my biggest supporter?
“You know how I feel about you working for thatplace,” Jeremy said, spitting out the word like poison. “I support you, Paisley, and am proud of all you’ve done, but---”
“How proud can you possibly be?” I murmured, cutting Jeremy off. “I worked hard to get where I am. I took the exams; I passed the physical fitness test, I did interviews…and finally,finally, they accepted me.” I took a breath to regain control of my anger, still staring him in the eye. You resent me for all that work, don’t you?”
Over the years, I’d been nothing but loyal to Jeremy’s career. I’d attended teaching conferences and school trips and even filled in once or twice for his TA when he needed me to. I’d stayed up late, waiting and lonely, while he’d graded papers in the classroom after hours, sometimes all through the night. I’d given him space when he had deadlines, and I’d understood even when I didn’t want to.
But today, he hadn’t even shown up for me.
“I don’t resent you,” Jeremy said patiently, patting my shoulder like a teacher would reassure their student. “And I’m proud of you for working so hard for it. I’ve already told you that.”
“You’re proud I worked hard for it but not proud enough to show up to my swearing-in, right?”
He said nothing, and I had to look away before doing one of two things: scream at him or cry in his lap. It had been a rough day; either was possible.
“What is it you don’t like?” I asked, turning my undivided attention to him. “What is it exactly, Jeremy, that pisses you off so much that it’s starting to strain our relationship?
Jeremy was silent as my words draped heavily over the room. I couldn’t tell if he was about to lose it on me or brush it off like he’d done so many times before.
“It’s a dangerous job,” he said, choosing the latter. “I’ve said that before.” The patient tone he always tried too hard to present to people was cracking. It was something only I could do to him … as he often liked to remind me.
“Is that really it?” I asked. “Or is it that I’ll be bunking down with and working alongside a dozen men who aren’t you?”
When he looked at me this time, his expression was oddly vacant. He didn’t have the energy to fightme, either. Neither of us did. Sometimes it felt like too much effort to even bother. Briefly, I wondered how soon it would take to recover what we used to have if we were even lucky enough to find it again.
“There are many reasons I can’t support this,” he said. “The danger is a big one, yes, and I guess I would be lying if I said the thought of my fiancée having sleepovers with her male coworkers didn’t make me cringe.”
“You say sleepovers like this is some big joke.” I pulled my hand between his, dropping it into my lap instead. “This is my job now, Jeremy. It’s mycareer. I have to be at the station with them, so we’re ready to go at a moment’s notice. They’re just coworkers—ones that hate me, for that matter—so I can’t imagine there’s anything for you to worry about.”
Even as the words slipped out of my mouth, the skin on my hand where Erik Hansen had briefly held it earlier that night tingled as if my brain was trying to remind me that maybe his slight paranoia was justified.
No, it’s not.
That wouldn’t happen, not in a million years. I was loyal to a fault, especially to my fiancé. I would expect the same from him one hundred and ten percent of the time.
But you have a puppy crush on Hansen. You want him.
I cleared my throat, looked away to gather my bearings, took a breath, and looked back at him.
“If things work out the way it’s supposed to, my coworkers and I will come to a mutual respect,” I said quietly. “They’ll have my back, and I’ll have theirs. It’s that simple. Family.”
“Good-lookingmalecoworkers who don’t even want you there,” Jeremy muttered, rubbing his face with the palm of his hand. “That’s a dangerous situation to put yourself in, Paisley. A lawsuit just waiting to strike.”
“I can handle my own.” The heat in my voice simmered, and I took another breath, but it was shaky. “And I trust them. I don’t believe, even amid their anger, that they could be so disloyal to one of their own.”
“You aren’t one of them,” Jeremy snapped. “And while you keep pretending you are, they’ll be wondering the same thing about you. How loyal would you truly be if they took a wrong step or insulted you somehow?”
“I don’t give a shit about their insults, Jeremy, and to imply that I would be so petty as to sue the department for false harassment claims, I’m disappointed in you.”
“This isn’t grade school, P—”
