Suddenly I realize she’s watching me as I unbuckle my duty belt, and remove my gun, opening up the gun safe I keep it in. There are way too many children in my life for me not to make sure it’s locked up. Her gaze follows as I unbutton the green shirt of my uniform, and slip it off of my shoulders, before reaching behind me and unsnapping the Velcro pieces of my bulletproof vest. Some choose to wear it over their shirts, but it gets in my way.
“Are you okay?” I ask when I see her mouth open and her breathing start to speed up.
“It’s never occurred to me that what you do actually requires a bulletproof vest. You could die.”
“Well yeah, but so could you. Riding to work, or standing in the store getting a can of Red Bull.”
She drops her gaze, an easy smile playing over her lips. “You never got to drink it, did you?”
“No,” I laugh, pulling my undershirt out of the waistband of my pants. “But it’ll be there for the next shift, I’ll just have to bring some ice with me.”
The tension between us has broken, and I’m feeling more comfortable with her right now than I have all night. “Magnolia Grace, why don’t you tell me what all of this is about?”
She sits up straighter, and it’s like at that moment she realizes she’s wearing my jacket and a bra. “Do you have a shirt I can put on? I don’t think I can have a serious conversation with you in just my bra and a pair of jeans.”
“Yeah, you want some sweatpants too?”
Grabbing her phone from her back pocket she looks at it, seeming to see what time it is. “Am I staying here tonight?”
“Yeah, I’m not letting you be by yourself. Stay with me for as long as you want. It gets lonely out here.” The words slipped so easily from my mouth, I almost try to take them back, but she beams up at me. Those blue eyes of hers shining brightly.
“I appreciate it, Levi. Yeah, I’d like a pair of sweatpants too, and some water?”
“C’mon, let’s get situated, and then you can tell me everything.”
I didn’t expect to like her in my clothes as much as I do. She wears them like they’re armor, but as we sit at my kitchen table, devouring a frozen pizza, I can’t help but notice that her bra-free breasts jiggle slightly as she moves.
“I got the papers today that he’s contesting it,” she says as she takes a drink of the Coke I set in front of her.
“Contesting what?” I question, taking a bite of the frozen pizza.
“The divorce. I thought we were clear,” she explains. “I filed last year and it didn’t seem like there was an issue. For a full year and a half we’ve gone through this bullshit, Levi. Now he’s contesting it.”
“What does he want? There’s a reason he’d contest it.”
She sighs heavily, taking the last bite of her pizza before she wipes her hands on a napkin. “Because my business has really taken off,” she answers quietly. “I mean really taken off. I’m booked solid halfway through next year.”
“Those videos on social media really do it for you, don’t they?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “And that’s part of it too. Because the videos are popular, I’m getting paid from social media, so he wants a piece of that too. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that I work close to sixty hours a week between social media and the actual business. He thinks it’s all so easy.”
Three years ago, she started a home-based business for desserts. She dips everything in chocolate, and it’s amazing. It looks like something you would purchase in New York, for thousands of dollars, and some of her orders are that large, but she’s worked her ass off for it. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “He’s saying that he’s sacrificed part of his life in order for me to be successful. He says his job provided us with the initial outlay for money for the business.”
“Which is bullshit,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” she scoffs. “We were in foreclosure with our home because he wasn’t able to keep a job. No one cares about that.”
“How were you able to keep it?” I ask, genuinely interested in what was going on in her life at that time.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs with a sigh. “At the very last minute, no matter what we needed, or how much it was, Cody would come up with the money. I used to ask him where he got it, because I never knew where he was, or where he went to work.”
My stomach drops as I hear her speak. That sounds like something illegal.
“It caused more fights for me to ask about it, so I stopped.” She closes her eyes. “But now? We’ve been arguing for the last three months over what he thinks the business is valued at. I don’t know what to do at this point. I left a message with your mom, to see if she had any tips, but I haven’t heard back from her.”
That’s not like Ruby Harrison. She gets back to everyone quickly. “When did you call her?”
