Images of Bishop’s curvy body and lacy panties erased for good.
CHAPTER 5
Terran
I was goingto actually fucking die.
Two thousand dollars.
Two thousandfucking dollars. Tossed in the trash like last week’s lunchmeat.
An entire year’s worth of savings, gone in an instant. All because I had to go and get myself stabbed like the rookie everyone at the goddamn precinct claimed I was.
What kind of idiot neglected to follow the first step in subduing a perp?
Securing any and all weapons before pinning them bodily to whatever hard surface was available andthenfishing out a set of cuffs to slap around their wrists.
Now, I had to suffer from my own consequences. Stuck in the hospital until sometime next week—the timeframe still ambiguous—and losing the most valuable item I owned.
Ripped off of me like a used bandaid and thrown into the trash like one, too, no doubt.
No amount of care taken into consideration for therealgemstones embezzled perfectly in those settings, or the handcrafted detail that went into casting the gold to make the chains and then shaping it into its intertwined pattern. No appreciation for the time spent on such artistry, now sitting in some compactor ready to head to the incinerator.
Probably with my blood still crusted all over it.
I’d admit, that purchase was the single most expensive thing I’d ever bought that I didn’t end up sharing with my sister in the end. Unlike my car that we both drove, my waist chains were my own private gift to myself. A way to pay ode to that part of me that I fought so long and hard to ignore and dismiss, pretending it was a fleeting interest I’d grow out of because it was easier that way than admitting to myself that I liked being fem behind closed doors.
Being out was a struggle with the upbringing my sister and I had. With a ruthlessly misogynistic step-father and a mother too abused into passivity to stand up for any of us against the swinging fists of a man three times her size, we’d fended for ourselves as best we could.
It’d taken a long time to heal from those wounds once we were out. Longer to accept the truth about myself even after that.
Thankfully, Palmerston PD was run by a captain who believed we all mattered, no matter what team we swung for or what past we came from. She was a fierce woman that took no shit from anyone. According to TJ, she’d beat her way through the glass ceiling with her bare hands, climbed to the top ranking position, and wrung the machismo out of those dingy walls until there was nothing left but the radical acceptance of a family forged in blood and brotherhood with no room for prejudice otherwise.
By the time I got there, they’d been five years deep into that mentality. All that was expected was that you took your oathfrom the academy seriously with no exceptions excusing you from your public duty.
Much better than I’d been expecting when moving to this small town.
Now, I wasn’t about to invite any of my coworkers over to my place to show off my closet full of lingerie, but feeling like I wasn’t going to get cornered in the locker room showers for an accidental lingering stare was a nice change of pace.
“Unca Terry!”
My head snapped around to my room’s door, Ainsley’s curly blonde head of hair bobbing while she ran to the side of the bed.
“Don’t climb up there!” My sister’s sharp tone forced my niece to freeze, one hand already slapped down and clutching the blanket draped over my legs, her back leg poised up behind her to do just that.
In her other hand, was some kind of large envelope that she held in a tight grip, the edges around her fingers crinkling.
“It’s all right. Plenty of room up here.”
My sister huffed, readjusting the baby bag’s strap off her shoulder and letting it drop to the ground over by the guest recliner chair. It sounded heavy when it hit the floor. “You say that now until she accidentally punches your incisions.”
Okay, fair point.
“On bed?” Ainsley patted the mattress, her head swiveling back and forth between her mom and me. Her curly hair had been pulled back in two matching pigtails on the top of her head, each decorated with an animal-shaped barrette.
There was a fresh looking stain on the front of her shirt, no doubt a car ride episode I was happy to have missed.
Amelia squatted down to retrieve her, hoisting her up into her arms. “Why don’t we show him the card you made?”
