He let that sit.
"So we're going to take this seriously. We're going to treat her calls with the same urgency we'd give anyone else. And we're going to stop acting like she deserves what's happening to her."
Sullivan had the decency to look uncomfortable.
Davis spoke up from the back. "Are you... involved with her, Bennett?"
Luke's jaw tightened.
This was it. The moment.
He could deflect. Downplay. Say he was just doing his job.
All the things he would have said a week ago.
"I was," Luke said. “Until I fucked it up. Because I was more concerned about what people in this room would think of me than about treating her the way she deserved."
No one seemed to know what to say to that.
"So yeah," Luke continued. "I'minvolved. And I'm done pretending I’m not.”
He looked at Mercer directly.
"You have a problem with that?"
Mercer held his gaze for a long moment. Then shrugged. "Your life, man."
"That's right," Luke said. "It is."
He turned back to his desk and sat down, blood pounding in his ears.
Behind him, the squad room slowly resumed its normal rhythm.
Luke opened the incident report again and started typing. His hands were steadier than he expected.
A few minutes later, Mercer dropped into the chair beside Luke's desk.
"For what it's worth," Mercer said quietly, "I wasn't trying to give her a hard time. Hart name comes with baggage. You know how it is."
It wasn't an apology. But it was something.
"I do," Luke said. "That's the problem."
Mercer nodded slowly. "We'll keep an eye out. Make sure patrol swings by regularly."
“I appreciate it,” Luke said.
Mercer stood. "You really care about her, huh?"
Luke met his eyes. "Yeah. I really do."
"Then you should probably figure out how to fix whatever you fucked up," Mercer said.
Luke huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. "Working on it."
Mercer clapped him on the shoulder once. "Good luck, man."
Luke glanced at the clock. Only another five hours until he would see her again.
