“You have a new friend,” Seton says.
“I’m about to find out,” I say. “Does your department do DNA tests?”
“Are you testing to see if Freya’s who she claims to be?”
“It’s for something else,” I say.
“We send samples to the state lab, but it’s expensive and I don’t normally have cause.”
“What if I paid for it?”
“It doesn’t work that way. We’d have to find a private lab.” Seton’s eyes narrow. “And why would you need a DNA test?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow when we’re friends again.”
By the door, Freya waits, guitar case in hand. “Tick, tick, tick,” she says.
“Watch out for yourself,” Seton says.
“Say the word and I’ll stick around,” I say. “We can go to the hospital together.”
Seton bites her lip and shakes her head. “Go,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”
I follow Freya into the rainy night. Across the street, she tosses the guitar into the covered bed of a gigantic pickup truck, while Ginger leaps into the back seat.
“What’s the police chief’s story, anyway?” Freya asks. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Are you sure?”
If Seton and I are on the “friends to lovers” train, we’re clearly riding the local. “One hundred percent,” I say.
Our hands brush, sending a chill up my back. Freya’s sequined blouse sparkles under the streetlamp.
“You could do worse than Seton Haviland,” Freya says. “She’s as pretty as you, in a butch kind of way.”
“You keep objectifying me,” I say.
“I have plenty of experience. It happened to me for decades.”
“Should I objectify you now?”
Freya glances to where Seton watches us from the doorway. “She seems awfully interested in you.”
“What does it matter?”
“Because I don’t like to be second best,” Freya says as she pulls me in for a kiss.
Chapter Fifteen
I’m standing in the rain, under a streetlamp, and I’m not sure what to do, where to put my hands, or what they should touch, because I’m kissing a girl. But she’s not a girl, she’s very much a woman, and she’s a good kisser—a very good kisser—and she’s Freya Faith.
FreyafuckingFaith.
“Relax,” Freya says. “You’re stiff as a board.”
I pull back.
