“I know, but still.”
“I want to be there.”
“No. I need to do this on my own. There’s no reason to humiliate him, Deuce.”
“I don’t give a shit. I’m simply protecting you, love.”
“Just let me do this. If there’s an issue, I’ll call you. I promise.”
Lena was the only woman I ever loved. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. We had been having an affair and hiding it for six months. She and Paul had been married for a little over a decade, but things had broken down a year ago.
She was in an abusive marriage, and she had threatened to leave on several occasions. When he started calling her bluff andno longer responding to her threats, she had finally gathered the courage to leave him a year ago.
The last year, he had been pressuring her to return home, but she had staunchly refused. One night when we were sitting around having dinner at a local pub with some of the other officers, I noticed that she had a bruise around her temple when she pushed her hair back briefly. That was the first time that I had learned about the abuse.
He had visited her at the house she was staying in and tried to force her back home. I didn’t call attention to the bruise in front of the others, but waited until we left the pub.
We were not only partners but good friends, so she confided in me, knowing that she could trust me with her secret. She cried on my shoulder as I held her and assured her that being in an abusive marriage did not make her weak, unintelligent, or less of a good cop because of it.
When I finished talking to and comforting her, she had kissed me. I had been fighting my feelings for some time at that point, and I was unable to do it any longer. After that, we discussed requesting new partners, but we both knew we didn’t want that. There was no one we trusted to have our backs more than each other.
Alternatively, we couldn’t let our relationship leak. Aside from her being married, despite being estranged from her husband, it was against department policy for us to be involved. It put too much at risk from compromising our judgment in an investigation to compromising her career.
Despite the fact that I was just as wrong, they would treat her much harsher than me, and she would pay the penalty, simply because she was a woman. But I knew that sneaking around with this baby she was carrying was going to become impossible. It would become even more difficult after the birth, because I refused to stand down.
“Lena, I don’t trust you alone with him, baby.”
“I know, but it’s been a while. I’m not worried about anything. Besides, I have good neighbors who look out, and I’ll have my gun. My apartment is right over the coffee shop. I doubt he’ll try anything during the daytime. I’ll just get him to sign the papers and be done with it.”
I knew that she was strong enough to handle it, but it didn’t sit well with me, no matter what she said. Unfortunately, I would have to trust her the same way that I wanted her to trust me.
ONE MONTH LATER (DECEMBER)
“Thankyou for being here for me today, Ethan.”
He took the keys from my hand and locked up my grandmother’s apartment. Staring into my eyes, he replied, “Sev, there’s no place I’d rather be. I know that it was difficult for you, and I know that we’ve been struggling, but I vowed to be here with you through the good and the bad. I don’t know how much more bad it can get than this.”
I sucked in a breath and hiccupped a sob. I wrapped my fingers around my purse strap and pulled it up my arm. “Let’s go.”
“Okay.”
When I got the news this morning that my grandmother had passed, it was not a surprise. She had been struggling with her health for the last few months. She had good days and not so good days. My birthday was a good day for her, but she had several bad ones after that.
I immediately did the one thing that came natural to me: I called my husband. He rushed over.
I felt so bad that she had been all alone when she passed. I should have been there with her, but I had opted to sleep in late. If I had gone to bed at a normal hour, I would have been at her house when she passed. We stopped outside of his car.
“I’ll drive,” I offered.
“Are you sure that you don’t want me to drive back? You’ve been driving all day, Sevyn. I know that you’re exhausted by now.”
“No. I’ll be fine. Driving is keeping my mind off my reality right now.”
We had gone to the retirement home and spent time with Gram before we went to the funeral parlor to make the arrangements. She had already put some money aside for her funeral, and she had a decent insurance policy that covered her wishes.
“She wants the choir to sing at her funeral,” I shared as we climbed in the car.
He reached over and grabbed my hand and squeezed it over the console. “She loved that choir almost as much as she loved the pastor. Did she want doves released?”
