“Baker.”
“Your dad the chief of police down there? I’ve met him a few times, he’s a really good guy.”
“Yeah.” She nods, taking a drink of her water. “He’s going to retire this year, though.”
“Is that right? Is Sullivan going to take his spot?”
“That’s the plan, but Braylon would like it too. I’m not sure how they’re going to go about giving it away, but the two of them will fight to the death for it. Braylon’s on desk duty right now though.”
Dad makes a noise. “I heard about that. Got shot in the knee?”
“He did, I was actually the responding EMT. One of the scariest nights of my life.”
“I can imagine.”
My mind wanders, it’s one of the scariest things for me to. Each time I hear we’re going to a call where a member of Laurel Springs PD might be injured, I think about all the men I know on the force. In my mind I try to decide where they all might be and pray that they aren’t in the line of danger. Really though, each time they go out, they are, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Ransom’s been shot once and thank God I wasn’t an EMT then. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get the sight of my brother on my stretcher out of my mind.
“You okay?” Rowan asks, bumping my elbow. “You got really quiet.”
“Just trying to figure out how you dealt with a family member being on your stretcher.”
The smile that was on her face disappears and I want to kick myself for it. If we were in a much more private setting, I’d ask what was going through that head of hers. “You just have to compartmentalize it. Having family members in the line of duty doesn’t change the oath you take. More than anything you’re probably going to work harder to save them.”
I know she’s said the truth, but I worry I’ll freeze. What if I let my brother down? The one who’s never let me down before?
“Hey, don’t think about it,” Rowan whispers in my ear. “The more you think about it, the more you get in your head about it. Your training will take over and you won’t even know what you’ve done.”
“Is that what happened with you?”
I can tell she doesn’t want to answer the question, but she does and for that I’m grateful.
“Yeah, everything I did was by the book, because I’d been trained that way. I was on autopilot and didn’t even have a chance to question myself. Don’t overthink it. The minute you overthink it, it allows for doubts to seep in. We know our training, and our training is what gets us through the hard times and rough days.”
I put my arm around her neck, pulling her close as I drop as kiss on her forehead. On the one hand, I hope she’s right, on the other I hope I’m never in the position where I have to test myself.
But that’s a prayer for another day.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rowan
“I’m so sorry you had to be thrown before the firing squad.”
I’m not exactly sure what he’s talking about. “The firing squad?”
“Yeah, my nosey as fuck family.”
“They’re nice.” And they really are. No one has made me feel more welcome. “Your mom said there’s family breakfast at The Café tomorrow?”
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I promise no one will say anything.”
“It’s okay, we can go. I liked them a lot. I like how they love you.” I kneel on the bed, walking on my knees over to him.
“They’re suffocating.”
I push my arms around his neck, holding him tightly. “You’re their favorite person, I think. You’re at least Keegan’s favorite person and Ransom loves you like crazy.”
His eyes soften. “I love them a lot too. Ya know my dad and I had a conversation about love the other day.”
“Oh really?”
My pulse gets faster, I’m not sure what he’s going to say to me.
“Yeah, I told him you scare the fuck out of me.”
“I scare you?”
“So much.”
I scrutinize his face, enjoying the little freckles that have popped up on his nose, the way his beard is starting to grow in this late at night. “How do I scare you?”
“Before I met you, I couldn’t see the rest of my life. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. To be honest, I kinda thought I’d ride along and never make any kind of commitment to anyone.”
“Why did you think that?”
He swallows roughly. “Because of what happened to me in college.”
His family alluded to this, and he’s made several cryptic statements. More than anything I want to know what happened, but I know we both have secrets, and if he shares this one, I’ll need to share mine. Can I do that?
For the first time I think I can. If I trust anyone with how I felt, it’s him.
Which is odd because I’ve always thought you can’t know anyone and their heart in a couple of weeks. How I feel about Cutter proves my assumption is so very, very wrong.
“Can you trust me with what happened?”
He nods, but doesn’t say anything.
“If I’m gonna talk about this, I’m gonna need a beer. You wanna go to the commons area?”
“The commons area?”
“A perk of this apartment building is we have a fire pit with seating out back. Anyone can use it, and at this time of night, no one will be there.”
“If it’ll help you.” I hug him tightly. “Whatever will help you.”
“It will.” He grabs hold of my hand, helping me off the bed.
As we leave his apartment, he takes a detour to his kitchen to grab a bottle of beer. “You want one?”
I nod, who knows what he’s going to say. Maybe this will completely change the way our relationship has been going up to this point. I’m equal parts nervous and thankful he trusts me enough to tell me the truth.
We’re quiet as we take the elevator down to the lobby. He holds my hand tightly, like he’s afraid I’m going to bolt as soon as he lets it go. I want badly to tell him I’ll never bolt, but the truth is I’m not sure. I’ve reacted in so many different ways over the past few years, I don’t even recognize myself anymore.
The one thing I do know? I want to be here for him in any way he needs me to be. When we get outside, I can tell why he wanted to come here. It’s a little piece of serenity in the middle of this town. Comfortable seating, a fire pit, and great view.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” he starts, taking a drink of his beer. “There are so many things that mush together in this story.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“For so long I wasn’t sure where the beginning was.” He looks over, a sad smile on his face. “But I’ve been thinking about this a lot, knowing I wanted to tell you about it, and I think I realize it started my senior year of high school. I was aggressively recruited.”
“For football?”
I don’t want to assume and I want to get the entire gist of what he’s telling me.
“Yeah, for football. Auburn, Alabama, Florida State, UT, they all wanted me. But I had a kinship with Alabama because my friend Caleb went there, and he loved it.”
“Also, your family.” I quirk my brow, thinking of Whitney and Stella.
“Oh yeah, they would have disowned me for sure. Even though they weren’t married yet.”
“I’d toured all the campuses and I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go, each one had something different to offer. In the end I was stuck between Florida State and Alabama. I toured FSU and was ninety percent sure I was going to sign with them, but Dad suggested I tour Alabama one more time.”
“Always a good idea.” I take a drink of my beer, already a bad feeling building in my stomach.
“We went down there and they had me a damn parade. Which was just weird to be honest. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. What did I do for a parade? If anyone should have had a parade, it was my dad and uncles. But my fragile ego…” He shake
s his head, taking another drink. “I thought I deserved it.”
“I mean, football in the south…”
“Yeah, football in the south. So that day there were a few people who showed me around campus. One of them was a girl named Katie. She had her red lipstick, blonde hair, and pearls around her neck. She wore her southern debutante costume with a pride I have yet to see again.”
“Oh no,” I whisper.
“We hit it off. She was everything I wanted in a girl. From the moment I met her, she flirted with me, and I was flattered. She was a junior, older than me, and the things she said, the things she did - sexually - were things I’d only heard of.” His face gets red. I’m unsure if it’s from anger or embarrassment.
“We dated longer than I’ve ever dated another woman. I told her I loved her, first girl I ever said that word too, and I was making a plan to declare myself eligible for the draft. Had a ring and everything. As soon as I got drafted I was going to propose to her.”
There’s a churning in my gut. The only way this can end is bad, and I feel awful for Cutter because I have a feeling this broke his young heart.
“The summer was on us, and I’d invited Ransom down to help me move. There was some of Katie’s stuff in my dorm. I wasn’t sure when we’d get to see each other. She was going home to Tennessee for a while, and I wanted her to have it if she needed it. We packed it up, and I let myself into her apartment using the key she gave me.”
I reach over, grasping his hand in mine, gripping his fingers because I can tell this isn’t going to be good. The way his voice has thinned, the way he’s pushing forward not wanting to stop.
“She was fuckin’ another guy in her bed. He had her bent over, pounding her from behind, and he was saying all kinds of shit. Telling her to tell him who she really loved, asking her why she was with me, and she would groan out because the coach is paying me to keep him happy.”
Tears spring to my eyes as I think of the young kid Cutter used to be, giving his heart to a woman he thought he’d love forever, learning in such a crass way that she didn’t care for him at all.
“I lost it. I pulled the guy off her and beat the living shit out of him. The whole time words were flying out of my mouth, to this day I don’t remember what I said. The only reason I stopped was because she’d run buck-ass-naked out of the room and gotten Ransom to get me off the guy.”
“Oh, Cutter…”
“I went to the coach and asked him if what she’d said was true. He admitted it, especially after I got picked up for beating the guy. It came out internally, but stayed out of the press that I’d accepted bribes I didn’t know were bribes. I lost my scholarship and after that, football left a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t even really watch it these days,” he sighs.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“I grew from it.” He gives me a sad smile. “But it’s always made me cautious when it comes to women, which is why I’m scared to death to tell you how I feel about you.”
“You don’t have to be scared.” I lean in, kissing him softly on the lips.
He holds my neck, keeping us close together. I can feel the whispered breath on my mouth. “Then if I told you I love you, would you run?”
My pulse vibrates in my wrist. I shake my head. “No, I would tell you that through all the crazy shit we’ve been through, I love you too.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cutter
“You do?”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It was the absolute last thing I expected.
“Yeah.” She grins. “I haven’t let myself feel this way in a long time, but with you, it’s natural.”
That’s exactly how it feels for me too. Completely natural.
I go to wrap my arms around her, but she shrinks back. “If you’ve been honest with me, I need to be honest with you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” I assure her. “Me confiding in you was something I needed to do.”
She reaches over, grabbing my beer, taking a drink of it. “I need to confide in you, too.”
“Then please, I’m here to listen to you. I’m here to help you through anything. I won’t judge.”
Relief flashes in her hazel eyes. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me.”
She sits back against the outdoor fabric, looking like the life has completely deflated from her body. “This is so hard.” Her voice shakes. “I’ve never told anyone about this. Since I’ve always lived in Paradise Lost, everyone knows. The only people I’ve talked to about it are medical professionals.”
Now I’m getting a little worried. Not for me, but for her. Obviously this is something much more serious than I assumed it would be.
“You can tell me anything.” I grab her hand, bringing the back of it up to my lips, hoping this little gesture will be enough for her to know I’m here.
“When I was seventeen, I got pregnant.” She pushes the words out of her mouth on a long sigh. “It was totally unplanned, I was on birth control. We’d been having sex for over a year.”
“So you had a long-term boyfriend?”
“Tommie. He was two years older than me, and he was friends with my brothers before we started dating.” She gets a faraway look on her face. “He was tall, strong, and everything a teenage girl wants in her first real boyfriend. He paid attention to me, told me I was pretty, and went out of his way to tell my brothers off when they’d make fun of us.” She turns so that she can sit cross-legged, propping her chin up on our hands.
“Graduation night, he’d rented us a hotel room so we could be together all night. My parents thought I was staying with friends. That’s the night I got pregnant. The night my life completely changed.”
Why do I feel like this story is going to kill me? Chew me up and spit me out?
“My parents, being old-fashioned believed Tommie and I should get married. So we did. They signed for me since I wasn’t yet eighteen, and we moved into this little trailer on the outskirts of Paradise Lost.”
“At seventeen you were a wife?”
“Yeah, it was real weird going from cooking yourself mac and cheese for dinner to cooking an entire meal for your husband. Tommie was getting his EMT Certification, and I helped him study. It seemed interesting to me, and I knew I wanted to do it too. We got grants because we were young, married, and I was pregnant. He graduated the program right before I gave birth, and I entered the program when I was twelve weeks pregnant.”
“To be so young.” I caress her face. “The two of you were doing amazing things.”
“We thought so.” She smiles sadly. “We’d managed to graduate without student loan debt, we worked on a shoe-string budget, and we were doing the best we could to provide for Etta.”
“Etta?” I ask, somehow knowing that was their baby.
“Yeah.” Her eyes shine brightly with unshed tears. “I named her after the Jazz singer. I loved going to News Orleans and listening to Jazz, it was one of my favorite things to do. When we found out we were having a girl, it was the only thing I could think of. Her name had to be Etta.”
She reaches into her pocket for her phone, scrolling for a few minutes. When she finally finds what she wants, she proudly shows a picture of a very young Rowan holding a toddler who looks to be about the same age as Keegan.
“Rowan, she’s the spitting image of you. She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” Rowan pulls her bottom lip in between her teeth before she licks at her upper one, taking some of her tears with her. “She was my best friend, which is weird to say because she was so young, but we were growing up together.”
“How was it going with Tommie?”
Her shrug tells me everything I need to know. “He wasn’t adjusting as well as I was. He wanted to go out with his friends and do the fun things he’d been able to before, but we were working on opposing shifts so we didn’t have to afford childcare. I found out later he felt trapped, which was what lead to him drinking
more than normal.”
This breaks my heart for her. She and her daughter should have been loved, they should have been cared for, not made to feel like they were a burden. The man lucky enough to have them should have known how blessed he was. “Did he hurt you?” I’m scared to ask, but I need to know.
“Not physically.” Her chin trembles, and I want with everything I am to reach over and make it strong again, but I know she has to do this on her own. “Once we started working full-time, the both of us, it was good money. Money we weren’t used to, so we were able to do things many other people our age couldn’t. Because we were so used to living on not much money, we continued to do it for a year and a half. Soon, we had enough money for a down-payment on a house. It was a brand-new subdivision, big lots with pools in the backyard. I was nervous about the pool, but everyone said ‘Rowan, you’ve worked hard, you deserve to have what you want.’ I believed them.”
An ache starts in the back of my throat as I mentally try to prepare myself for what she may say. All signs are pointing to something horrible happening to her kid. “Take your time.”
I’m sure I say the words for not only her, but me. I feel as if I need to be eased into whatever happened. I’m as emotionally invested as she is. She takes a breath I feel to my soul and soldiers on.
“He was supposed to be watching her, just like he always did, but we’d been arguing. He wasn’t happy with our relationship and I wasn’t happy with the lack of effort he was putting forth. We’d been married for almost five years, and we were both getting older, growing up, and wanting different things. For me, Etta was my world, and for Tommie, she was a bump in the road and she was holding him back. He’d admitted that to me a few days before. I’d gotten home and he’d been drinking. We argued about being married at our age, and I’d asked if he wanted a divorce. He said no because it’d disappoint his parents,” she snorts.
“Tommie sounds like a real winner.”
Her eyes cut to me and the sorrow in them is so sharp it slices me like a knife. “When I got home that day, Tommie was inside, and I knew, I knew something was wrong. I yelled to him, asking where Etta was. He said she was out back, but he’d locked the gate.” She shakes her head. “That was one thing he never did. He never checked it. I looked over at him and he was holding a beer in his hand. He’d obviously come inside to get it, leaving our four-year-old outside. Alone. I ran out, screaming her name. As soon as I got to the gate, I could see her, her dark hair floating in the water. She was face-down.”
Cutter (Laurel Springs Emergency Response Team Book 4) Page 13
