Joke's On You- To beta

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “I should’ve never left.” She sighed.

  I looked in my rearview mirror at Asa, who was still sleeping, and grinned.

  “He’ll get over it, Delanie,” I said. “It’s not a death sentence.”

  At least, I hoped not.

  ***

  “You ready to get some sleep?” Dillan asked curiously.

  I pulled her into my arms and wrapped them around her tightly.

  She yawned in response.

  “You scared the shit out of me today,” I said. “And I’m sorry you can’t keep the dog.”

  She sighed.

  “I just… I want him to have a good life. I know why I can’t keep him. I’m not quite crazy enough to think that I can control a dog,” she murmured against my skin.

  Knowing that she didn’t want to talk anymore about this, I changed the subject.

  “Hey, Dillan?” I asked softly.

  Dillan moved until her back was facing the window and her front was facing me. “Yeah?”

  I swallowed. “I want you to move in with me.”

  “That might leave Delanie in a bind if she ever has to leave like she’s doing now,” I admitted. “Not necessarily with Asa, but with the dogs and the kennel.”

  I debated whether or not to say the next thing on my mind, but then chose to go ahead and give it all to her.

  “How about you worry about us,” I said softly. “We can help your sister out when she needs it, but I’m…” I blew out a frustrated breath. “I think we’ve done enough living for other people. Now it’s our turn.”

  She moved until her lips could press against my chest.

  “You don’t think it’s too soon?” she wondered.

  I moved until she was splayed fully on top of me, her head resting against my heart.

  “Do you think it’s too soon?” I asked. “Because I wouldn’t have asked you if I thought it was.”

  She snorted. “Does this not hurt?”

  She pressed her hands to my still sore chest.

  “No,” I lied. “Answer the question.”

  She snickered. “You’re being quite pushy.”

  “You’re evading answering the question,” I countered.

  She sighed. “I don’t think it’s too soon. But I’m fearful that you’ll realize it’s too soon after I’ve already moved in. Or realize that I’m not nearly as cool to be around when it’s my time of the month. Or when I get up Saturday and Sunday mornings at the ass crack of dawn to make donuts.” She paused. “I go to bed at eight o’clock.”

  I grinned and ran my hand up and down the length of her back.

  “There are some nights that I get a call out at one in the morning,” I said. “And there are others where I’ve been up on my feet from the time the sun rises to the moment that it sets. And all I want to do is fall asleep in my recliner at six o’clock.” I paused. “I snore. I drink too much sometimes on the weekends. I cook a mean steak, but I can’t cook anything else. And, a lot of the times, I leave the toilet lid up.”

  She snickered. “That’s a deal-breaker for me. You’re going to have to get that under control or this deal is off.”

  I felt my chest lighten at her words, as if a huge weight had been lifted off of my chest.

  “So if I promise to kick that habit, you’ll give me what I want?” I asked, confirming her words.

  “Do you promise to never say a word about how much ice cream I eat on a daily basis?” she asked.

  “Promise,” I teased. “I’ll never comment.”

  “One more thing,” she said.

  “Okay…” I waited for her to ask.

  “Is your family the type of family that runs races on holiday mornings, or is it the type of family that drinks mimosas?”

  Chapter 12

  Skaweeeeeee reweeeerrt bedong beedong tschchchchchc.

  -Dial up internet.

  Dillan

  “It’ll be okay, Delanie,” I said into my phone. “I promise. The doctor didn’t seem at all worried about it. The appointment is set with the specialist, and we did it for Thursday, so you should be able to get there in time.”

  She made a non-committal sound in the back of her throat.

  “Shit,” she said. “I’m just… terrified. Migraines aren’t that bad, right?”

  I wouldn’t know. I’d never had them.

  I’d been blessed, because I’d heard that they were god-awful.

  Not that I would be telling Delanie that.

  “Ummm,” I hesitated, not wanting to lie to my sister, but not wanting for her to worry while she was all the way in Austin. “I don’t know.”

  She sighed. “I love you, Dill Pickle.”

  “I love you, too, Delanie Weenie.”

  She laughed. “One day you’ll come up with a good one.”

  One day I would.

  Delanie had nothing that rhymed with her name, and nothing that went cutely with it like ‘Dill Pickle’ did.

  One day she would be right, and I’d find the perfect one.

  Until then, I would just keep making up random ones that didn’t.

  “I gotta go. Bourne needs to use the bathroom,” she whispered. “Bye.”

  I frowned.

  Hadn’t they gotten two hotel rooms?

  Just as I was about to call her ass back and demand answers, my phone buzzed.

  Thinking it would be Delanie, I immediately tapped through to the message.

  I looked down at the text, first seeing who it’d come from.

  Laric: Bobo was hit by a car. We were at the rest stop between Kilgore and Souls Chapel when I opened the back door and he bolted. He ran in front of a truck and the truck clipped him. He’s at the emergency vet on 59. I was hoping that you could go check on him over the next few days. I can’t stay with him because I have eight other dogs at home. They’re too volatile on their own to stay by themselves. I was hoping you could help.

  I had a long moment of wondering A, how the man got my number and B, how the man’s number got into my phone. But I dismissed both of them as soon as I thought about poor Bobo, the dog that saved my life.

  I immediately replied.

  Dillan: I’ll go check on him. Is he going to be okay?

  Laric: Yes. Thanks.

  That was it. Two words.

  I immediately looked at my watch and sighed.

  I still had two hours to go. Visiting hours for the emergency vet hospital didn’t open until eight, meaning I needed to find something to occupy my time.

  I decided to fill the space cleaning up Booth’s place.

  I started with the kitchen, and by the time that I wound back to the living room, it was time for me to leave.

  I bit my lip, wondering if I should inform Booth of my whereabouts, but chose to wait.

  He wouldn’t be too mad… right?

  ***

  Booth

  “Something happen to your brother’s dog?” Dax asked.

  I frowned and looked up from my mountain of paperwork to the big man heading into the room. Dax was looking kind of rough.

  Then again, after another fuckin’ sleepless night, it wasn’t surprising that he was looking rough.

  I was just wondering what he was still doing here. At least he was caught up on all of his paperwork.

  I’d been getting behind lately what with SWAT calls galore, Asa getting sick and forcing me to head home before I’d done any paperwork, and then there was Dillan.

  Needless to say, being forced to go in early on a Saturday after spending four hours at a SWAT call this morning just wasn’t my happiest moment.

  I looked at my watch and checked the time.

  Eight minutes past eight.

  “Not that I know of,” I admitted. “My parents have Asa, and I’m fairly sure that I would’ve heard first thing if Asa knew. He didn’t say anything on our phone call first thing this morning.”

  Apparently while my dad
had Asa after Dillan’s big ordeal, it’d been decided that Asa would be spending the weekend at my parents’ place.

  Meanwhile, that gave me a full weekend of uninterrupted Dillan time.

  Only, SWAT calls never waited for convenience. And since I didn’t want to wake Dillan up on her first day of vacation, I’d chosen to come here, finish up as fast as I could, and head back home.

  “Heard Laric’s dog got hit by a car yesterday,” Hayes said. “Maybe she’s visiting the dog.”

  Hayes looked at me with a shit-eating grin.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered darkly, rubbing my face. “She’s going to be the death of me.”

  “Just think of it this way,” Dax supplied. “The dog just got hit by a car. Maybe he won’t be in the best of shape to rip her face off.”

  I flipped him off.

  “I hear you don’t have much longer until the baby is born,” I drawled, leaning back in my chair. “Tell me, how are you with shit?”

  Dax narrowed his eyes.

  “There was this one time when Asa was young. I don’t know, about five months? I was off for a long week of leave, and I got to keep him all by myself for the first time. I thought I was going to be the best dad ever and take him everywhere. Took him to his first movie and sat him in my lap. I don’t know when it happened, or started should I say, but there was one point during the show that I realized that my shirt was wet. Thinking it was just sweat at first, I allowed it to keep happening. Only, when I finally started to smell it, I realized that it wasn’t sweat at all. It was liquid shit. He’d liquid shit all the way up his back. It was on me from my groin to my neck,” I recounted.

  Dax looked positively green. “I can do everything, I think, but the poop. Jesus, I hate poop.”

  I grinned. “Then there was the one time that he started projectile vomiting everywhere. That time it actually got into my mouth. And that was when I realized that I’m a reactionary vomiter. If he throws up, and I have to touch it, I’m going to throw up.”

  “In your mouth?” Hayes looked grossed out as well. “That sounds awful.”

  “It was awful. And, let me tell you, vomit doesn’t taste good. Especially when it’s not yours.” I looked down at my paperwork.

  “I hate you,” Dax said.

  “Just wait until you see my baby gift to you.” I grinned. “It comes with a video of me using it.”

  “When is that, by the way?” Hayes asked.

  I looked at my watch for the date. “Next Wednesday. We’re doing that instead of our usual team bonding exercise.”

  “Yay,” Dax said.

  I grinned. “No ladies allowed at this one, remember?”

  Dax rolled his eyes.

  “I don’t know why,” he muttered. “I don’t like her being that far away from me these days. It’d make my blood pressure better if I had her in sight.”

  Amen to that.

  This morning when I’d woken up, the light beside the bed had been on, and at first I’d been confused.

  Then I’d remembered why I’d had to leave it on.

  Dillan had been scared.

  Not that she would ever admit it or anything, but the moment that the room had been plunged into darkness, I’d felt her stiffen.

  At first, I’d given it some time to see if she’d loosen up, to see if my touch would calm her down enough that she could sleep.

  Though it’d helped, and I’d tried to talk her through it, in the end I’d decided that maybe the first few nights we should take it slow.

  So I’d turned the light back on.

  The moment that she could see, her entire body had gone from a tightwire to a relaxed noodle in the blink of an eye.

  This morning, when I’d woken up, the light had illuminated everything.

  The stark features on Dillan’s sleep-slackened face. The dark circles underneath her eyes. The bruises in the shape of two hands that were wrapped around her throat.

  She had bruises all up and down the length of her arm, too.

  Needless to say, this morning had been eye-opening.

  I was scared.

  For her.

  Kerrie may be in jail now—on attempted murder charges at that—but something still didn’t feel right.

  Her out of my sight? That wasn’t sitting well with me, either.

  And it was the day.

  Meaning when the time came to go to Dax’s baby shower at our usual meeting spot, I wasn’t going to want to leave her at home alone when I didn’t have to.

  Maybe I could call my mom and dad and have them go over to keep her company…

  “When’s your brother coming back?” That had come not from the original two men in the room with me, but Malachi, the quiet, stoic man that rarely ever talked.

  I looked up at him in surprise.

  “He’s due home tonight,” I admitted. “But…”

  Malachi’s eyebrows raised at me.

  “But what?” Malachi wondered, getting a good look at the mirth on my face.

  “But, Malachi…” I grinned. “Bourne is finally with Delanie. I don’t see him rushing home.”

  “They should just fuck and get it over with.” I blinked at Saint, who I hadn’t realized was even in the room.

  When I glanced in the direction that I’d heard his voice, I saw him in the dark shadows of the room.

  I wondered how long he’d been there, but he’d probably been there the entire time, watching and listening to our conversation.

  Saint, the quiet one that I never quite knew what to expect from, rarely joined in on our conversations.

  It was honestly a surprise that he joined in on this one.

  I signed off on my last report and started to gather up the papers.

  “I think that they did,” I admitted. “Or, if they didn’t, they are damn well close to doing that. With the way he was evading the questions I lobbed his way this morning, he definitely did something.”

  “Yo, Pena.”

  I looked up to find a uniformed officer, a rookie that I didn’t know the name of, staring at me.

  “Yeah?” I asked coolly.

  I didn’t like that he was talking to me like that.

  I’d seen him all of two times, and each time that I saw him, he made sure to act like he was better than me.

  The first time that I’d had the pleasure of his presence had been when I’d gone to have lunch with my dad. My dad was the rookie teacher. We called him the toddler wrangler.

  When I’d arrived at lunch with my dad, since he was helping the rookie through his first few weeks of training, he’d had to come to lunch, too.

  Needless to say, I hadn’t enjoyed lunch. The kid’s ability to treat everyone like shit, from the waitress all the way to the old woman outside that had asked for his assistance in stepping up onto the curb, disappointed me.

  I hadn’t been able to get away fast enough.

  Sadly, a winning personality wasn’t something that was a requirement to work at the Kilgore Police Department.

  “You have a visitor,” he sneered. “Out front.”

  With that, he left, leaving me to roll my eyes.

  “I really don’t like that kid. And what the hell did you do to him to warrant him acting like that?”

  I looked over in surprise at Saint.

  “You don’t?” I asked. “When would you have talked to him?”

  “He came into the bathroom the other day when I was taking a piss. Took the urinal right next to mine.” He paused. “Who the fuck does that?”

  “The rookie is an asshole,” I admitted. “And he didn’t like it that I gave him a dressing down in front of my father because he refused to offer an old lady assistance in getting up onto the curb. He literally looked at her and walked away. It was embarrassing the way he conducted himself. Who wouldn’t have helped her?”

  “Sounds like a piece of shit.”

  Chuckling and agreeing with Saint
’s observation, I gathered up all of my paperwork and dropped it off into the Sergeant’s bin before heading up front.

  I was two steps into the bullpen when I spotted my ‘visitor.’

  Grinding my teeth, I made my way up to David, Dillan’s dad.

  “How can I help you?” I asked stiffly.

  “You can help me by asking Dillan to drop the charges on Kerrie,” he said. “Then, you can help even more by getting the hell out of my daughter’s life. It wasn’t good enough that you ruined one daughter? Now you have to ruin two?”

  I stiffened and glared.

  “She’s not pressing charges. And I didn’t ruin either of your daughters,” I found myself saying. “And I would hardly call sleeping with both of them as ruining them.” I hesitated. “But, if you’d like to know, I only willingly slept with Dillan. I was drugged by Kerrie, the man that tried to kill your daughter yesterday, when I unknowingly slept with Delanie.” I paused. “Do you want to see pictures of your daughter’s neck? I took some this morning when she was sleeping in my bed.”

  David straightened his spine and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You have to be confused,” he said. “Kerrie wouldn’t have done all those things.”

  “We have video proof,” I said. “In case your daughter’s word wasn’t good enough.”

  David bared his teeth.

  “Talk to her about dropping the charges,” he urged.

  With that, he left, leaving me standing in the middle of the busy bullpen watching him go.

  “Your future father-in-law is a piece of shit,” one of the female officers observed.

  It took me a second to realize that it was someone I knew.

  “Hey, Ashe.” I gave her a half-hearted grin. “How’s the baby doing today?”

  Ashe patted her small baby belly.

  “I have indigestion.” She paused. “But at this point, I think it’s because he caused it.”

  She gestured at David’s retreating back.

  “He caused what?”

  I looked over to see Ford, Ashe’s husband and a fellow member of the SWAT team, staring at the two of us with concern.

  I grinned. “My future father-in-law decided to tell me that I ruined two of his daughters in the middle of the station.” I gestured to his wife. “And your wife got to listen to it.”