“Okay.” He pushed his glasses into place. “We’re all heading out for lunch. Want to join?”
“No, thanks, I’m going to run home and grab my daughter’s bag. She forgot it, and I told my mother I’d bring it by, since she’s sleeping over tonight.” And to be honest, he needed to see his baby after last night. Needed to hug her. Hold her. Smell her sweet strawberry shampoo.
“Be careful what route you take. I heard there’s a big standoff with the police and some nut with a gun on Masters Street. Traffic’s parked and hasn’t moved for a half hour. There were a few cops hit.”
The news punched the wind out of Mark’s chest and replaced it with fear. Cold, white fear. He stood abruptly, shoving his chair back so hard that it hit the wall of his office and bounced off. “Daisy? Is she there?”
Holt looked at him strangely. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Without another word, he grabbed his phone and stalked out of his office, brushing past a surprised Holt. There was a long line of people at the elevator waiting to leave for their lunch break, so he opted for the stairs, passing Steven without even waving or smiling. He took the steps two at a time, trying to ignore the rising panic trying to choke him. He dialed Daisy’s number quickly, holding the phone to his ear. It rang six times and went right to voicemail. “Shit.”
Obviously, if she was in the middle of a hostile situation, she couldn’t answer her phone. Maybe she didn’t answer because she wasn’t there, but was busy handling the rest of the city while the other cops handled that situation. Or maybe she was just busy. Logically, he shouldn’t assume she was hurt, or go straight to that dark place he’d lived in after Tina died before he knew the story.
But as he glanced at his phone, and he checked the last text he sent her, he noticed she hadn’t read it, and against all reason and logic…he went there.
And he went there bad.
In his mind, Daisy lay in a pool of red, sticky blood, her red hair coated with the dark liquid, as she stared up at the clear sky unseeingly, and there was no bringing her back. She was gone, and he was alone, and he was right back in abyss he’d only just climbed out of. And in that startling, terrifying moment of loss, he realized something he’d been trying to ignore and avoid.
He loved Daisy.
He’d fallen for her.
Fallen for a fucking cop.
Like a damn fool.
And now here he was, worrying about her dying, like he’d sworn not to do. He’d ignored every single warning bell going off in his head every damn time he kissed her, and now she was going to die, like Tina, and he was going to die, too. Not physically. But the small part of his heart that was left after losing the woman he loved first would die along with the woman he loved now.
He never should have fallen for Daisy O’Rourke.
Never should have knocked on her damn door.
Cursing under his breath, he got in his truck and pulled up to the stop light. Left would take him to Daisy. Right would take him home. He gripped the turn signal, gritted his teeth, and turned left. He drove two blocks before he hit the stopped traffic Holt had warned him about. He stuck his head out the window and craned his neck, trying to see something. Anything.
Preferably a lock of shockingly red hair.
Something told him she wouldn’t be happy if she found out he was here, trying to catch a glimpse of her, but he just had to see her, know she was alive, and then he’d go.
No one would even know.
The boom of a gunshot reverberated through the warm afternoon, and he was shifting his truck into park and running toward the sound before he even fully realized he’d moved. His heart pounded harder and faster with each step, until his pulse sounded louder than the shot. He only made it a few steps before, without warning, a cop stood in front of him and lifted a gun, pointing at his chest. “Freeze!”
Mark froze, breathing heavily.
Jesus, had he really been sprinting toward an active shooter situation?
The cop cursed and walked toward him, shoving his sunglasses up in place, and Mark stiffened, because he recognized him instantly.
It was Daisy’s partner, Tim.
Of fucking course it was.
Damn it.
“What the hell are you doing here, man?” Tim hissed, glancing over his shoulder. “Get back in your truck before I’m forced to arrest you for interfering with a crime scene.”
He lowered his hands. “Of course. I’m sorry. I don’t know…”
“Go.” He followed Mark to his truck, and watched as he climbed in. The second the door was shut, he leaned on the open window and eyed Mark. “If she sees you here, checking up on her, she’ll be pissed. I suggest you leave before that happens.”
Mark said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Directly behind him was Daisy…
And she looked pissed as hell.
Shit.
Stalking over to him, she rested her hand on the butt of her gun. “I’ve got this, Tim.”
Tim shot him an apologetic look, but immediately left.
“Mark…” She looked impossibly tiny in her bulletproof vest, but every step she took radiated with power. When she reached his truck, she rested a hand on his open window, glanced over her shoulder at the waiting cars, and said, “What are you doing here?”
He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be this guy.
Couldn’t drag her down.
He had to end this.
“I…” He could lie. Tell her he was heading to lunch and didn’t know about the shooting. But that wasn’t who he was. He’d made a mistake in coming here, in checking up on her like a worried father, and he’d have to own up to it. “I heard about the standoff and got worried, so I came over to see what I could see. I also called you, and texted you a few times, to see if you were okay. Then I heard the gunshot…”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”
“I see that now. But when I heard cops were shot, and another bullet was fired,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I just immediately pictured you lying on the ground, dead, and it scared me. It reminded me of—”
“Let me guess.” She made a small, angry sound. “It reminded you why you didn’t want to be with me?”
It hurt to hear it out loud, but it didn’t make it any less true. He never should have chased her, or caught her, and he certainly never should have fallen for her. If the fear coursing through his veins today was a reminder of anything, it was that. The two of them didn’t belong together. They both knew it when they met but chose to ignore it. It was time to stop.
To walk away before someone got hurt…
More.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. We never should have done this.”
She backed off a step. “Are you saying what I think you’re trying to say?”
He took a deep breath, because as much as he didn’t want to, he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t live in constant fear for another person’s life like this. He couldn’t be the guy who charged on to a crime scene and got his fool ass shot because he was terrified. And he also couldn’t be the guy who begged her to get another job, because he couldn’t handle hers. He couldn’t do that to her…or Ginny.
This had to be the end.
Here and now.
He locked eyes with her, regret making it hard to speak. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize. Don’t you dare.” She stepped back, her nostrils flaring. With her hand still resting on her gun, she avoided his eyes as she shrugged. “We said when one of us changed our mind, then it was done. No questions asked, right?”
Damn, she didn’t need to look so okay with it.
He wasn’t okay.
He flexed his fingers on the wheel. “Right.”
“I—” Her radio went off. The man on the speaker called for backup, and asked for the units holding off traffic to approach. More were being sent to guide
traffic away. She lifted the radio to her mouth, depressed the button, and said, “10-4. We’re on our way.”
“Daisy—”
“I have to go. I’m working, Mark. It’s fine. I get it. You don’t want to deal with this. We knew that from the beginning. And you know what? I don’t want to, either.” She shrugged nonchalantly again, and it felt like a knife stabbed through his chest. “We were just messing around anyway. It’s not like this was serious or anything. It was just sex.”
Just sex.
That’s all he’d been to her.
A good lay.
Jesus.
She tapped his hood and cocked her head to Tim, who nodded back. “Take care, Mark.”
He watched her walk away, speechless for the first time in his life.
Every nerve in his body screamed at him to go after her, to chase after her one more time and take back everything he’d said, but she didn’t even care that he’d broken it off with her.
Didn’t even care about him.
So he did nothing.
“Nothing” had never felt so fucking horrible.
Chapter Eighteen
This is a mistake. A huge mistake.
But she was going to go ahead and do it anyway.
Daisy marched up to Mark’s door with sweaty palms and shaky legs. After he’d stopped by that scene and broken up with her on the frigging street, she’d been a hot mess. He’d begged her to let him in. Begged her for a chance to prove why they belonged together. And then at the first hint of danger…
He bailed.
He frigging bailed.
Lifting her hand, she knocked hard three times. She stood on his stupid perfect porch, with its stupid little perfect wicker chairs, and its stupid little perfect porch light, and wanted to punch him right in his stupid perfect nose, just like her dad had done, because she hated him for making it hurt to breathe. Only she didn’t. Not really. The knife in her chest, radiating pain throughout her body because she lost him, wasn’t hate.
It was fear.
The door swung open and he was there, wearing an open shirt and a pair of jeans that hugged him in all the right places, making him look way too damn sexy for her own good. His five-o’clock shadow was more of a full on stubble, and it made her wonder if he didn’t have time to shave this morning. It was even sexier than his usual shadow, and her fingers itched to touch the long lines of his hard jaw, to touch that dimple she loved so much. Her gaze lingered on his abs and those too-tight jeans, but she forced herself to stop drooling.
She wasn’t here to admire his beauty.
She was here to yell at him, damn it.
He watched her from under hooded eyes, and swayed slightly. He squinted at her, like he was having a hard time focusing. She wasn’t. “This isn’t a good—”
“Time? Well, I don’t care. Screw you and your time.” She poked his chest. He stumbled back clumsily, blinking at her. She barged inside and shut the door behind her. “You asked me to give you a chance.” Another poke. “You promised me no one would get hurt.” A harder one. “You lied.”
When she went to poke his chest again, he caught her hand in an iron steady grip. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
She blinked, caught off guard at the way he looked at her. Like she was…nothing. A thing of his past, that dared to come back into his present. “What?”
“You’re right. I lied,” he said again, his tone hard and angry. “You need to go.”
She swallowed, because he was acting so different. So…so…cold. “Why did you do it? Why beg me to let you in, and then—?”
“We both know you never really let me in.” He still held her wrist, his thumb pressed over her pulse. He probably felt it leap when he stepped closer, his chest touching hers. He lowered his face to hers, their noses touching. “We were just having sex, right? Some good old fashioned fun. Nothing serious. That’s what you said.”
She flinched, because out of all the things she could have said, that was probably the worst. It was the biggest lie she’d ever told. “Mark…”
“Don’t,” he hissed. “Don’t go back on what you said.”
She stiffened, not because of what he was saying, but because of the way he smelled. She hadn’t noticed it till now, but when he was this close, his breath reeked of whiskey and cigars. He smelled like…like… Her father.
His favorite drink was cheap whiskey, too.
She stepped back. “You’re drunk.”
“Like I said.” He let go of her and covered his face. “Not a good time.”
Hugging herself, she took another step back, forcing her face to remain calm. He wasn’t her father, and would never be her father, but the last thing she wanted to do was have this conversation with the drunk version of Mark. “I’m going to go—”
“I’m not usually a liar, you know,” he said, just as calmly as she. He was good at putting on a front, too, apparently. “I honestly thought…shit.”
“I—” She cut herself off. Big conversation. Big topic. High emotions. Drunk boyfriend…or ex-boyfriend, she guessed. “It doesn’t matter what you thought.”
She opened the door, but he placed his hand on it above her head, holding it shut, effectively trapping her in the room with him. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” she asked without turning around.
“What you said.” He swallowed hard. “Was it just sex?”
“I…” She faced him, placing her back flat against the cool door, pain radiating from her chest throughout her whole body. “Does it really matter? It’s over. You’re the one who ended it.”
He stared down at her, nostrils flaring, and pushed off the door, freeing her. He muttered something under his breath, so soft she didn’t make it out.
Heart pounding, she said, “What did you say?”
“I never should have chased you,” he said, more loudly this time.
In other words, he regretted her. She tried not to let that hurt, but it was like trying not to let running full-force into a brick wall hurt you. It was inevitable. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing at all.
“You didn’t want to be caught. You never wanted to be caught by me.”
She needed to go. Needed to stop having this conversation with a drunk man. But— “Who says I didn’t want to be caught? I let you catch me, didn’t I?”
“And then you pushed me away. Repeatedly.”
She shook her head. “Not last night. Last night, I let you in…and then you broke up with me. On the street. While I was working.”
He winced and held his hand out. “Daisy…”
“No.” She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“I was going to ask you to take a step back from your job,” he said flatly. “Maybe not now. Maybe not next year. Maybe not until we were married and you were pregnant with our child, or maybe not until the second one. But eventually, I would have asked.”
She swallowed. “I won’t do it.”
“I know. And you shouldn’t.” He laughed. Not a real laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. “That’s why I had to end it. I can’t…we can’t…I can’t be with a cop. Not even for you.”
Her heart twisted, and she blinked away tears. “I know.”
“I…” He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” After a few moments, she whispered, “It wasn’t just sex. It was so much more.”
He took a step toward her, his eyes blazing fire, then stopped. What she saw in those brown depths—desire, pain, loss, hope—took her breath away. “You need to go. Now.”
“What?” she whispered, caught off guard, because just seconds ago he’d been looking at her like he couldn’t live without her.
“Leave. Now.” He gave her his back, his shoulders hard. “If you don’t go, if you don’t walk away from me right now, I’m going to chase you again. And we both know I’m going to catch you. We’ll be happy for a little while, and we’ll go back to pretending we don’t remember why we can’t be together, but then somet
hing like this will happen again, and we’ll be right back to this moment. I can’t do that to you, and I can’t do it to Ginny. This needs to end here. Just do us both a favor and get the hell out of my life because I’m not strong enough to do it myself. Not when it comes to you. So, please, just fucking go.”
The pain piercing her chest choked her. She swallowed past it, the sound of her heart breaking the only thing filling the silence of the room, but she was fairly certain she was the only one who heard it. The second she walked out the door, he slammed it behind her and locked it. She jumped then took a calming breath. Something crashed against the wall and shattered, and she covered her mouth, blinking rapidly.
It was over.
They were done.
She’d been right.
It ended exactly as she imagined it.
With her broken.
Chapter Nineteen
Three days.
That’s how long it had been since he’d told Daisy to get the hell out of his life. And he’d been miserable ever since. A part of him, a tiny part, said he’d done the right thing. The sad truth was, no matter how much he cared about her, no matter how much he wanted it to work, it just didn’t. They were like two puzzle pieces from different boxes that would never fit together no matter how hard he tried.
It was time to give up and go back to his own box.
Ending things the way he had was the right choice. He had no doubt that the two of them together didn’t work, and never would. But that didn’t make accepting it any easier.
Steven nudged him with his elbow. “You okay over there?”
“Yeah,” Mark said immediately. “Just focused.”
“On what? The wall?” He pointed to the left. “Mr. DeLaCorte is over there.”
Mark stiffened because, damn it, he was right. He’d been staring at nothing, like a moron. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“You’re not the only one,” Steven muttered angrily. “I’ve been left to clean up the damn mess you made, and I’m not too happy about it.”
“What?” Mark asked.
“Nothing. Never mind.” He narrowed his eyes. “Five o’clock. Guy in black. Does he look suspicious to you?”
His Best Mistake (Shillings Agency) Page 14
