Falling for the Cop

by Dana Nussio

SHE WAITED. PEOPLE praised her for her sacrifices to deal with her mother’s needs so often that she’d come to expect it. Instead, Shane studied her for so long that she could barely sit still.

  “Do you feel guilty that your mom was injured in the accident instead of you?”

  The empty mug she’d been tilting on its side toppled on the table. No one had ever asked her that before. A counselor that her mother’s doctor had suggested Natalie contact might have, but she’d always been too busy taking care of her mom to make an appointment.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Was that why you gave up your dream?”

  She shook her head, the need to deny as strong as if he’d asked if she’d committed a crime. “No. It wasn’t like that. I guess by the time I went back to school, my priorities had changed. How could they not have? I’d seen too much. Life wasn’t as simple as I’d pictured it. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  His sad expression made her wonder if he understood too well. Was he remembering his own injury and recovery, or was there something more putting that raw look in his eyes?

  “But your mother resents you sometimes, doesn’t she? And you’re angry at her for that.”

  Natalie blinked and started shaking her head as his incisive gaze bored right through her. How had he cut so close to a topic she’d never been able to broach with her mother all of these years?

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s not? It was hard to miss that game you two were playing, with her trying to make you feel guilty for not being at home when she cut herself.” He pointed to her. “And you weren’t so innocent, either, telling her that I was a cop to get a rise out of her.”

  It hadn’t worked, either, something she couldn’t figure out. She looked up to Shane again and shrugged. “I was just annoyed with her tonight. She nearly called an ambulance over a tiny cut, and, well, you know the rest.”

  He nodded, digesting her answer. “Have you ever thought about pursuing your dream now that everything’s more settled?”

  “What?” She shook her head, trying to catch up with him. “You change subjects so fast. Is that how you keep suspects off balance during questioning?”

  “Sorry. Career hazard.”

  But he only waited, watching her, until she squirmed, trying to recall his last question.

  “Oh, you mean that dream to play the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, the pinnacle of a musician’s career, in front of two thousand, eight hundred and four of my biggest fans?” She grinned. “Yes, I memorized the capacity. But I don’t really think about it anymore.”

  “Really?”

  His tone said he didn’t believe her, but she tried anyway. “It was a long time ago. A pipe dream even then. I have different dreams now.”

  “Like what?”

  This time she met his gaze steadily. “That one day Mom will really live again instead of just existing.”

  “Tonight was a start, wasn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. There was definitely a spark, but she’s so comfortable in her misery now that I don’t know if she even wants anything else.”

  “Is it okay with you if she doesn’t?”

  At that question, she stared at her hands. Could she handle it if her mother lived like this another ten years? Twenty? Could she bear to continue this daily game they played for the rest of her mother’s life? Of course she could. She had to. Like always, they only had each other.

  “Do you still have any dreams for yourself, Natalie?”

  Her gaze flitted to his, but she looked away quickly. She hadn’t allowed herself to have dreams for a long time, and then Shane had come along, awakening her from what felt like a long, dark sleep. Did he realize the disruption he’d caused?

  “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

  “Did I mention that I’m a cop?”

  “Yes. I think we’ve covered that material.”

  He grinned. “You keep answering, so I keep asking.”

  “Any chance I could get you to stop?”

  “Okay. But may I ask just one more question first?”

  She nodded, wondering what he could possibly still want to know.

  “Will you play for me?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHANE COULDN’T HELP but stare as Natalie’s fingers danced across the ebony and ivory keys of the upright piano tucked in the back of her home’s formal living room. A piano that for several years had served only as a shelf for a half-dozen photographs from Natalie’s childhood. Though his definition of music included drum solos and guitar riffs, he’d asked her to play, curious how this musical side of her fit into the puzzle of Natalie Keaton that he’d been putting together with excruciating detail.

  And from the first moment she’d lined up her fingers—drawing them up and down along the narrow keys in a caress before causing the instrument to emit a single note—Shane realized he’d missed a puzzle piece right in the center. The one closest to her heart. She’d been reluctant to play at first, a bashful genius, but he could see now that it was more than that. Maybe she’d worried if she started playing again she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  A musician. He couldn’t put that thought together in his mind along with the competent therapist, the encouraging basketball coach, the talented basketball player. Yet the amazing sounds spilling from the piano told a different story. Of a private passion. Of dreams that had been lost the day of the accident.

  He’d never known that a piano could make sounds like that, never realized its music could stand alone, rather than serve as accompaniment to a great vocal track or bass line. And Natalie was the one massaging those sweet sounds from it, her fingers whipping up and down the scales like a bicyclist who’d been injured and away from his machine for so long but whose body had never forgotten how to ride.

  How could he have believed he knew her at all and not known this about her? She didn’t really know him, either, though she probably thought she did. It felt as if, through her music, she was inviting him to see her soul, and he wanted to do just that. More than that, for the first time ever, he was tempted to let another person really know him, too.

  Why would he risk it? That was dangerous. The truth about him wasn’t pretty. It was easier to keep his distance, to invite her only to the fringes of familiarity. It was safer, too, since he was a coward, after all.

  But the thought continued turning inside his mind as she played on, so lost in the joy of her music that she appeared to forget he was even there. She’d made herself vulnerable, so maybe he could allow himself to be that exposed with her, as well. He gripped the armrests of his chair, uncertainty battling with the desire for connection. Maybe, just maybe it was time to finally introduce a woman to the real Shane Warner.

  * * *

  THE MELODY CONTINUED to play in Natalie’s head as she drove Shane home a half hour later. It had been all she could do to pull her hands away from the keys, and even now, her fingers stretched on the steering wheel, longing to blend notes for chords.

  “So now you know how I spent much of my adolescence, practicing Bach’s sonatas and perfecting my three-pointer,” she said. “Neither were things Mom was particularly thrilled about.”

  “I can understand why basketball might not have been her favorite thing, but why not music?”

  “It wasn’t practical. She always paid for my lessons, but she never understood why music was so important to me. She was especially shocked when I decided to study music. It didn’t make sense to her. She is an accountant, after all. It’s hard for her not to see the world in terms of a W-2.”

  “I don’t think parents are meant to understand their kids.”

  “Do you really believe that? I guess you did say you got into trouble, though you were a kid fr
om a ‘perfect’ family. Didn’t they at least try to stop you?”

  “Oh, they tried, but there’s no way you can slow down someone who’s hell-bent on imploding. Too bad I had to take other people down with me.”

  Natalie couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Are you going to tell me your story, or are you going to make me hunt down your secrets on the internet?”

  “Juvenile records are sealed.”

  “Then you’ll have to tell me.”

  For several long seconds, he said nothing. Without the radio on, the van was so quiet that the whir of the engine crowded the space. Would he pretend he didn’t want her to know when he clearly needed to talk about it?

  “There’s an adrenaline rush that comes from getting away with something,” he said finally. “I was addicted to it, and I surrounded myself with friends who craved it as much as I did.”

  “What did you get away with?”

  “Little things at first, like pranks at school and then vandalism to the play structure in our subdivision. Stealing a couple of beers from an open garage. Letting the air out of a teacher’s tires.”

  “So small-time stuff?” Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw his nod.

  “Then in eighth grade, we upped the stakes. We experimented with drugs. But raising hell was still my favorite rush. That was why it was my idea to have the competition that night. The four of us were to go out on our own, steal the craziest things we could think of and meet up the next day to show our trophies. A perfect plan.”

  At Shane’s foreboding words, Natalie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “So not so perfect?”

  “I was determined to win, so I stole a pair of Kevlar vests right from the backseat of a police car.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “The officer had parked his take-home vehicle near his house in the subdivision next to mine. But too bad for me, he was watching his own neighborhood more closely that night. I landed in jail.”

  Natalie let out the breath she’d been holding and grinned into the darkness as she continued down the dark road. “So you rode in the back of a police car instead of the front one time. I was expecting something worse.”

  “It was worse. My friend Connor wanted to take his game to a new level, too. At least we suspect that’s what he’d planned to do. We’ll never know for sure.”

  She swallowed. This was going to be bad. But she had to ask. “What happened?”

  “He’d been huffing from a can of compressed-air computer cleaner to get high before he went out.” Shane gripped his hands in his lap. “He never made it out of his bedroom. His parents found him dead the next morning. Cardiac arrest.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she blurted. “You know that, right?”

  “But I wasn’t exactly guilt-free, was I?”

  Even if he had a point, she wished she could say something that might assuage his guilt. “How do you know he had plans to go out that night?”

  “He was wearing dark clothes and had a dark pillowcase, a roll of duct tape and some nylon rope waiting on his bed.”

  “Whatever he did that night or intended to do, those were his decisions,” she said. “You weren’t responsible for them.”

  He didn’t argue the point this time, but it was clear that he disagreed.

  “It wasn’t until three days later when I learned that Connor had died.”

  “But you were in jail, right?”

  “Not the whole time—my parents put me under house arrest and took my phone. By the time my brother let me know what had happened, they’d already scheduled Connor’s funeral. My parents wouldn’t let me go, which was a good thing, since his family didn’t want me there.”

  “They needed someone to blame.”

  “They weren’t the only ones. My other friends told everyone about my dare, so...”

  “So you were an unpopular guy.”

  “They didn’t need to hate me. I hated myself enough for all of them.”

  “How did you go back to school?”

  “I didn’t. At least not there. My parents had to move so my brother and I could go to a different school. Stephen never forgave me for that.”

  “I’ve heard of kids moving to new schools and then just raising hell at the new school. Is that what you did?”

  “I probably would have, if Kent Sawyer hadn’t planted himself in my corner and refused to budge.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The officer I stole the vests from.”

  “Are you kidding?” She peeked at him with her side vision, relieved that he was finally smiling.

  “Yeah. No accounting for good sense. After Kent found out about my connection to the boy who died, he convinced the judge to assign him to mentor me as part of my juvenile sentence.”

  “I bet you weren’t happy about that.”

  He nodded into the darkness. “And no matter how hard I tried to convince him that I was a bad bet, he refused to give up on me. He took me to the gym and taught me how to pound weights instead of fists. He even convinced me to go out for football.”

  For several seconds, he was quiet as if remembering. “He’s been like a father to me. He saved my life. If not for him, I might have turned out just like Connor. Sometimes I—”

  He stopped himself then, but Natalie couldn’t help but to fill in the blank. Sometimes he wished he’d died instead.

  Natalie parked the van in front of Shane’s house, watching his profile in the light coming from the floods on both sides of his garage doors. A pickup she didn’t recognize was parked out front, indicating that one of his friends was already there.

  So much made sense now. Shane had become a police officer to atone for his mistakes and to repay the police officer who’d taken a chance on him. Once again he’d proven himself heroic, and it made her feel like a heel for all the things she’d decided about him without even knowing him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned his head to face her. “For what?”

  “For judging you based on my prejudices.”

  He surprised her by chuckling. “Well, thanks. That means a lot.”

  “What ever happened to your other two friends who were there the night of the dare?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “I guess Mark straightened up after that. He’s an accountant in Boston now. Nate wasn’t so lucky. He got hooked on drugs. He’s been in out and out of prison for the past fifteen years.”

  “And what about the officer who mentored you? Where is he now?”

  Immediately, Shane’s shoulders lowered. He stared out the windshield a few seconds before responding. “Kent had to take early retirement last July. Cancer.”

  “Is he okay?”

  His shoulder lifted and lowered. “They thought he’d beat it. He was in remission, but now...not so much.”

  “Has he been given long?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry. Have you been able to visit him since...?” She let her words trail away without filling in the rest. They both knew what Shane had been dealing with the past few months.

  “My coworkers take me to see him as often as they can. He’s supposed to be coming to my commendation ceremony, but I don’t know if—”

  She nodded. Shane had a lot riding on that ceremony. He’d already said he wanted to be walking by this artificial deadline, and now there was another inexact deadline—a much less flexible date.

  “Will your parents be able to attend...as well?” The last sounded awkward to her, but she was searching for something comforting to say, and she was coming up empty. She might as well have said instead.

  “They both passed away several years ago. First Mom and then Dad a year later. They were older. A lot of health problems.”r />
  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks.” He shifted higher in his seat now. “At least they had the chance to see that I turned out okay. They even forgave me for the hell I put them through.”

  “What about your brother?”

  He shrugged. “One of these days.”

  And hopefully one day Shane would be able to forgive himself, she thought as she opened her door. She pushed the button that opened the van’s side door and lowered the exit ramp. Neither spoke as the automated system moved his chair from the passenger position and lowered him to the ground.

  “Well, that was a downer of a way to end the night when we were supposed to be celebrating our first victory,” he said as his chair rolled out onto the still-frozen ground.

  “Thanks for sharing your story with me,” she said simply.

  “Now aren’t you glad you decided to have my case reassigned? You never know what kind of lowlifes you’ll have to work with.”

  When she didn’t laugh at his joke, he finally nodded. He’d taken a risk to share his story with her tonight, and she couldn’t have felt more honored that he’d trusted her with it.

  “You know something, Shane?”

  He stared at her, waiting.

  “Someday you’re going to have to forgive yourself. Hopefully someday soon.”

  He nodded. “I hope so, too.”

  Strange, they’d seemed so different when she’d first met him: two sides of a law enforcement story with no way to bridge that disconnect. But now she recognized that they weren’t so different after all. They’d both experienced tragedy. Him more than once. And they both carried around survivor’s guilt, questioning why they’d walked away when others hadn’t been so lucky.

  Maybe it was that shared experience or something more basic, like the need to connect with another human who understood pain and loss, but something urged Natalie to reach for Shane’s hand and lace their fingers together. His hand was cold—they should have been wearing gloves—but warmth immediately spread where their skin touched.

  For several seconds, Shane only stared at their hands as if surprised by the fingers entwined with his, and then he looked up at her. Natalie stilled, her muscles and joints frozen into place, as she fell completely and willingly into the magic of his mesmerizing eyes.