“I’ll take him,” I said to Ashe.
Although she could handle her own, she didn’t have the strength to hold him down and keep him still without hurting the little fucker.
Something in which he deserved.
“Youth nowadays,” an elderly woman said as she watched me shove them into my cop car.
I looked up, surprised to see someone so old out so late.
Then realized that the car she’d gotten out of was packed to the gills with vacation shit and two sleeping kids.
“Wow, what happened?”
I ignored the couple and took Douchebag one to Saint’s cruiser. Saint, who’d just pulled up in time to receive his precious cargo.
“Careful with this one,” I drawled as I threw him in. “He’s lively.”
Saint scoffed and got out, walking into the building with me.
I frowned when I saw Ashe on her hands and knees doing chest compressions to the man who’d been punched.
“What the fuck?” I asked, dropping down onto my knees.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “He’s not breathing, though.”
Saint had already disappeared back to his car, coming back with a face mask.
Then the three of us continued chest compressions before he was hauled off in an ambulance eight minutes later.
The mewling kitten was the only thing left behind of the aftermath.
Saint picked it up and stroked its head.
“You can keep it,” Ashe said. “I already have way too many.”
Saint was already shaking his head.
“I can’t keep this cat,” he said. “It looks traumatized. I don’t do traumatized.”
The kitten closed its eyes and started to purr. Loudly.
Saint blew out a defeated breath. “I don’t even like cats.”
Ashe turned to me. “That guy was dead before he even hit the floor.”
Yes, yes, he was.
Chapter 9
Saying ‘have a nice day’ sounds friendly. Saying ‘enjoy your next twenty-four hours’ sounds threatening.
-Text from Ford to Ashe
Ford
It was the knock on my door at eleven in the morning the next day that had me wanting to kill who was on the other side of the door.
Blearily I opened it up and stared at who was outside.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, hair sticking up every which way, eyes on the woman, and death in my eyes.
She grinned at me.
“I’m here to talk about kitten and cat disappearances.” She waggled a sheath of papers at me.
“Since I’m off for the next two days with you, I decided not to go to sleep.”
I grunted something unintelligible, then turned to go back to the couch where I’d fallen asleep earlier.
I would say that it was because it was more comfortable, but honestly, I’d just been too goddamn tired to make it all the way into my room.
Not to mention that the pillow I’d been using smelled of Ashe when she’d come over for pizza the other night.
Something girly. Floral and scented.
I liked it.
Too much.
Especially since I wasn’t supposed to continue to want the girl that was a pain in my ass ninety-five percent of the time.
“I found like eighty missing cats in the area,” she said as she sat on the couch next to my face.
Her phone buzzed right against my head, and I pushed her away with a shove.
“Move over,” I ordered.
She didn’t.
She did, however, remove her phone from her pocket.
“Who’s texting you so early?” I asked tiredly.
“I joined the Facebook dating app thing,” she answered. “Rowen and Calloway made me do it.”
A dart of anger started to angle through my blood.
“No shit?” I asked, much more awake now.
And pissed.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Actually, they filled out the app online for it. Signed me up for it, anyway. I don’t actually know how it was done. But they forced me to do it because they said I’d never meet anyone if I didn’t put myself out there.”
Anger now licking at my features, I kept my head down as I said, “You want to date?”
“It’s not like I don’t want to date,” she admitted. “I have no reason not to.”
She said those words as if she was waiting for me to argue with her. To tell her that I was the reason she shouldn’t.
But I chose not to give her what I felt like she was hinting for.
I turned my face so that it was hidden in the cushion of the couch, solidly understanding the situation at hand.
Ashe and I didn’t work.
We fought like cats and dogs.
We were attracted to each other.
But attraction couldn’t carry a relationship.
Something which both of us realized, which was why we’d never pursued anything like this before.
At least, that was my take on it.
Sure, the attraction had always been there since the moment that we’d been old enough to realize what it was.
“Do you think I should accept a date with a cop?” she asked curiously. “He works at KPD.”
I did sit up then, my eyes narrowing.
“Which cop?” I asked.
She turned her phone so that it was facing me.
“This one.” She showed me.
I barely refrained from saying ‘that pussy?’
“Uhh.” I paused. “He’s nice.”
He was nice.
And a pushover.
Ashe would hate him.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll accept.”
The officer, Trace Davidson, was a bit older than us. And he still lived with his parents.
I couldn’t wait to hear what Ashe thought about that.
Picking up her stack of papers that she’d gathered, I read over the reports. Each one of them reported a cat missing.
And she was right. There were over forty of them missing in just the last week alone.
“Hey.” Ashe paused. “Did you know that Linnett, your ex-girlfriend, moved to Kilgore?”
I frowned and looked at her.
She was showing me her phone, and on it was a picture of Linnett in front of the oil derricks that sat in front of the Oil Museum.
“No,” I said. “I had no clue. She’s probably just passing through.”
Ashe shook her head as she turned the phone back around to her.
“Actually, no. It says on her profile that she works here. Slater Printing,” she disagreed. “Didn’t they have a place in Benton, too?”
I snorted and went back to the papers. “Yes. They have places all over the south.” I paused. “Why do you know this?”
“We’re friends on Facebook,” she answered.
An idea started to form in my mind.
“We should go on a double date.”
I honestly couldn’t believe those words had just come out of my mouth.
But I was so focused on proving to myself that I could do this, move on from Ashe, that I didn’t think about what was coming out of my mouth until it was too late.
“What?” she asked.
“We should go on a date,” I repeated the dumbass thing that’d just come out of my mouth. “You say yes to Trace, and I’ll ask Linnett. It’ll be like old times.”
I would’ve laughed had I not been trying to convince both her and myself that we could do this. Move on.
I could do this.
I really could.
Couldn’t I?
“You want to go out on a date with Linnett?” she asked, surprised.
I shrugged and nodded my head, the idea already taking root. “I’ll ask her if she wants to go. Maybe just to catch up. You ask Trace. We’ll hash out a time that works for both of us.”
Th
at sounded like a terrible idea.
Honestly, what was I thinking?
“Okay…” she hesitated. “Are you sure?”
No, no I wasn’t.
There was a reason that Linnett and I hadn’t worked out.
She was crazy in high school.
But going out with her beat sitting there watching Ashe date.
That I couldn’t handle.
Chapter 10
At my funeral, I want you to stand up and say ‘at least she’s quit drinking.’
-Text from Ashe to Ford
Ashe
Our double date happened on a Friday, an entire two weeks later.
I wasn’t sure why the hell I’d agreed with him.
First, I wasn’t really sure that Trace was dating material.
Though he seemed nice when I’d met him the few times at the police department, and when I talked to him online, I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to cut it.
Then, there was the fact that I was going to have to look at Linnett hanging all over Ford again.
Seriously, I’d about had enough of her, and I hadn’t even seen her yet.
Her Facebook posts about ‘catching up with an old friend’ happened every single day.
And goddamn did she not drive me crazy with her countdowns.
‘Two more weeks until I see my old special friend.’
‘Two more days until I see Ford.’
‘Two more hours until our date.’
All of the posts were accompanied with about half a million hearts.
I was also quite happy to find out that Ford still wasn’t her friend.
He was, however, mine.
Want to know how I’d accomplished that? I’d stolen his phone in eleventh grade and made him a Facebook. Then I’d added myself and his family. Followed by everyone at school but Linnett.
Though granted, at the time it was just following Ford and Linnett’s breakup, so it was understandable.
Eventually I’d given him the password, and he’d used it, but not until I’d made myself an admin on it to change his profile picture every once in a while since I knew he never would.
Which was what I was doing right that very second as I waited in the parking lot for Ford to get done writing his report.
We would be leaving for the restaurant directly from the station and would be going in our work clothes seeing as we’d had yet another day from hell.
Honestly, I was almost glad that I would be going back to school soon, meaning all of this riding around and doing the beat business would be stopping.
It was getting old.
Really old.
What was also getting old was seeing Linnett count down the fucking seconds.
I scrolled through my photos of Ford that I’d surreptitiously taken over the last few weeks he’d been training me.
I found one of him with his face forward, eyes scanning the street in front of him. He had his hand on the wheel and his other hand wrapped around the mic as he called a license plate in.
His Ray-Ban sunglasses were shielding his eyes, and the sun was shining in his window, making him look all ethereal and badass.
I selected that particular photo because you could see me in the reflection of the window, taking the picture.
The more reminders of me there could be, the better.
Because it was right then that I’d decided that enough was enough.
That ‘one time’ with Ford had been the most perfect of my life.
It’d been the one and only time that I’d felt like I didn’t have to pretend. That I could just be who I was meant to be.
Originally, I’d done the dating app with Calloway because I’d wanted to see what he would say to me ‘dating.’
What I hadn’t expected was for him to suggest a double date.
I’d honestly expected him to say, ‘okay, have fun’ and that be the end of it.
Him doing a double date like this meant that he wanted to be there. Wanted to keep an eye on me.
Wanted to be ready in case something happened that he didn’t like.
And I was making sure of that.
Sadly, poor Trace was going to be the fodder for my end game.
I needed an excuse to do this, and Trace was it. Thankfully, when I’d told him that I was just looking to be friends with him, but would still like to go out to dinner, he’d agreed.
He’d also suggested that he could bring a friend for me to meet.
When I’d told him sure, that I was down for that, since we were just having a friendly dinner, I hadn’t quite expected it to go as bad as it did.
Linnett, however? Well, I didn’t care if she got hurt. I didn’t even like her.
The only reason I was friends with her on Facebook was because I enjoyed seeing the woman flounder.
Which made me sound like a complete dick, but it was what it was.
It was also why I’d stopped by my place over lunch break and retrieved a set of earrings that Ford had given me for my seventeenth birthday.
Earrings that Linnett had picked out, thinking that they were for her when they were really for me.
Now, there I was, decked out in my work gear, wearing sparkly pink earrings that I would’ve never picked out on my own, waiting on Ford to get outside.
He finally arrived late, just in time for us to make it to the restaurant—barely.
“What were you doing in there?” I asked. “Reports don’t take that long.”
He shrugged. “Had to go to the bathroom.”
I crossed my arms. “Even filling out a report doesn’t take that long.”
He glanced at me as if he was amused by my commentary.
“Sometimes I’m not sure what to do with you,” he said conversationally as he started the cruiser up and began heading toward the restaurant where we were double dating at.
When we arrived five minutes later, not a word had been spoken between us, but the tension was thick in the truck as if both of us knew that this was about to get ugly.
“We’re here,” he muttered darkly as he pulled into the parking lot.
I immediately saw Linnett standing at the front entrance talking to Trace.
“Oh, look. They’re friends,” I teased, elbowing Ford. “Maybe she’ll try to steal my date.”
Ford snorted and got out of the car, but not before tossing me a parting comment of, “We could only be so lucky.”
I was staring at him when he rounded the cruiser and waited for me to arrive.
“You’re weird,” I told him as I fell into step beside him.
He shrugged and popped his back by pressing his fisted hands at mid-back.
After twisting each way, garnering a plethora of pops that ran along his spine, he dropped his hand and looked around the parking lot.
“I’ve never been here before,” he said as he took in the area.
We were visiting The Back Porch for the first time.
It hadn’t been my idea to come here, mostly because this had been my first time hearing about it, when Linnett, apparently, had suggested it.
“It’s great,” Linnett chirped. “It’s got live music, great food, and the atmosphere is amazing.”
I inwardly groaned upon hearing that they had ‘live music.’
Not because I didn’t like music, but because my head didn’t.
I literally couldn’t tolerate it.
And when the hostess led me to an interior booth with everyone else following after me, I knew that I was in for it.
I took a seat as did the rest of us, and as the hostess handed us each our menus, I felt the first pounds of my future headache.
I looked up in time to see Ford staring at me with concern.
The minute our eyes connected, I knew he was about to interrupt.
“We can’t sit in here,” Ford said, standing up.
I touched his hand with mine.
�
�It’s okay,” I started to say, but he shook his head.
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Ashe is going to get a roaring headache if we stay in here. We need a table on the porch.”
Linnett shot her hate-filled eyes to me.
I barely contained the urge to laugh.
One time when we were younger, nearly the same thing had happened. Only he and Linnett had come to a family dinner with us. My parents had been ecstatic to watch some particular band play, and I’d gone inside to sit by myself while I waited for the concert to be over.
Sadly, concerts gave me extreme headaches. And when I say extreme, I meant headaches that would quickly turn into migraines if I wasn’t careful.
All it took was exposure to the loud sounds for more than five minutes, and I was a goner.
And it’d already been three, and I could feel the pounding pulse at the back of my brain.
“Oh, man,” Linnett whined. “I picked it because of the band that was playing. I thought that you’d really like them.”
Ford glanced over at me and winced.
“Yeah, but you also damn well knew that Ashe couldn’t do loud places.”
“That’s a bummer,” Trace said as he stood. “Why is that?”
We moved to a table outside that would all but stop the sound of the music unless the door was opened.
Once we regained our seats, I had Trace on one side of me, Ford on the other, and I was facing Linnett.
Yay.
“So what happens when you listen to loud music?” Trace questioned as he opened his menu.
“Normally? I just get a really bad headache,” I answered. “The only problem is, it stays for days. And I wouldn’t say that it’s a migraine as much as just a headache. But it stays for so long that I can’t recover. By the end of the four days, or however long I keep it, I’m exhausted.”
Trace frowned.
“My sister used to get headaches,” Trace said.
“I’m going to go run to the bathroom,” Linnett said, eyes coming to me as if I would want to go with her.
Thanks, but hell no.
“Oh really?” I asked conversationally, returning my gaze to Trace.
Ford leaned back in his chair and watched the two of us talk, his eyes narrowing more and more the longer the conversation continued.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I swear, she lived her life with one. That’s all I ever heard about, was her head hurting.”
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