by L A Witt
He stared at me. I stared right back.
Larson cleared his throat. “Detective, I’d like to step back and discuss the recording of the incident…”
In the end, they grilled me for almost two hours. It was a waste of time—all they really wanted to do was warn me about giving the city bad PR and remind me that decorated white officers and law enforcement’s reputation were higher priority than murdered black civilians and their justifiably terrified loved ones. But they couldn’t say that out loud any more than I could say I’d been working in Internal Affairs long enough to be very familiar with the rampant racism that everyone tried to pretend didn’t exist on the force. That it was far worse than even I had realized.
After the meeting was adjourned and everyone except my boss and me had left, Bridges turned to me, her poker face gone and both exhaustion and impatience written all over her tight features. “You’d better play this one right, Mark. I know you don’t like getting involved in the city politics, but you just dove into them head first.” She arched a slim eyebrow. “Don’t you dare fuck this up.”
I swallowed. “I won’t.”
“And if your report concludes that we have a problem in this city,” she went on, “you’d better have an airtight case with indisputable evidence, or we are both fucked. Am I clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded, and she started to leave, but hesitated. “And, um…” She chewed her lip before she finally turned to me. “I would suggest you stay away from your doctor friend for the time being. At least until after this is over.”
My heart sank. On some level, I’d known it was coming, but it still hit hard. Ryan and I had managed to keep some of the spark simmering beneath the surface, and I was confident that when this was all over, we could see where things could really go between us.
But if I had to avoid him altogether? Stay away from him until this was well and truly finished?
Damn.
I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.
Chapter 14
Ryan
I might be a doctor, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be an absolute dumbfuck sometimes. I’d made plenty of bad decisions before, things that had the potential to haunt me later in life. Up until now, though, none of those bad decisions had been romantic ones. Sure, I might have all the ability of a mayfly to keep a partner for longer than a fling, but at least I was honest about it. Nobody came to me expecting more than I knew could give. I hadn’t even really known that I wanted to give more until I met Mark.
Mark, with whom everything had started great, then gotten blown to hell, then ended up in a sort of “will we or won’t we” space that I was actually pretty happy with. I definitely hoped it would end in a “we certainly fucking will” as soon as the trial ended, but…
It took almost a week of me texting and receiving no reply, calling and getting no answer, to realize that Mark had ghosted me. It struck me at lunchtime, while I ate in the staff breakroom—I was avoiding the cafeteria, even though Officer Russel hadn’t been there for the past few days. I had my phone out, one hand scrolling through old texts while the other held a sandwich, waiting to see if Mark was going to respond to my latest message. He’s working so hard on this case, it’s not surprising he doesn’t have time to spare… but how much time and effort does one fucking emoji take? Not that I’ve ever seen him use one.
“Aw, Ryan,” Ronnie said sympathetically as she stopped in to refresh her coffee. “Is he blowing you off?”
“Who?” I asked distractedly, still staring at my phone.
“Whoever you’ve been waiting to text you for the past six hours, that’s who.”
“I haven’t…” Except I had been waiting on it. If Ronnie could see it in me, then I was walking around with the equivalent of heart eyes. More than that, I’d been counting on it. I was up to my neck in a fast-flowing river, one missed step away from drowning, and I wanted Mark to be the one who kept my chin up. I wanted him to be there to make me feel safe, to make me feel wanted. It was, I decided, a horribly selfish way to be thinking, given everything that was going on with his work right now. He was trying to put away a murdering cop. That was important, more important than whatever we had stumbled into with each other.
Then again, would it have killed him to send me a single goddamn text, or give me a minute of his precious time?
Apparently the answer was yes.
I carefully set my phone face down on the table. “It’s fine,” I said to Ronnie. Her bullshit meter was working perfectly, if the raised eyebrow was anything to go by, but because she was the best she didn’t call me on it.
“There’s a guy in Room Two who fell off a ladder and impaled his left butt cheek on a garden rake,” she said instead.
“Drunk?” I asked.
“Drunk, high, and irritable as hell.”
“Sounds perfect.” Nothing took my mind off my personal life like a difficult patient, and Ronnie knew it. She tried to send all the really strange cases my way, and I loved her for it. “I’ll be there in five minutes,” I said, waggling the hand holding my sandwich.
“Don’t worry, he won’t go anywhere in the meantime.” She left, and I looked at my phone again. I actually hovered my hand over it, wondering if I shouldn’t send one more message letting Mark know that fuck him, I got it. Maybe he blocked your number. Maybe you’re just texting into the void. Was there a back-stabbing emoji?
You’re not fifteen, I reminded myself. If Mark was done with me, on a personal if not a professional level, then the least I could do was salvage a little bit of my dignity by letting it go without whining. Resolutely, I turned my phone off, then stood up and threw the rest of my sandwich away. My shins felt better today—maybe I’d risk a run around the park after work.
Maybe Officer Russel will follow you again. I bet Mark would take your call if you left that message in his inbox.
Scratch that—I’d go to the gym and run on the treadmill.
By the time the next weekend rolled around, I’d run myself into the ground. I thrived on being busy—it was part of what had made med school bearable for me—and had doubled down on filling every minute of my waking hours with activity, from extra shifts to extensive workouts to willingly calling my parents, who I tried not to talk to outside of the holidays if I could help it. My father tended to get quiet once we got past the pleasantries, and my mother overcompensated with a lot of noise about nothing—she was like my sister that way, but way less funny than Sam.
Needless to say, two consecutive days off this weekend was the last thing I wanted, but the hospital administrator refused point-blank to give me any more overtime this month unless the city was “hit with a Biblical plague, so unless you see a rain of frogs or half the population comes down with leprosy, don’t count on it, Dr. Campbell.”
“Fine.” Whatever. I’d just catch up on my Netflix, or…
There was nothing to catch up on. I’d watched everything I’d wanted to watch, I’d gone through enough bottles of wine to fill my recycle bin, and I’d ordered Italian food two more times from that same goddamn place Mark had brought the pizza from. I didn’t even want to go to a club, because I already knew that all I’d be able to think about was the fact that none of the men I saw there would be that tight-assed, overly-formal, jackass gorgeous son of a bitch Mark Thibedeau. I was so gone on him, I didn’t even want to look at random eye candy right now.
Fuck my life.
Okay, so I might have walked out of my boss’s office without so much as a goodbye, and I might have slammed my locker door a little hard as I got changed that evening. That didn’t mean I needed an intervention.
“Ryan?”
I looked at Zach, standing there watching me with a concerned expression and wearing a camouflage army jacket, of all things. “Are you okay?” he asked.
My first impulse was to tell him to fuck off. That’s when I knew that maybe I did actually need an intervention—Zach was probably the nicest d
octor in the whole hospital, and he didn’t deserve that shit from me. “I’m... yeah,” I said after a moment. “Yeah, it’s fine, I’m good. Why are you in that, um…”
“The jacket?” He plucked at it with an embarrassed grin. “Believe it or not, this is for my bachelor party. I let Erin’s dads plan part of it, and they chose paintball.”
Zach’s imminent doom was enough to distract me from my own problems. “Oh shit, but they’re both cops, right?”
“Yeah.” He winced. “I basically expect to spend the next hour getting massacred by my future fathers-in-law. My dad loaned me this, though, and it’s pretty thick. It should stop the worst of it.”
“Unless they go for headshots,” I pointed out.
He grinned. “Nah, I’ve got an ace up my sleeve for that. Erin warned them that if I showed up for our wedding with a black eye, she’d kick their asses. They won’t risk it.”
“Plus, they like you.”
“Plus they like me,” Zach agreed. “Or at least Darren does, and he’ll keep Andreas in line.” His tone of voice indicated that he was kidding… mostly.
I shook my head. “Fun family you’re marrying into.”
“I’ll never be bored, that’s for sure. You’ve still got Saturday off, right?”
“Unfortunately,” I said with a sigh.
Zach frowned. “Ryan, the ceremony is on Saturday.” I stared at him blankly. “Our wedding ceremony. You’re coming, right? I’m sure we’ve got you down as confirmed.”
“Oh.” Oh, right. Right. Shit, I’d just insinuated I’d rather work than go to Zach’s wedding. “Yes, I’m sorry, of course I’ll be there. I just…” I waved a hand weakly. “Forgot.”
God damn it. Mark would be there. Mark who couldn’t be bothered to respond to a fucking text message would be there, and I didn’t want to see him. I was desperate to see him, and that bugged the hell out of me.
Zach leaned against the row of lockers and looked at me. I could only meet his eyes for a moment. I kind of expected him to ream me out for neglecting to remember one of the most important dates in his life, but all he said was, “I’m glad you can make it. Erin’s driving herself crazy worrying that her half of the aisle is going to cause an explosion before the ceremony’s even over.”
“Her dads wouldn’t dare.”
“I was more thinking about her boss,” Zach said wryly. “Apparently he’s been a real pill lately. If he picks a fight with Andreas, there could be bloodshed.”
I managed a little half-smile. “Bloodshed is my specialty.”
“Good thing you’ll be there, then.” He set a hand on my shoulder and squeezed warmly, then let go before I could do more than blink. “See you Saturday, Ryan.”
“Yeah,” I murmured as he left. “You definitely will.”
He wouldn’t be the only one who noticed me, either. I’d make sure of that.
Everyone had a fuck-me outfit. Back when my sister was figuring out how to catch eyes in high school, she’d experimented with a lot of different styles before finally settling on a combination of ruby red Doc Martens, fishnet stockings and Daisy Dukes that got her into literally every party our social circle had to offer. A lot of guys wore fuck-me outfits to the clubs—strategically worn-out jeans said a lot about someone’s expectations, especially once you took a closer look at exactly where the rips were. I had some clothes like that, but none of them would work at a wedding. I did, however, own a fuck-me suit that would fit the bill perfectly.
The suit was almost too loose on me now, but instead of being baggy it just looked a little louche. The fabric was dark blue with metallic threads running through it, and the pattern in the cloth almost looked like scales. Fuck making a statement with plaid or pink—I was going dressed as the Serpent of Eden. Coupled with a white shirt—no tie, top two buttons undone—and mother-of-pearl cufflinks, I looked barely somber enough not to get thrown out of a church. I’d definitely catch some eyes, though.
I’d catch Mark’s, for sure. He could ignore my texts all he wanted to—try ignoring me in the flesh.
It was a petty-as-fuck move. I was acting like the psychopathic ex in every movie, playing dirty to get what I wanted, but screw it. All I really wanted was to know why. Why had Mark stopped talking to me, without even a text to let me know? What had I done to deserve that? How could I fix it? And it galled me that I even wanted to fix it, that there was a part of me that wanted to throw myself at him and ask him what I could do to make things right, because I knew this wasn’t on me.
It wasn’t, but it felt that way.
“Jesus, stop,” I said to my reflection. “You’re not helping yourself.” Even in my fuck-me suit, I looked a little tired. My legs ached, and I had a tension headache that was thinking about blossoming into a migraine. I poured myself a cup of water and swallowed it down, along with two aspirin, then straightened my lapels and headed for my car. It was go time.
The wedding venue was packed. They’d chosen to have both the wedding and the reception at a five-star hotel downtown—apparently it had an award-winning rose garden, who knew? There was space for a hundred people in there, but there had to be at least a hundred and thirty of us vying for seats. I recognized a lot of people from the hospital, mostly in other departments, and finally ended up sandwiched between one of Zach’s fellow orthopedic surgeons and a pediatric RN who had plastic flowers on her broad-brimmed hat.
“It’s a lovely day for a wedding, isn’t it?” she said with a smile as she turned my way.
“Beautiful,” I agreed, lying my face off. But once we’d all been squeezed in and Zach—with no visible bruises, luckily—and his best man showed up beneath the flower-festooned arch at the end of the aisle and Here Comes the Bride began to play… Well. It actually was beautiful. Erin moved in her long white gown like she was floating, riding a tide of rose petals to the altar. Andreas kissed her cheek and gave her a hug before moving to the side, and when she took Zach’s hand, he just…
I’d never been inclined toward romanticism, much less sentimentalism, but watching Zach absolutely melt at the sight of his bride-to-be made my heart ache. He brought both her hands to his lips and kissed them, his own hands trembling, before they finally turned to face the officiant.
The actual ceremony was wonderfully brief, mostly consisting of the vows that they’d both written. Erin’s were surprisingly funny, Zach’s decidedly emotional, and then the rings were exchanged, the power was vested, and with a kiss they were married. They walked down the aisle arm-in-arm, their faces glowing with happiness, and for a minute while I watched them I was able to forget everything else. God, they were so in love. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen two people so incredibly in love, and it really was beautiful.
Then they were gone, whisked off by their wedding coordinator for more pictures with the rest of the bridal party. The glow faded, and I became again just one more person in a sea of people, all jostling to get out of the way so the staff could move the chairs and remake the wedding garden into a dining hall.
At least there was an open bar.
I made it through two glasses of the house red before I finally saw Mark—not that I’d been looking, but… okay, fine, I’d been looking. He was standing near the abandoned arch, his shadow lengthened by the setting sun. He looked stern, almost forbidding. It was no wonder other guests were giving him plenty of space, with that expression on his face. It didn’t stop him from being stupidly handsome, though. He’d cleaned up nice for this, wearing a trim black suit maybe a shade darker than his hair. He had a glass in one hand, but from the loose way he held it I figured he’d pretty much forgotten it was there.
I knew the moment he noticed me back. I hadn’t planned to go over to him—I’d come prepared to engage in long-distance warfare only. He didn’t want to talk to me? Fine, fuck him. He could watch from afar and be grateful for it. At least, I’d hoped that would be his reaction. I hadn’t counted on the way his expression cracked right down the middle when ou
r eyes met, all the seriousness replaced by astonishment and desire. He zipped his emotions up again fast, but he couldn’t fool me now. I knew he still wanted me.
So then why the hell wasn’t he talking to me?
It took all of five seconds for me to abandon my plan of aloof dismissal, hand my empty glass to a passing waiter, and weave through the crowd to Mark’s side. He warily watched me close in, but didn’t move, widening his stance a little like—what, like I was going to tackle him? Like he needed to brace himself against the inevitable barrage of abuse I planned to heap on him? Screw that, this was a wedding. I wasn’t going to make a spectacle of myself where everyone could see it.
I was going to do it somewhere privately.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said as I stopped in front of Mark. He glanced down my body before meeting my gaze again—this suit worked magic.
“Ryan,” he said after a moment. His hand tightened around his glass. “How, ah… How are you?”
How are you? Turned out you could smile and bite the inside of your cheek at the same time. “I’m fantastic,” I said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm. Hopefully the sarcasm hid the hurt. “Just amazing. Look, can I borrow you for a minute?” I didn’t wait for him to reply, just looped one of my arms around his and walked him toward the nearest restroom. I checked inside to make sure it was empty, then dragged him in and locked the door behind us.
Mark set his glass down on the nearest sink, then gently pulled out of my grip and squared off at me. He looked like he expected me to try and hit him, and realizing that was like being hit—did he really think so little of me? Did he not know me at all? We hadn’t had the time to get close, exactly, but I thought at least we were friends. I wouldn’t hit my worst enemy—who was Officer Russel, definitely—much less the guy I was ridiculously into.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, sticking my hands in my pockets where they’d be nice and non-threatening. “I honestly could deal with you just getting tired of me. I’m a complete pain in your ass, I know that. I wrecked our dates and I dropped a huge, complicated case in your lap and I came running to you for help the minute I felt a little insecure. All of that legitimately sucks. But for fuck’s sake, Mark.” Now I couldn’t keep the hurt out of my voice, but that was fine—I wanted him to hear it. “Would it have killed you to send a single text letting me know that? I’ve been trying to contact you for a week, and all I got was silence. I fucking worried about you. I—” I stopped and ran one of my hands through my carefully-messy hair, obliterating twenty minutes’ worth of effort. Mark wasn’t saying anything, he wasn’t even moving—he just stared at me like I was speaking a language he didn’t understand.
