by Finn, Emilia
I’m silent. I’m an impenetrable wall.
“Mr. Griffin.” James, the male detective, leans forward and, taking a photograph from a manila folder on his lap, places it on my desk so dark eyes stare back at me. He sits back with deliberate movements and steeples his fingers. “I believe you might recognize this man.”
It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. So what he says next is almost enough to make me exhale with relief.
“Li Zhang is the CEO of a company you recently dumped millions of dollars of shares in. We’re very much interested in your business relationship.” He lifts a dangerous brow, as though to dare me to prove him wrong and admit I was a part of Zhang’s bullshit. “Detective Trinke and I have been following his dealings for a little while, so any information you could give us would be greatly appreciated.”
This isn’t an alleyway, and I’m not hungry.
But somehow I’m alone again.
I miss Libby.
I miss my home.
20
Libby
And Just Like That… He Left
Gunner Bishop has always been an enigma for me. Child or man, he was always a mystery. Dark. Difficult to grab on to. And impossible to keep.
But his appearance in my life this time lasted three-hundred and thirty-six times longer than the first time.
Literally.
I got one single hour with him when I was nine. One hour that changed the very course my life was on, so despite the fact that one hour was followed by two decades of nothing, doesn’t mean he didn’t shape my every thought or choice.
This time, I was gifted with two weeks. That’s three-hundred and thirty-six hours, and though I didn’t get all of those hours with him, they still counted in some way.
They counted in my heart.
Does that mean I’ve used up my entire lifetime allocation of Gunner Bishop? If one hour of being with him equals twenty-two years of grieving, does that mean two weeks equals the end of our road?
Mathematically, that must be true, and yet, I sit at my desk at the station with my elbows on the wooden tabletop, my chin in my hands, and a pathetic sigh escaping my mouth as at least half of my station’s staff are missing.
It’s Kane Bishop and Jess Lenaghan’s wedding day, which means Alex and Oz are out; they’re part of the bride’s family. Jess really did send Gunner and I an invitation. It’s not on fancy stock, it’s handwritten, and the last few words are in a messy, rushed scrawl, which makes me think Jess was almost caught while writing it out.
But she really did it. She really wants to include the man that would literally be her brother-in-law in a matter of hours.
And not only that, but the handwritten invitation arrived in my mailbox by the evening of our meet – no stamp. She hand-delivered it, and included both of our names.
Well, it didn’t say Gunner Bishop, but Theo Griffin; it’s as though she understands his need for cover. She respects his choices the way I should. He demands to be known as the name he’s built, but I don’t think I’ve used it once, except when speaking to others.
My boss asks about ‘This dude Griffin in town’. So I allow that story and roll with it. But in private, I know who he is.
When it’s just us, or more commonly, just me, he’s Gunner. He’s the boy that stole my heart when I was nine, and not once in any of the three-hundred and thirty-six hours we’ve had, did he think to give it back.
He’s still an asshole.
The town is quiet today. Unlike a week ago when everyone wanted to cause trouble, things are settled now, as though the universe knows we need peace and quiet. Today’s wedding is the wedding everyone is talking about. Criminals and businesses, security experts and police alike, everyone knows those that rule our town are busy, and if you interrupt such an important day with something as annoying as crime, there will be hell to pay.
Everyone is on their best behavior, which means the two cruisers we have moving around town have nothing to do but burn through gas, and the phones I decided in my misery to man haven’t rung in hours.
Where are all of the Aaron Scanlons when you need them?
My face is much better than it was a week ago. My cheekbone is tender, but my lip is mostly healed, and what was an ugly purple bruise surrounding my eye now looks like a nasty case of jaundice.
Everything is going back to normal. It’s as though he was never here.
He doesn’t send me any texts, but then again, I don’t send him any either.
I smashed through my sleeve of cookies by Monday night this week – they didn’t stand a chance of seeing Wednesday.
Everywhere I look, every desk, every computer monitor, every phone held to every ear, the lion logo winks back at me, and though the lion on those products is simply a 2D image and looks absolutely nothing like the roaring monster on Gunner’s back, it still makes me think of him.
I’m broken, and I’m not sure I know how to fix it unless I give up everything I’ve worked so hard for.
The desk phone that sits merely twelve inches from my elbow rings and startles me out of my pity party.
That’s not who I am. I don’t sulk, I don’t dwell. I grieve, yes. My entire life has been one massive grieving jag, and ironically, it’s been for the same man. But grieving and sulking are two different things, which means I need to get my shit under control and finish my shift.
Take the call. Clock out in one more hour. Then go home and start all over again tomorrow, while the chief sleeps off his hangover.
I pick the phone up before it rings out, and bring it to my ear. “You’ve got Officer Tate. What’s your emergency?”
“Hey there, darlin’.” Drake’s exaggerated drawl makes me smile and sit back so my chair squeaks and groans. “I heard your station is empty today but for your pretty backside and seventeen boxes of Girl Scout cookies.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me of the cookies. I’m trying my damnedest not to eat the cardboard.”
“You hangry, baby girl?” He lets out a gentle grunt, as though reclining in a chair. “I just deep-throated a footlong sub, so my hunger is under control, but then I heard about the cookies, so now I’m thinking maybe I could get on board for an afternoon date.”
I chuckle and kick my feet up onto the desk. Just like sulking, this isn’t me either. I don’t sit at work and gossip with my feet kicked up. But I’ve been staring at Griffin logos all day, and I’m done with that. I can’t cope. “If you touch X’s cookies, there’ll be hell to pay. He knows how many are out there, and he’s been known to shoot for less.”
Drake barks out a laugh that helps loosen the knots strangling my heart. “Your CO runs a tight ship, Tate. What’s new with your life? I haven’t heard from you all week.”
“We normally speak once every few months,” I argue. “Literally. We call, we make plans, then we move on with our lives. We don’t chitchat like school girls.”
“Ouch,” he mock-hisses. “You treat me like I’m just meat. Am I nothing more than a hole to stick it into?”
I want to maintain my bad mood, but I just can’t. You can’t be around Drake and be in a bad mood at the same time. It’s just not possible.
“Yes. You’re a juicy steak and nothing more. What do you want?”
“Cookies?”
“No.” I glance up when our young receptionist wanders through with a stack of paperwork that needs to be filed.
Tiffany and I aren’t friends. I don’t have a problem with her, but we’re definitely not from the same circles. She’s younger than me by a few years, she’s a partier, a flirt, and content filing papers and answering phones all day.
She’s beautiful, and when Drake makes sexual grunts in my ear, my lips pull up into a smug grin as I follow her with my eyes all the way to the file room and the door closes behind her.
“Are you even listening to me, woman?”
“Yeah. So I had this idea.”
He pauses what I’m certain is a rant, and instead b
ites at my bait. “What idea?”
“This chick I work with. You know our receptionist?”
“Tiffany? Yeah, she’s hot.”
I snicker. “I might put in a good word for you. Set you guys up. She’s adorable, and I bet you could make her cry the best kind of tears.”
He chuckles and makes me picture his broad chest bouncing. I don’t know if he’s on duty or at home, but in my head, he’s sitting on a dark brown recliner with his feet up and a beer sitting on his stomach.
“Babe…” His fake drawl turns to the tone he uses in the bedroom. No longer fake, no longer silly. “Why are you trying to set me up? We don’t do that, remember? We do uncomplicated, we do cool people, plus, Tiffany and I already fucked.”
I shoot up tall. “What?”
He snorts. “That was so last year. Catch up. But just in case you were wondering; let’s say we’ve got a scale. A one on this scale being a lame lay, and ten being TNT in my brain – Tiffany is like…” he hesitates. Considers. “I dunno. A six?”
“You are despicable! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What? You were just trying to set us up. Now you’re saying it’s disgusting? Hypocrite, much?”
“No, I’m not saying you and her are disgusting, I’m saying your scales are disgusting. Remind me again why I speak to you?”
He gives an audible shrug and sips something; a beer, an energy drink. It could go either way. “You’re a solid nine, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“You asshole!” I hiss. “How dare you put me on your scales. And where the hell is my final point? I should come over there and beat you with a damn baseball bat, you jerk.”
“You’re solid in bed, babe. Like, seriously, you rock my world. But–”
“But what? What criticism could you possibly have that you’re willing to risk your life for?”
“But…” His laughter slows, then his voice turns thoughtful in a way I’ve never heard before. “You never gave me anything but your body. No eyes, no heart, no smiles – not while we were fucking. Your body was in my bed, and I’m telling you right now, your body is banging. Physically, you were right there, but in your head, you were always somewhere else.”
“Drake…”
I can hear the smile in his voice. “I didn’t give it a lot of thought, since I knew we were both there for the same reasons. No complications. No feelings. Nothing icky and weird. But I dunno, darlin’. If I’d gotten even a taste of the passion I saw in your eyes last week when your boyfriend walked in, I’d have taken us more seriously. You have fire in your heart, Libby. It’s bright and hot, and super fucking tempting, but it belongs to someone else.” He pauses for a moment, then gives a soft laugh. “I didn’t even know you were capable of it until now. And now that I know you were holding out on me, you only get a nine on my scale.”
“You’re a pig,” I grumble.
He laughs and takes another sip. “I would have married you already if I knew the fire that was inside your heart. I mean, we probably wouldn’t survive it, and lord knows we’d divorce by the seventh year, because no amount of fucking could make it tolerable to have a chick in my apartment around the clock. But I’d have tried. For you and that rockin’ body, I’d have tried.”
My heart races with odd nerves. Tiffany comes out of the file room with a meek smile, dashes back to the hall and drops into her squeaky chair, but despite the distraction she provides, my heart still races. “That might be one of the most romantic things I ever heard. Like, I think once you find your girl with the fire, you might even go longer than seven years.”
His chuckle is so throaty, so warm and cuddly, that I sit back at my chair and snuggle in.
“So, that brings me around to my call.”
I snort. “Of course it does. I thought you were calling for ass?”
“Nah.” He moves around on his end, gets more comfortable, then sits back again. “Tell me, Lizbeth, why your man is on TV right now.”
“What?”
I shoot up from what could have been the perfect posture for napping, toss my phone down and dash around my desk, and without even thinking to use my computer, I race across the office and into the boardroom.
The station’s facilities are nothing like those at Checkmate. They have expensive, top-of-the-line technology – ironically, all Griffin – whereas we often settle for five-year-old throwbacks from bigger stations. It’s still Griffin technology, but it’s old, and when those other, bigger stations get upgrades, we get their hand-me-downs and a morale boost, since five-year-old devices are still better than the ten-year-old stuff we would otherwise be using.
I scramble along the boardroom table and snatch up the remote for the TV mounted to the wall, and flicking it on, I channel surf at lightning speed – click, click, click, click – until the logo makes my heart stop and I drop my hands.
The phone on my desk hangs from the cord, but Drake wouldn’t be Drake without making a second call and having it transferred to the new line.
The trilling sound coming from the phone on the boardroom table hurts my brain as I watch Gunner work to avoid the cameras parked outside Griffin Plaza. He walks with another man – young, perhaps Tiffany’s age, icy blond hair, dark blue eyes, and a body hidden under a suit that I know for sure sees the inside of a gym. He’s not large, but he definitely has a regular membership to a gym somewhere, and when he stands beside Gunner, or more accurately, in front of Gunner, the two men have similar shapes. Similar height. Similar widths. The other guy is smaller than Gunner, but not by a lot.
The phone continues to ring, buzzing inside my brain and insisting on attention, so while staring at the screen and refusing to look away, I blindly grope, swearing when I knock it over and it crashes to the table.
I snatch it up in a hurry, and slam it to my ear without peeling my eyes away from the TV for a single second. “Yeah.”
“Hi, Tate. I have an Officer Banks on line two for you.”
“Yeah. I got it, thanks.” I hang up and grieve the second it takes to look away from Gunner’s handsome form, then to locate the flashing number two and hit it. “Yeah.”
“You threw me!”
“Hush, stop whining.” I can’t not take notice of the sneaky tattoos that creep along Gunner’s neck and peek out from the top of his collared shirt. I can’t ignore his strong jaw, the way it ticks with anger, or his watchful eyes scanning the crowd as the blond friend tries to help him shuffle through the horde of people.
Never has Gunner accidentally been caught by the media outside his building. Not once in all the years since Griffin became an industry leader, so why now? Why today?
“What’s going on, darlin’?”
“I don’t know.” I walk to the end of the table so I’m closer to the TV, and stretch the phone cord as far as it’ll go so I can sit. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. In all these years, he’s never been on TV.” And that’s why he’s a good cop. He thinks the way I think, he acts the way I act. “I feel a little starstruck. That dude was in my living room only a week ago.”
“Shut the hell up.” I pull the end chair out from the table and rest my feet on it so they don’t dangle. “You’re not starstruck. He’s not a celebrity. He’s just…”
“Theo Griffin…?” I hear the smile in his voice. “Who’s the blond?”
I shrug. “I think it might be his driver. Olly someone. G–Uh…” I pause and silently chastise myself for slipping. “Theo mentioned him a few times. Best friends, family, all that sort of stuff. Dude looks like he works out, so I’m thinking maybe his job title is driver, but the details skew more toward security.”
“Two in one,” Drake chuckles. “Saves on the expenses.”
I doubt Gunner needs to save his pennies. I suspect it’s more like the turkey meat thing; he’s cheap because he can be, not because he must be. Or maybe in his mind, he still thinks he must be. The hungry boy from so long ago can’t bear to waste.
“Zhang’s a military supplier, no? Those are the shares Griffin dumped?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure. I’m a cop, not a business mogul.”
“Griffin ain’t in trouble,” Drake murmurs. “They want him to make a statement, but nowhere does it say he’s in trouble.”
“He won’t make the statement,” I whisper mostly to myself. “He doesn’t like to speak.” Except to me, my brain throws in my face. He doesn’t like to speak… except to me. “He won’t do it.”
“Hey, Tate? Can I ask you somethin’?”
“Sure.”
I rest my elbows on my knees and nibble on my thumbnail while Gunner’s eyes come to the camera. For the first time since I switched the TV on, he stares right into a camera rather than avoid it. He stares right into my eyes with such intensity that my breath stops.
“Lizbeth, you there?”
“Yeah, I already said yeah. What’s your question?”
“Why does he look at you the way he does? Why does he follow you to a cop’s house, refuse to pull a piece even after you do, and then stick around the cop’s house even after you leave, to politely discuss how we would share you in the future–”
“He… what? Share me?”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat and gives the impression that he’s smiling. “Yeah, it was something like, you’re his now, you always were his, you always will be his, and should I want to survive until my next birthday, I’m to never show you my dick again.”
“He said that?”
He chuckles. “I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist. So tell me, Lizbeth. Why the fire? Why the intensity? Only for you to be sitting all alone in a boardroom right now, talking to your ex fun-time, and he’s all the way over there, standing in the street with a dude and a bad attitude? Why didn’t you go with him? Did you lovebirds have a fight?”
“He and I always fight. In fact, I’m not sure we’ve ever been nice to each other.”
