By Your Rules (New York City Fixers Book 1)

by Ally Decker

  Nate looked down at his lap when he felt a sharp pang in his chest at the mere mention of her name. It wasn’t enough that he spent half the night and the whole morning feeling sorry for himself, no. Now he had to do it with his friend watching, too.

  “How bad was it?” Shawn asked quietly.

  Pretty damn bad. “Not too bad for the mayor, I suppose. At least not until she gets him somewhere where there won’t be any witnesses. She was furious, and rightfully so.” Nate grimaced, thinking of Claire unloading that fury on her father. On one hand, it would be a disaster. On another… He couldn’t help but wonder if it would change anything that happened later on.

  He forced himself to stop that line of thought, and then quickly recapped what the mayor had done, to which Shawn had the only correct response.

  “What the fuck?”

  Nate shook his head. “No idea. It’s like he completely forgot everything she explicitly told him not to do. And what we both told him right at the start.”

  “I haven’t read about the mayor’s daughter having a blowout last night, so I assume…”

  “She was too shocked to react, I guess.” Lucky guy. “We left right after, so she didn’t see him later.”

  “Small mercies,” Shawn muttered, and Nate snorted before he could stop himself.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, it’s obviously not the end of the story, so come on. Tell me.”

  “What can I say…” Nate shrugged, avoiding his friend’s gaze. He tried to push back the hurt, be as clinical as possible, but he knew he was failing pretty badly. “Apparently, when her father wasn’t available, I became the perfect target.”

  Shawn frowned. “Target for what?”

  “She got it into her head that I knew her father was going to be there and didn’t tell her. That I—or rather we—orchestrated this whole disaster.” Nate ran a hand through his hair, wishing it would all be easier to get out.

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Well, tell her that. God knows I tried, but she didn’t listen. There’s more, though.”

  “More than you lying to her and setting up a ridiculous trap to, I don’t know, risk a PR disaster involving the mayor?”

  “Apparently, I’m more resourceful than that.” Sarcasm was good. It helped Nate not to—not to get too into what he was saying. “You see, her father somehow found out about Claire wanting to move to the Major Crimes. He brought it up in front of the commissioner as that joke I mentioned. But since she didn’t tell him about it, someone had to, right?”

  “And she thinks you were that someone.”

  “Yep.”

  There was a stretch of silence and then, “What the hell, man?”

  Nate snorted humorlessly. “I honestly have no idea. We were good. We were really good. Even last night, before her father showed up, everything was great. And then, poof, I’m the bad guy, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  There were things that were sitting at the tip of his tongue, admissions about how much he had come to care about Claire, how invested he had become in such a short period of time.

  He swallowed them all down.

  It didn’t matter. He hoped there was still a chance of things working out—how, he didn’t know yet—but even if they didn’t… Even if they didn’t, he would get over it, and in the meantime, yes, it was going to suck, but he would push through. He didn’t have a choice.

  He just wished he wouldn’t still see Claire shying away from his touch so clearly in his mind. He wished he could forget the way she looked at him with contempt and disgust written all over her face.

  He wished he could go back to yesterday afternoon. He wished—

  It didn’t matter what he wished for, anyway.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Monday came around, the last thing Claire wanted was to go to work and face her colleagues, who all probably heard about her father’s stunt. She would gladly spend another day on the couch, in her pajamas, marathoning Friends and definitely not crying over Rachel’s love life because Ross was a douchebag who lied and didn’t deserve her.

  But whether or not she wanted to go to work didn’t matter. She scrambled out of bed when the alarm started ringing, and she went through her morning routine on autopilot, in a haze of not enough sleep and not enough caffeine in her system.

  She could do this. It wasn’t the first time a guy screwed her over and, regardless of how much she tried, it probably wouldn’t be the last. The same with her father.

  Maybe she was just destined to deal with men who would always put their needs above hers—or even above being a decent human being.

  Whatever it was, it was eventually going to stop hurting, so she just had to grind her teeth and bear it. If she was lucky, she and Lori would get a case right away, and she would have plenty to distract herself with.

  But after she arrived at the precinct, it looked like her luck continued to be anywhere but on her side. She heard the usual murmur of voices when she got in, but the majority of conversations dropped off as she walked through the bullpen to her desk. Don’t mind me, she wanted to tell them. Let’s hear it.

  Claire realized she was itching for confrontation. She knew herself well enough to know that if she didn’t unload everything that was on her chest soon, she was going to blow up—and that was never pretty. Especially not when she ended up blowing up at the person who didn’t do anything wrong but was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Dowson, my office.” Lieutenant's voice snapped her out of it, and she got up before she fully registered what was going on, dropping her bag on the floor and earning herself a few laughs from the squad.

  She pushed her bag further under her desk without a word and followed the lieutenant to his office.

  “Close the door,” he told her before gesturing for her to sit down. Then he stared at her for a long moment, as if sizing her up, and Claire could feel herself getting more tense with every passing second.

  “I have to say, I don’t understand you, Dowson,” he finally said as he sat back in his chair. “You submit the damn paperwork for a transfer, hell, you have a leg to stand on because you’re a decent detective. And then what do you do? You run to your daddy because you got impatient.”

  Claire watched him shake his head as her brain was trying to catch up. Calling her a decent detective was probably as close to praise as the lieutenant had ever gotten when it came to her. But then the rest registered.

  “No, sir, I—”

  “Police commissioner?” he cut in. “I mean, really?”

  “Sir, I had no idea my father was going to do that. I didn’t even—”

  “Save it, I don’t need to hear it.” He pushed a folder he had in front of him in her direction. “Just for your information, it came in on Friday,” he added with a grimace. “You only had to wait two more days.”

  She opened the folder.

  Transfer papers. These were the transfer papers to Major Crimes, signed, and accepted, and they came in on Friday.

  Claire stared at the files in her hands, and there was a bubble of happiness inside of her that seemed to be ready to burst at any second. She forgot about the accusations. She forgot about her father. The papers came in on Friday, and she was transferring to her dream position.

  For a moment, everything was amazing.

  And then the reality came crashing down, and she looked up at her lieutenant—soon-to-be-former lieutenant.

  “Sir, I know you don’t think highly of me now, but I just… Thank you. I mean it.”

  He nodded slowly and then tilted his head towards the door. “You can go now.”

  She sprang from her seat. “Thank you, sir.”

  Claire was about to open the door when he spoke up. “If you really didn’t tell him to do what he did, I would suggest you raise a little hell.”

  She froze, hardly believing what she’d just heard. Was h
e really giving her the benefit of the doubt? Or was it just that he despised her father more than her?

  In the end, it didn’t matter much. Whatever it was, she would take it.

  She looked back at her boss. “I intend to, sir.”

  She walked out with a grin on her face, clutching the folder to her chest, but she paused in place when she noticed her mother sitting in her chair and talking with Lori.

  It was like a déjà vu from a few weeks back when her mother surprised her at the precinct to take her out for lunch, but this time, Claire felt a spike of apprehension. She’d learned a long time ago to separate her mom from what her dad did, but it wasn’t always easy. Claire figured she would never understand why her mother continued to just tolerate everything he did, but she wished that sometimes—sometimes—her mother would take a clear stand. Not “I will talk to him”, or “You know how your dad is”, or whatever else she’d say whenever he and Claire would have another fight.

  Claire definitely didn’t want to hear any excuses today.

  She walked up to her desk and answered in kind when her mother embraced her.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, putting the folder down on the pile of similar-looking files. She was going to tell her mom about the transfer, of course, just…not yet. Not like this. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  Her mom nodded, glancing between Claire and Lori, and then back. “I know, I’m sorry, I just… I wanted to talk to you for a minute.” She made it sound almost like a question, as if she knew Claire might refuse.

  The three calls you ignored yesterday might’ve given her this idea, the voice at the back of her head supplied helpfully.

  Claire swallowed down a sigh and nodded instead. She turned to Lori. “I’ll go grab myself another coffee from down the street, you want some?”

  “Chai latte, please, and thank you.” Lori waved her off with a knowing look.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Neither she nor her mother said anything as they walked through the bullpen, and Claire once again felt everyone’s eyes on her. She could already picture how the talking would start the second the door closed behind her.

  Her mom paused right outside the building and caught her hand, making her stop as well. “Claire, I’m… I’m really, really sorry about your father.”

  Claire closed her eyes for a moment, trying to rein in all the emotions she’d been trying so hard to control. The apologetic words made a crack in the façade, and, damn it, she needed to get it together. There were cops mingling all around them. “Let’s—” not do this here, I work here, I’m at work, and everyone’s looking at me now, don’t you get it— “Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t until they were sitting in the café close to the precinct that Claire looked straight at her mother. “He went so far over the line I can’t even see it anymore, Mom.”

  “I know,” her mother said quietly, circling her hands around her cup of tea.

  Claire raised her eyebrows. That was unexpected.

  “What the hell has gotten into him, then?” she asked, shaking her head. She still couldn’t understand it. “He seemed fine with me staying out of the campaign. He didn’t even say anything. And then this?”

  Her mother stared at her nails. “I honestly don’t know. I didn’t even know he was going to go there. I swear I would’ve—”

  “I know,” Claire cut in, covering her mother’s wrist with her fingers and squeezing lightly. “I know you would’ve warned me.”

  “To be honest, I think it was a last minute thing.” Her mom shook her head. “He wouldn’t have done it if he took more time to think about it. And he wasn’t planning it on Friday, either. We had a meeting with Shawn Foster, and he didn’t say anything about it when Shawn asked about our plans for the weekend.”

  Claire stilled at that, even as she could feel her heartbeat suddenly picking up. “What?”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know—”

  “No, I meant the Shawn part.” She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat. “You’re saying he didn’t know?” How was that possible?

  “He didn’t know on Friday, and I doubt your father called him on Saturday. I’m pretty sure Shawn would have tried to talk him out of it. He’s been very clear about how your father should be more selective about his outings and—”

  Claire tuned her mother out. Shawn didn’t know. Shawn didn’t know. And that meant… That meant Nate didn’t know, either, and she had treated him like— “Oh God,” she whispered, hiding her head in her hands as all the things she’d hurled at him echoed in her brain.

  “Honey?”

  Nate didn’t know. She had accused him of lying, of betraying her in the worst possible way, and he didn’t know.

  She balled her hands into fists over her eyes and took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to cry, no way.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Her mother’s fingers curled around her forearm, and Claire straightened in her seat, dropping her hands down on her lap.

  “Do you know how dad found out about my transfer request?”

  Because that still didn’t make sense. If Nate hadn’t known about the party, if he was telling the truth, then how had her father learned about this? Claire had only told two people—Lori and Nate, so if neither of them said anything, who did?

  “I told him.”

  She froze at her mother’s whispered words. No, it was impossible. She couldn’t have, she didn’t even know, how could she know?

  “What?” Claire asked, barely audible, but her throat hurt as if she’d shouted at the top of her lungs the way she wanted to.

  “Honey, if I had any idea what he would…” Her mother paused, face stricken. “I’m sorry. When I came to the precinct a few weeks ago, you were busy, and I was sitting there at your desk, and I… God, it sounds so stupid now, but I guess I was curious about the kind of cases you work on. You rarely talk about work, and I was worried, so I… I told myself that I’d only take a look at one folder.” She sucked in her lower lip and looked away. “It wasn’t a case file, though, but your application.”

  Claire stared at her mother, lost for words. She remembered that day—she had been in a hurry to get the interrogation over with, and she hadn’t hidden the transfer paperwork the way she’d usually done. She’d just tossed it on the pile when the suspect’s lawyer had shown up.

  And that was where her mother had found it.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Claire finally asked. Why did you tell him instead?

  “I don’t know. I felt bad for snooping, and then I thought that you should tell me when you’re ready…” Her mother shook her head. Claire could hear her voice breaking at the end but she couldn’t muster any sympathy now. “I wasn’t planning on telling your father, but one night we were talking about you, and it seemed… Your father listened and asked questions, and…”

  And it seemed like he cared. Claire could almost hear it, even if her mother would never say it like that.

  “I’m sorry. If I had known…”

  You should’ve known, Claire wanted to tell her. Scream at her. You should’ve known because this is who he is, who he always will be. You give and he takes, and he uses whatever he needs and discards the rest.

  “I have to go,” she said instead, standing up. She needed to get away or she wouldn’t be able to swallow all of this. She would just say it all and not care about consequences.

  She hurried out of the café and turned right out on the street when she should’ve turned left. She took off running then, leaving her mother, the café, and the precinct behind her without looking back.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nate was the first one to admit that he was spacing out on the usual weekly company meeting slash Monday lunch break, but he straightened in his seat when they heard the entry door being open, and Alicia went back to the foyer to check who it was.

  He was out of his chair the second he heard Claire’s voice.

  Shawn tried to stop him
, but Nate didn’t listen. If she was here, he wanted—needed—to know what that was about.

  When he saw her, she looked like she had run through the entire Manhattan. Her face was red, hair stuck to her forehead, and she was trying to catch her breath.

  God, it was so good to see her.

  “You’re all right?” he asked, stepping closer. He could see Alicia slinking back in the corner of his eye, and he was sure Shawn was watching behind him—Dean, too, probably. But Nate didn’t care. Claire was here.

  “Can we… Can we talk?” Her voice was breathless, and her eyes were shining with things Nate didn’t know how to interpret. He nodded quickly and gestured her to his office.

  “Come on.”

  Her shoulders dropped as she closed her eyes for a second, and then she was moving. He went to follow when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  He met Shawn’s worried gaze when he turned.

  “Nate…”

  “I’ve got this.” He nodded at Dean standing in their conference room’s door. “Just continue without me, and I’ll catch up later.”

  Nate followed Claire to his office, and he found her by the window, staring at the city. He closed the door and stepped closer.

  “What’s wrong?” Because it was obvious something had happened. The last time they’d seen each other had seemed pretty final to Nate.

  “Everything’s wrong,” Claire said quietly and ran a hand over her hair. “Everything’s—” She turned to him, and they looked at each other over the space between them. It was barely a few feet, not much more than the length of the couch, but Nate wasn’t sure what the rules were anymore. Where the lines were drawn. “I want to go to my father and tell him what I think of him, and then repeat all of it on TV.”

  Her fingers curled into fists she put against her stomach, and Nate wanted nothing more than to walk up to her and put her hands in his.

  “I want him to see how it feels like, like…” She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. “I hate that he just doesn’t care,” she whispered.