Just Kidding (SWAT Generation 2.0 Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  He had no right.

  “I’m ready,” he confirmed, still not looking away.

  “Theo, time to go,” I ordered. “I need to talk to Dax before we go.”

  Theo whipped his head around and stared.

  “I really need to talk to you,” he repeated.

  I rolled my eyes and dislodged the hat that Dax had teasingly put on my head when we’d gotten in the truck earlier. It pushed upward enough that Theo could see my hair, and he sucked in a breath.

  “You cut your hair.” He blinked.

  That was my breaking point.

  “Actually,” I said. “I didn’t cut my hair. Your girlfriend thought it’d be humorous to put Nair, a hair removal cream, into my conditioner bottle when we were out to dinner the last time we saw each other. When I woke up the next morning after using it, my entire ponytail was in a clump on my bed.”

  Theo looked as if he didn’t believe me.

  I narrowed my eyes, then walked away from him, going to my bedroom to grab the mass of my hair that was still exactly where I’d left it after my freak out.

  Snatching it up, and making a pit stop for the bottle of conditioner, I walked back into the living room.

  “Dax, can I borrow your arm? I want to prove a point,” I snapped.

  Dax immediately offered up an arm, holding it out.

  I squirted some of the conditioner on his arm, then spread it in with my finger to encompass one of the only spots that wasn’t covered by a tattoo.

  Then I let it sit as I turned and waved my clump of hair at Theo.

  He looked at it as if it was something he couldn’t quite believe.

  I threw it on the ground by his feet, then started speaking.

  “I don’t know what I ever did to Shondra,” I admitted. “But I’ll have to thank her. I’ve moved back home, found a duplex. I already have a great job that pays me more than I ever could’ve expected. And…” I hesitated, looking over at Dax for a split second. “I’m happy. So you can thank your girlfriend.”

  Theo looked as if he wanted to throw up.

  “I came to apologize for her behavior and springing our relationship on you,” he admitted. “I can see that you’re upset but…”

  I shook my head. “Upset? You think that I’m only ‘upset’ about what she did to me?”

  Theo didn’t say anything.

  “If I knew I could prove it, I would fucking ruin her,” I told him. “Upset doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel when it comes to her. And after the bullshit she’d tried to pull today after I collected my stuff from my office? Yeah, let’s just say that I’m going to enjoy living somewhere where she’s not around. Because if she was, I would fuck her up.”

  Theo’s face went soft.

  “Rowen…” he began.

  I was already shaking my head.

  Heading into the kitchen, I came back with a towel and wiped the cream off of Dax’s arm.

  His hair came off smoothly.

  Theo looked at the paper towel, then Dax’s arm.

  His eyes were worried when he once again glanced at me.

  “I…” He paused. “I’ll talk to her.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “You can talk to her all you want.”

  With that, I grabbed my keys and gestured toward Theo. “Now please leave.”

  Theo reluctantly did.

  “She told me that you punched her in the face,” Theo grumbled as he walked out.

  I snorted out a laugh. “That woman also told me that she was giving me conditioner. The bad thing is, I paid a hundred bucks for that shit. Shit that made my hair fall out. I paid for my hair to fall out, Theo. All because Shondra thought I had a thing for you.”

  Theo paused with his feet on the last step leading down to the walkway and his truck.

  “And you don’t?” he pushed.

  I gave him a sad smile.

  “I might could have,” I admitted. “But I’m beginning to see that you’re not the man I once thought you were, and I’m not the woman I once thought I was.” I paused to allow my eyes to connect to his. “Thank God for small miracles.”

  There was a short, awkward silence as everybody took a moment to digest that bit of words that’d just come from my mouth.

  Then I felt Dax’s hand on my shoulder. “Ready to head to the tattoo parlor?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I told him.

  Theo made his way to his vehicle.

  I made my way to Dax’s.

  Dax got my door for me and I climbed in.

  He rounded the hood of the truck, and my eyes stayed on him as I tried to get my head on straight.

  Had that really happened?

  Had I just said those words to Theo? The man that I’d once thought was going to be it for me?

  Dax got in and slammed the door just as his phone chirped, alerting him of a message.

  “I haven’t thought about Theo since the night of the SWAT meeting,” I told him.

  I wasn’t sure why I was telling him.

  I just felt like he should know that I was no longer hung up on someone.

  You know, just in case Dax decided that I wasn’t the worst thing to ever come into his life.

  His eyes met mine for a couple long seconds, and I saw acknowledgment there. Understanding.

  His phone beeped again, signaling another message.

  He sighed and pulled it out of his pocket and read what was written.

  “Shit,” he grumbled, looking all of a sudden a hundred years older.

  His shoulders drooped and his face went blank.

  “What is it?” I asked worriedly.

  He groaned and put the phone into the cup holder, starting the truck up and putting it into reverse.

  He looked at me before he put it into drive. “The calendars are out.”

  I looked at him with wide eyes.

  “Really?” I asked. “That’s kind of fast, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “Apparently there was a woman that worked for a big promo company that’s close to someone at the department. She worked some magic and had about five thousand of these bad boys made without any cost to us. That means more money for all the charities each officer chose.”

  I was excited.

  Dax? Not so much.

  “You okay with that?” I wondered.

  He grumbled out something under his breath.

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I guess I was just hoping for more time so I could prepare myself.”

  “Did they show you what your month looked like yet?” I wondered.

  Dax shook his head once, his jaw tight.

  “You want to talk about what’s got you so nervous?” I tested the waters, knowing that he was either going to lose his shit on me, clam up, or tell me.

  I was hoping for the latter.

  He surprised me by actually answering.

  “It’s hard for me,” he admitted. “My old girlfriend, Rachelle, really fucked with my trust. Putting those pictures of me out there for the world to see. Then the way everyone—even people I called friends—spread that shit like wildfire. It just chapped my ass. Let me know really fucking quick who my actual friends are.” He paused. “And Rachelle.” He shook his head. “I wanted to fuck her up like she’d done to me but couldn’t. I… shit. What she did was wrong. My parents wanted to pursue charges against her since I was a minor at the time, but when I heard that by doing that, if she got convicted, she’d have to register as a sex offender, I couldn’t go through with it. She was eighteen at the time… and that would’ve fucked her entire life up.”

  I was nodding.

  I’d actually put those pieces together myself. As a lawyer, I knew all the laws. I knew what would happen to her if he’d pursued it.

  And she wouldn’t have liked it. Not even a little bit.

  Her entire life would’ve been ruined at eighteen. She wouldn’t be able to have her teaching degree like
she did today, and she sure as fuck wouldn’t be so hoity-toity if she had to register herself in her fancy-schmancy neighborhood.

  “Does her new husband know that she’s practically a sex offender?” I asked.

  Dax gave me a vastly amused glance.

  “He’d lose his shit,” Dax commented. “It might almost be fun to watch him realize it. I don’t know what she’s told him, but everyone knows our history in town. When they hooked up after he moved here, my mom told me that she had to do some fancy talking to get him to go out with her. He’s not a half bad guy, but he’s blind where his new wife is concerned.”

  Ugh.

  Rachelle was such a freakin’ bitch.

  No joke.

  I’d hated her since I was old enough to know that she was a bitch. Not only had she been an asshole to Dax, but she’d treated a few of my friends like they were less than trash.

  One could only take so much before the opinion was formed and could never be changed.

  Rachelle had never done anything to me directly. But what I’d heard, as well as seen with my own two eyes, was enough for me to form an opinion. And that opinion wasn’t a good one.

  I honestly felt sorry for her husband, who had no clue of the woman he married.

  I bit my lip and furiously thought about changing the subject. An idea occurred to me.

  “Let me text Avery to see if she can send me the shot,” I said, pulling out my phone.

  “You’re that close with her?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I am.”

  “That’s kind of… weird,” he admitted.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Avery’s always kind of been around,” I admitted. “Dad is friendly with all his officers. When shit went down with her mom a few years ago, I spent a lot of time at their house helping. She was younger than me, but damn, you wouldn’t know it. She’s so mature. Every time I’m around her, I feel like I’m the younger one and not her. She has her life together. She knows what she wants to do. She’s got a house now—something that she’s been taking care of since she was fourteen. Both of her parents were busy, did a lot of overtime. Then, her dad wasn’t around much at all after her mom died. She pretty much raised herself since she became a teenager.”

  He was nodding his head right along with me.

  “I’ve noticed that,” he admitted. “I’m normally pretty guarded when it comes to my picture, but I’ve spent enough time around her that I really know that my trust isn’t misplaced.”

  I grinned at him.

  And ten minutes later, when the photo came in, I realized that I was in trouble.

  The man staring back at me on my phone screen was heartbreakingly gorgeous.

  And if I thought I had a crush on Theo… that was only because I hadn’t met the adult Dax Tremaine yet.

  Chapter 9

  It’s called Karma. It sounds a lot like ‘hahahaha, fuck you.’

  -Dax to Derek

  Dax

  “SWAT team en route,” I heard over the radio.

  I looked across the armored vehicle I was riding in at the man directly across from me—Ford.

  He gave me a chin lift that said, “This is fucked.”

  I silently agreed with him.

  We’d just gotten a call about a woman holding a van full of kids hostage.

  Apparently, she was high or drunk on something. The caller couldn’t tell.

  But she was sitting in the middle of an intersection, on a set of railroad tracks, waiting for a train to hit their vehicle.

  Every time someone approached the vehicle, she would shoot at them.

  Hence the reason we were in an armored vehicle.

  We needed to get that van off the train tracks. There was no telling when a train might come.

  And though we’d done our best to contact the railroad, there hadn’t been any contact made yet.

  Which led us to figuring out how the hell to get the van off the railroad tracks while keeping the children safe and making sure that none of our team got shot while doing that.

  Though that second part was definitely on the lower end of things for us to do seeing as those kids looked absolutely terrified in the photos that’d been taken.

  “All right,” SWAT team two’s leader, Bennett, rumbled. “SWAT team one is already in place behind the fence line of the house closest to the tracks.” He pointed at a map of the neighborhood. “We’ll be coming in here.”

  He pointed to the main entrance of that road, which was right next to a daycare, a small animal hospital, and a florist.

  “The florist said we could use her back entrance. There’s a large dumpster about halfway between the train tracks and the building. We can use that for cover as we get eyes on the situation and plan more accordingly once we realize what we’re getting into.”

  Bennett continued to talk, and the five other guys in the vehicle with us were silent as we listened.

  In this particular vehicle, there was Derek, Ford, Hayes, Louis, and Booth. In the other vehicle was Booth’s twin, Bourne, Adam, Samuel, Nathan, Malachi, and Saint. Their team leader was another veteran of the SWAT team, Foster Spurlock.

  Once we’d all gotten our assignments and offered our opinions on the situation at hand, half of us got out and started into the florist.

  The other half stayed with the armored vehicle and parked in such a way that we were blocking the woman’s exit but also a safe distance away just in case things hit the fan.

  Like what happened about two seconds after she saw us parking.

  It was as if something had clicked.

  “She’s on the move,” I heard someone from the other team say. “She’s started the van and is putting it into drive.”

  She tried to go backward, but we poked our nose out farther.

  “Don’t let her leave with those kids,” I heard ordered.

  I wasn’t sure who’d said it, but I was in wholehearted agreement. That woman didn’t need to be driving those children anywhere. But the woman in the van took one look at our vehicle and reversed, going the opposite direction than where we’d expected her to go.

  Meaning she drove through a ditch that no van should’ve ever been able to make it through. Then started back up the hill and across the parking lot. Then farther into traffic.

  “Son of a bitch!” I heard cried.

  The back door was wrenched open and the rest of our team poured in, regaining the seats that they’d previously been occupying.

  Seconds after that, the drive of the armored vehicle started accelerating, Ford likely flooring it.

  “Don’t let her get onto the interstate!” I heard Foster order as he talked to someone through his mic.

  Another police officer, I was sure.

  “Shit,” I heard Ford say. “She got onto the interstate.”

  Sure did.

  We all watched in horror as the woman started speeding, the wrong way, down the length of a busy highway.

  “Oh, fuck,” I whispered.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Louis growled, his body tensing.

  We all watched, in utter horror, as the van continued to drive down the wrong way.

  The cars coming at her were going the speed limit—sixty-five.

  And there was no way in hell she wasn’t going at least that, too.

  People were swerving, running off the road, and braking all over the place.

  “Someone get up ahead and get the interstate closed down,” I heard ordered.

  That sounded like our chief of police, Luke Roberts.

  I winced.

  For him to be involved, this had to be just as bad as my gut feeling was telling me it was.

  Just then a man on a motorcycle came roaring past us as if we were standing still.

  Seconds after that, the motorcycle overtook us, sped so far down that we could barely see his lights anymore before we saw him turn around by going through the grass median.

/>   Lights on, he closed off what he could of the interstate—which admittedly wasn’t much seeing as he was only a small vehicle.

  People stopped, but it wasn’t enough.

  Just as the van finally got to where he had the cars backing up, a white Escalade that was avoiding ramming the woman that’d stopped for the motorcycle patrol vehicle swerved around it and came nose to nose with the woman and the van full of kids.

  It took half a second, and the cars collided.

  Debris went absolutely everywhere.

  Bits and pieces of cars.

  Bits and pieces of clothing.

  Bits and pieces of… other things.

  “Shit,” I breathed, my stomach tightening as horror rolled through my veins.

  “Son of a bitch.” Ford parked the armored vehicle on the side of the road and we all got out.

  But there was no use.

  There was no way that anybody could’ve survived that particular wreck.

  None.

  Chapter 10

  I got so much procrastinating done today.

  -Rowen’s secret thoughts

  Rowen

  After Dax’s rough day, I decided to surprise him with dinner and a movie.

  Well, dinner and the password to my brother’s Netflix account that we shared.

  I knocked on the door to his duplex and waited for him to answer the door.

  It took him a whole lot longer than I expected it would.

  When he finally arrived, I could see why.

  His hair was all over the place, and his eyes were barely cracked open.

  There were also creases on his face as if he’d been lying on his couch and the lines of the cushion had been permanently etched into his face.

  “Hey,” I said softly.

  He blinked owlishly at me.

  “Hey.” His voice was gruff. “What’s up?”

  That’s when I took in the rest of his body.

  He was wearing sweatpants.

  And nothing else.

  Holy.

  Shit.

  His feet were bare.

  His chest was bare.

  And dear God.

  He had those sweatpants so low on his hips that I damn near saw pubic hair.

  I licked my lips and tried not to stare at how freakin’ hot he was with his sweatpants and held up my bag of tacos.