Stolen in Love

by G. G. Andrew

  It was a police badge.

  His jaw tight, he snatched it off the table just as her hand almost reached it.

  “Let me explain,” she started.

  “Whose badge is this?” But he knew. He knew. Kim Xavier was a thief. She took things that belonged to other people. That badge was his. Had been. Last fall, before he noticed it missing after he’d had Thanksgiving dinner at the Xaviers’.

  He should have known.

  “Scott,” Kim started, her voice cracking.

  “No.” He held up a hand again to ward her off while the other held the badge in his palm. It was just a small piece of metal, but it meant so much more to him. How hard he’d worked to get where he was. How seriously he took his duty to protect the citizens of New Haven. His lifelong commitment to being caring and responsible.

  He shoved the badge in his pocket and spoke quietly, his eyes on the floor. “We need to break up. It’s not good for Lily to be around this. It’s not good for me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Kim

  She tried to speak, but there was a lump in her throat. It felt like her heart.

  Tears pricked her eyes as she thought of the fucking cruel irony of life.

  After she’d left Lily with Bette, she’d come straight to her apartment. It didn’t feel like hers anymore, and she guessed it probably wouldn’t ever. She’d known on some level since the break-in that she wasn’t going to move back there. It wasn’t home anymore, but it still held memories that were weighing down her life. It was time to do some spring cleaning.

  She’d unlocked the apartment and gone straight back to the bedroom, kneeling and reaching under the bed until she unearthed those two tampon boxes. Taking them to the kitchen, she’d put them on the table while she grabbed a trash bag. Then she’d dumped the boxes all out, and was putting items in the trash one-by-one.

  It wasn’t just the positive pregnancy test. Mostly it was Lily, looking up at her with those big blue eyes, and saying something no child should ever have to say to an adult. You don’t need to do that.

  She didn’t.

  How many times had she felt like she stole not only because her addiction compelled her, but because it was what bad people like her did? She didn’t need to steal, but it’d taken a small child to get the message across.

  She was still an addict. She always would be. She would be tempted again, especially in times of stress, to get that jolt of euphoria taking things brought her, to give that broken part of her brain that confirmation, that sickly sweet relief, that she was a bad woman. She might slip again—in a month, in a decade.

  But she wouldn’t steal so easily again.

  It’d made her sick to her stomach to see her own face reflected back in Lily’s eyes, to think that she was now carrying a child. What was she doing?

  From now on, she would be better. But it didn’t matter, because Scott saw her past laid out before him, and he didn’t want it. He didn’t want her.

  Didn’t she always know this would happen?

  “Scott, please. Don’t do this.” She sniffed.

  She knew he hadn’t found the pregnancy test in the purse too, because when his gaze finally met hers, his voice was raw with hurt and anger. “Why are you still doing this? I know you’re under some stress with what happened with Viktor, but I thought I made you happy.”

  She swallowed and shook her head. “You do make me happy. It’s not about that. I’m a kleptomaniac. Did you really think you could stay my hand?”

  At the hurt look in his blue eyes, she could tell he had. She tasted salt at the back of her throat and though she hated to cry in front of others, she had an urge to press her face against the starched cotton of Scott’s uniform and sob for both of them. Instead she tried to remain perfectly still lest he see the wetness dropping onto her cheeks and know there was something she couldn’t joke her way out of, that things got to her, that he got to her, that she wanted his arms around her.

  “Promise me you’ll never take anything again,” he said, his husky voice almost pleading.

  Despite the pained look on his face, she shook her head and whispered through her tears, “I’m an addict. It doesn’t work like that.”

  He exhaled, took a step towards her, and then, shaking his head, pivoted to the door. “I can’t do this.”

  “Wait!” she cried. He couldn’t leave. She loved him. She was having his baby.

  He slowly turned to face her. “I need to go.”

  She shook her head. The tears were falling in earnest now, dripping off her chin and making it hard to speak. “Can’t you—can’t you just hold me?”

  He swallowed, his voice cracking. “I wish I didn’t want to.”

  Without another word, he turned and walked out, the sound of the door closing the only noise in the otherwise quiet apartment.

  Kim crumpled to the floor and began sobbing.

  Her cell rang, and for a second, stupidly, she thought it was Scott. But he was driving away from her. He didn’t want someone like her, and she didn’t deserve him.

  It was her sister.

  “Laurel?” she said, not bothering to fight her tears anymore.

  “Kim? Oh my God, are you okay?”

  “No.” She drew a shaky breath. “Scott and I just broke up.”

  “Oh, honey, where are you?”

  “I’m at the apartment.” She glanced at the table. “Cleaning.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Laurel said. “I’m coming to get you right now.” She could hear her sister’s boots being zipped up in the background, followed by keys jangling. “I’ll be there in ten minutes or less.”

  “Okay.” Kim tried to take a deep breath. “Laurel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  ~

  When Laurel knocked and opened the door, she was still on the floor, but she’d been grabbing items off the table again and shoving them in the trash.

  “Kim.” Laurel rushed to wrap her arms around her.

  “I want to go home,” she said tearfully.

  “Home?”

  “To Mom and Dad’s.”

  When her sister leaned back to examine her face, she added, “For real. I don’t know why. I just want to be home.”

  “Okay.”

  Laurel brought her tissues to blow her nose and helped her get her sandals back on.

  “Wait,” she said as they were about to leave. “Can you help me get the rest of this crap in the trash? And then take it out to the dumpsters?”

  Laurel looked at the stuff on the table, and wordlessly started grabbing items and throwing them in the garbage bag on the floor. Kim knew she’d known her too long and too well to need to ask what they were; Laurel knew, and she probably wanted them away and gone almost as much as Kim did.

  They drove the half hour up to her parents’ place south of Hartford in near silence. Kim stared out the window as the sky blackened and let the feelings swirl around her.

  Her eyes moved of their own accord to Scott’s driveway. His car wasn’t there.

  They hadn’t warned their mother they were coming, and Diane Xavier opened the front door before they even reached the step. She was dressed in capris and a blouse, her black hair in an elegant knot and a wine glass in her hand. She noticed Kim’s face. “What’s happened?”

  Kim rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. “Not out here.”

  Her mother opened the door wide to let them in, and they trudged into the warm, spice-scented front room of the Xavier house. It smelled like Kim’s childhood, warm and homey, and maybe that’s why she wanted to be back here. Bixie hopped around their feet for a minute, then sat her fluffy white butt down by Diane’s chair.

  “Sit down, girls.” Diane gestured to the couch, but once Kim sat she started sobbing again.

  Laurel hugged her. “Oh, Kim.”

  “What’s going on?” Diane asked.

  Kim tried to speak, but through the tears she only managed to babble inco
herently.

  “It’s Scott,” Laurel translated. “They broke up.”

  “Oh.”

  Kim pulled away from Laurel, blew her nose on some tissues wadded in her purse, and avoided her mother’s eyes as she said the next part. “That’s not all. I’m pregnant.”

  The Xavier house fell into silence. Even Bixie seemed to be holding her dog breath.

  Finally, her mother said, “That son of a bitch.”

  Startled, both she and Laurel looked across the room. Her mother had been perched on her chair beside Bixie, but at her utterance she leapt up, her eyes narrowed in the direction of the Culpepper house. She looked like a general ready to declare war.

  “No, Mom,” Kim said. “He doesn’t know yet.”

  Her eyes cut to her youngest daughter’s. “He doesn’t know?”

  “No. I just found out today. We had a fight and broke up before I could tell him.”

  Diane crossed her arms. “He needs to know. He has responsibilities.”

  “I’ll tell him, Mom, I just…” She started sniffling again. Was this pregnancy hormones? Or was this just her life? “He doesn’t want to be with me.”

  “Well, too damn bad,” her mother said.

  Kim hiccupped a laugh. Her mother’s sudden use of profanity was at least tickling her funny bone. That or she’d gone hysterical. “I need to figure out what I want. It’s still sinking in that I’m pregnant. Even if he changes his mind, I can’t be with him if he doesn’t accept me as I am—if he doesn’t—”

  Diane crossed the room and sat on the other side of her. She cupped Kim’s face in her hands. Her mother’s blue eyes were framed by wrinkles, but shone intensely. “Kim, you’re a bright, beautiful girl who’s worked hard to get through some difficult times,” she said. “If Scott can’t recognize that, well… I’ll get together with the other neighbors and make sure we make it very uncomfortable for him to remain in this neighborhood.”

  “Jesus, Mom.” Laurel started laughing.

  Kim’s hands reached up to cover Diane’s, but instead of pulling her mother’s hands away, she let her fingers rest against their warm flesh. “There’s something else I haven’t told you. That thing I stole, the thing the guy who broke into my apartment wanted back, it was a flash drive with a list of women’s names on it. Women who are being harassed online.”

  A prosecutor for well over a decade, Diane’s eyes grew sharp. “Did you take it to the police?”

  “I gave a copy to Scott, but I printed out a list for myself. I’ve been tracking down the women to warn them and encourage them to go to the cops.”

  “Kim!” Laurel cried behind her. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  Diane’s hands slid from Kim’s face to her shoulders. “That is unsafe. It’s a matter best left to the police.”

  Kim took a deep breath and straightened. “He knew when I was staying here. He left a knife on my car.”

  Diane inhaled sharply.

  “This guy, whoever he is, he’s been hurting women,” Kim continued. “Their reputations, their jobs, their sense of themselves. I need to help.”

  “Yeah, but it’s dangerous,” Laurel said, her voice adopting that lecturing, older-sister tone. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

  Kim turned to her sister. “Spoken by the woman who chased down a notorious graffiti artist last fall.”

  Laurel huffed. “Jamie’s harmless. Mostly.”

  “But you didn’t know that! It could’ve been bad. Like TV-movie-of-the-week bad.”

  “Girls.” Diane’s voice rose above their bickering. “We need to focus on the future. Kimberly, you need to stop contacting those women immediately and leave it to the police. You should also move back here—this school district is much better than what you’ll find down there, and—”

  “Wait,” Kim said, “are we already talking about schools? I can’t. I’ll figure this out myself.”

  “You’ve been saying that since you were eight years old.” A note of annoyance crept into Diane’s voice. “You can’t do this alone. You need to let us help you.”

  Kim shook her head, dazed, and fell back against the big pillows of the couch. “God, I’m pregnant. I have no idea how the hell I’m going to do this. How can I be a mother when I’m the kind of person nobody wants their kids around?” She thought of Taylor’s expression and Scott’s words and Bette’s lecture from the week before.

  “Oh, Kimberly.” She turned her head to see her mother smiling sadly. “You’re wonderful with Scott’s daughter. I wish you could see that. That little girl just lights up whenever she sees you.”

  Tears filled her eyes again. Along with losing Scott, she was going to lose Lily, too.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Scott

  Scott went out drinking Wednesday night.

  He’d never done that before, but damn it if he could do anything else. He’d called Bette from the road, asked her if she could stay the night, and at the next rest stop, changed into some gym clothes left in his car. He drove far enough out of the area he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew, then he found a dive with dark wood paneling and surly customers, grabbed a hard stool at the bar, and proceeded to down enough beer he’d forget Kim Xavier even existed.

  It didn’t work.

  As he tipped back yet another cold bottle, he reasoned with himself. He’d had to end it. He had to break up with her before she took something from him he’d never get back, though judging by the hollowness in his chest, maybe she already had.

  It was always going to be doomed. A cop and a woman addicted to breaking the law? In a few weeks or months, she would’ve figured out it wasn’t going to work and left him. He was doing them both a favor. This hurt like hell, but it was survivable.

  He ordered another beer.

  By the time he’d stopped drinking and sobered enough to call a cab, he was at least so exhausted that he’d surely fall asleep when he got home, thereby achieving another state of oblivion. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to feel. Didn’t want to wonder what would’ve happened if he’d stayed to hold her like she’d asked, or kissed her salty tears away.

  No. He came home and fell onto the bed, bone-tired—body and soul.

  He waited for sleep to take him, but instead a scent played around the edges of his consciousness. Oranges and something deeper, something he liked. He turned his head into the pillow, inhaling deep, seeking out the source. Reaching up to grip the pillow, he buried his face in it, reveling in both the comfort it brought him and the sweet yearning, before awareness shivered in like a snake through his stupor.

  He bolted upright.

  “Damn it.” Her perfume. The bed smelled like her.

  Groaning, he tossed the pillow to the floor, and after a few sniff checks, the blankets too. He settled down again, but off came the sheets a minute later.

  It all smelled like her. She was in the sheets, her memory sunk deep into the mattress. All those times he’d taken her or she’d ridden him, he’d held her close or she’d kissed his knuckles one by one. Her giggles in the dark and the way she’d made him realize his life before her was monochrome. She’d brought color into his life, and heat, and happiness scented with oranges.

  He ended up on the hard floor, where he eventually fell asleep until an hour and a half later, when he woke up wincing to the sight and sound of Lily bouncing into his room to say good morning with the bright sunlight.

  ~

  Bette was still there, and good thing too, because it was going to take a lot of coffee and food for Scott to be able to fully function as a parent, let alone think about his shift at the station that afternoon.

  His head feeling like a watermelon that’d had a date with a large axe, he pulled on a pair of sweats and an old shirt and walked into the kitchen. There he opened the fridge and began rummaging.

  “Cereal’s already out,” Bette said from the table where she sat with Lily. “Late night?” She raised her eyebrow at him, knowing the answer to that quest
ion.

  “Do we have any donuts?” he asked her.

  “Ooh, donuts!” Lily said.

  “Hush,” Bette said, then added to Scott, “You kept telling me they were junk food, so I stopped buying them.”

  He sighed and looked back in the fridge, finally settling on making the world’s largest sandwich for breakfast. As he carried a loaf of bread, lunch meat, lettuce, and a jar of mayonnaise to the counter, the jar slipped from his hands with a thud, and his head hammered with the noise. He cursed.

  Bette studied him.

  “Lily, can you go play in the living room?” she asked. “Your father and I need to talk.”

  The little girl obliged, and Scott picked up the jar from the floor and awaited a lecture from her.

  “What’s got your goat?” Bette asked.

  He exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you remember where I keep the Tylenol?”

  “Mm-hm.” Bette got up and found the bottle in a cabinet, bringing it to him with a tall glass of water. “You should drink all of that.”

  “Thanks.” He swallowed two pills down.

  “It’s not like you to go out drinking at night. Alone. On a Wednesday.”

  “I know.”

  She nudged him. “Sit down, I’ll make you a sandwich. You don’t look awake enough to even spread mayonnaise on bread.”

  Exhausted, he walked to the kitchen table and slumped in a seat.

  “You fight with that girlfriend of yours?”

  Scott rubbed his face. “Yes. We broke up.” He stared at the ceiling. “Don’t worry, I’ll look for someone else to watch Lily. I know you’ve been doing too much.”

  “Hmm.” Bette spread mayonnaise on the bread.

  “We’re too different,” Scott continued. “She’s got a lot of stuff she needs to work on, and I can’t let that interfere with my job or responsibilities.”

  Bette clanged the knife down on the counter. “Listen, Scott, I have to confess something. I might’ve had a talk with her. With Kim.”