Page 2 of Trial By Fire
Jackson Anderson threw his bag onto the couch in his living room, his teammate and second-in-command walking in behind him. He looked over as Bradley Johnson shut the door to the apartment and headed towards his room.
“Hey, Cap. You making plans for tonight?”
“After the clusterfuck that mission was, yeah, I’m thinking of heading out to Bernards to have a few drinks. You want to join me?” Jackson asked his best friend.
“Sure. Maybe I’ll find someone I’ll actually want to defile tonight.”
“That sounded wrong on so many levels!” Jackson laughed as he threw a pillow from the couch in Brad’s direction.
“Like you weren’t thinking that same thing! Maybe you’ll get lucky and that psycho nurse that keeps chasing you around will be there.” Brad wiggled his eyebrows Jackson’s way.
“Not only no but fuck no! That bitch was a one and done. How the fuck she got my number is beyond me. I even changed the number, and she still got it.” Jackson glared at Brad when he started laughing.
“Yeah, I remember that. She wasn’t happy that one day she showed up and found out you were on a date with some other chick. You need to talk to the big dog and see if there’s a way to do an investigation to find out how she’s getting private information on you,” Brad agreed, sitting down on the couch after he threw the pillow back at Jackson.
“He is. The only thing we can figure out is she’s friends with one of the girlfriends on the team. Looks like she has them believing there’s something going on. Now that we’re back, he’s setting up a meeting with the entire team on Monday morning to go over everything and let them know what is going on.”
“It’s not me. I’m like you. No permanent chicks. Besides, you haven’t had a serious girlfriend since that cop chick two years ago.”
“Trish?” Jackson asked, looking over at Brad as he walked back into the living room in just his shorts.
Jackson had to stop and really think. Shit, that was one woman he couldn’t get out of his fucking mind. Trisha fucking Malone. She was the one woman who made him think about forever. He just had an issue with her job.
She was a cop in the SVU department. They dealt with a lot of heavy shit. While he understood when she had to postpone or cancel a date because of the job, he sometimes hated waiting for that call that she wouldn’t be doing their dates period. He knew her job was dangerous. Hell, his job was dangerous too. But he didn’t want a future with someone whose job was as dangerous as his was. He didn’t want their kids to wonder which parent wouldn’t make it home when they were called out.
“Yeah, well, I still think you were a dick for the reason you ended things,” Brad commented, breaking into his thoughts.
Jackson sat down on the loveseat across from Brad, rubbing his face with his hands. He knew Brad was right. It was a dick move the way he had ended things with her because shewouldn’t end her job. Truth was that the feelings he was starting to feel for her scared the ever-loving shit out of him. He had promised himself, after his mother had died from depression when his father was killed in combat when he was younger, that he would never put a woman through that.
The night he almost said the “L” word to Trish when he kissed her, after a rather intense fucking session, he knew he was falling in deep with the woman. In a dick move, he ended things with her over the phone the next day. He ignored her text messages asking what she did wrong or what happened for him to end things. He just blocked her number.
He’d seen her a few times out and about since they lived in the same town, and she worked for their local sheriff’s department. He would see her in the grocery store, the gym now and then. He started using the one on base after running into her a few times. Seeing her all sweaty in her tank top and shorts had his dick jumping for attention.
No matter how many women he’s slept with since ending things with her, he couldn’t get her off his mind. He’d always been a one and done type of guy. With Trish, her personality won him over. Her sarcasm always made him laugh. Her touch lit him on fire and her kisses drowned him.
Like a drowning man, he’s tried to reach out to her a few times when they’d ran into each other in town, but as soon as she saw him, she’d go the opposite way. He couldn’t really blame her. He did do her kind of dirty when it came down to it.
Fuck! Why couldn’t he get her off his mind?
He was in love with her. No matter how many other women he fucked to try and get her off his mind, it didn’t change that fact.
CHAPTER
THREE
Trish stood in front of the floor-length mirror staring at herself with the outfit that Lola had picked out for her. The dark jeans molded to her ass as if they were painted on. The shirt was a dark blue halter top with a strap that went around her neck yet pushed the girls up and allowed the cleavage to look like she had more than she really did. Lola then paired the outfit with a leather jacket and matching dark blue high heels that she’d forgotten she’d had.
Despite her already having done her make-up, Lola fine-tuned it to match her outfit and worked on her hair. She was petrified the woman would have her looking like a street hooker. But, looking at the final results in the mirror, she could finally let out a sigh of relief. Her makeup was light. Dark blue eyeshadow on her lids and under the eye along with black mascara and black eyeliner made her eyes pop in a way she never seen them before.
Lola had used a curling iron on her newly colored dark hair, curling it all the way around. Then once she was done, she put it in a loose ponytail that had hair loose on the side giving it a wild but serene look. She had to honestly admit to herself for once inher life, she looked fucking hot. Screw the fucker who broke her heart.
God how she wished she could screw him one more time. She’d had at least two other guys that she’s fucked since Jackson Anderson broke her heart two years ago. Neither one could make her come the way he did. Hell, the two losers couldn’t even make her come. She had to fake it and then when she got home, she had to be a pathetic loser who used her toy and imaginehimas she pleasured herself.
She hated herself for that sometimes. He broke her heart, yet she couldn’t get over him. Seeing him the few times that she had, she usually went the other way before he could notice her. Trish knew he had seen her once and had started her way. She high tailed it out of the area as fast as she could have when she saw he was heading her way.
The fucker changed gyms because he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Why should she give him the time of the day to prove he was over her. She knew she wasn’t a looker, or the most desirable female in the area. He could have manned up and admitted he didn’t want anything but a fuck now and then types of relationship.
They had dated for several months before he broke her heart with a text message. Yeah, she had to cancel a few dates, but damn it, so did he with his job, too. She just wished she knew what she had done wrong to make him change his mind about where things were going. She thought things were going great. That was until the last night they were together.
