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Waiting for me to get home.
Charles stopped to chat with Jackson. They exchanged fist bumps and bro-hugs, and I went back to focusing on my girls. They peppered my face with kisses, talking over each other.
“… then we did pancakes, and we had cream and strawberries, and it was yum?—”
“… Jackson ate so many, and Uncle Jamie laughed…”
“… we made more, and they’ll be cold, but you can have them…”
“… I dropped Annie-bear in the pond…”
“… We iced cupcakes…”
“… she got all wet, but Jackson fixed it for me…”
“… and then Jamie made scones, and we have more cream and jelly, and that was nom as well…”
I scooped both my girls up—Scarlett was maybe getting too big at seven to want her daddy carrying her, but I needed this right now, and she wrapped her hands around me and kissed me again.
They were everything.
Jackson pulled me and the girls into a hug, stealing the quickest of kisses. “You came,” I murmured.
“I wanted to welcome the man I love home,” he deadpanned. “Live with it.”
And I realized at that moment, I’d do more than live with it. I’d take him and hold him close and never let him go.
Epilogue
Jackson
It was funny,in that not-funny way, how much a person’s life could change in such a short amount of time.
Last year, as the weather started to cool a little—Los Angeles didn’t get super cold, as it’s no Vermont, but the temps did dip a bit in fall—I’d been working nonstop. Eager to fill the emptiness in my life with nicotine, whiskey, and long days chasing down bad guys. I still worked too hard, but now I took time off to enjoy things. Like a fast day trip to Big Bear with Oliver, the girls, Jamie aka Nanny Belvedere, Bryce, and Leo to see some fall colors.
I did things like pick apples, carve pumpkins, make paper plate turkeys, and read bedtime stories about princesses and dragons. Bryce liked to tease that the feral cat of the family had finally found someone to domesticate him. Jamie commented that, perhaps, someone should dock my ear in case I reverted to my feral state, so no one would try to neuter me again.
Oliver would chide his friend, but I could handle the Brit’s teasing. A lot of what he was saying was true. Iwaslike an alley cat in many regards. I needed love and affection, but I was too hissy to accept it until someone with patience had lovingly taken the time to work past my defenses. Was I neutered? Yeah, maybe. I had no drive to sleep around any more. My nights were spent curled up on the sofa with a full belly and Oliver stroking my hair. Why would I venture out into the mean streets when I had it so good here? Jamie’s gag gift of a feather dangler cat toy might have gotten my fur up a bit, but I smiled sweetly, and then, a week later, left a neatly folded ‘The British Blew a Thirteen-Colony Lead’T-shirt on his bed.
It was typical family shit, and I loved it. It was what I had needed. My sister had been right all along, something she took great joy in pointing out every damn time we spoke. Older sisters could be so superior.
Four weeks had passed since we had officially turned the money laundering case over to the district attorney. Mack and I were still overworked and underpaid, as most civil servants were, but we now had four pairs of detectives in our division, so we could at least pause to breathe. The Feds had been interested in some of our findings in the Baladin case, which had led to them joining with us on a concurrent jurisdiction case involving Ivan’s family. All that malarkey about rivalries between local and state with the FBI is just Hollywood drama. For the most part, law enforcement is grateful for any aid in taking down the nogoodniks. The face-eating druggie who’d shot Lazlo had sobered up and turned evidence on Baladin, said he’d been threatened to break in and find passwords. He admitted that he had no fucking clue what he’d been looking for, and Baladin had really been clutching at straws.
I still felt sick at the feel of his teeth in my skin.
Freaky zombie shit gave me nightmares.
So that was one of six ongoing cases that Mack and I were working on, with trips to court added in whenever we were needed. My time at home had become precious to me, and I guarded it like that feral cat Jamie teased me about being.
“You look tired,” Oliver said, busting into my mental meander. “We can go home soon,” he added.
“I’m good. We need to celebrate,” I replied, taking a sip of my punch, then moving a step to the side to slide my arm around his waist.
The front lobby of the Haven of Hope was packed with friends and supporters for a re-re-reopening party. The LA Storm had turned out in force to support the cause—donations flowing in, I was sure—as had several of my fellow cops. Mack and Elena were here talking to Lazlo, who was cuddling Dilbert, the alley cat. Joe was chatting it up with my ex-brother-in-law, Bryce, and his man, Mike, while Leo and Oliver’s girls were sitting in the newly finished playroom eating cookies, sipping pink punch, and coloring in pages on how to avoid catching colds. “This is a big night.”
“Still, you need to slow down,” he said as I reached over to pluck a cookie from a tray being carried to the buffet table by one of the catering staff. “And eat better.”
I popped the cookie in and chewed. Oliver was such a stickler for proper nutrition that we sometimes had little spats over my less than stellar eating habits.
