Page 55 of Misadventures in Blue
An hour later, I’m sweaty and ragged, having set the treadmill to a dead sprint and then pounding out a run like I was being chased by ghosts, my arm wound screaming like hell the whole time. I grab my reusable water bottle and start chugging as I leave the gym and walk down the short hall to the locker room. Even though my body is thirsty and beat, my mind is still chewing on itself, wondering where I went wrong, and my chest still feels like it’s been cracked wide open.
I strip off my clothes—miserably, tugging on the waterproof sleeve over my bicep to protect the bandage there—and then I shower—also miserably, too messed up to even touch the swelling erection my starved cock is offering up against the water. Even fatigued, my body remembers that just ninety minutes ago I had Cat pressed against me, ready and whimpering for me to slide inside her. Even heartbroken, my flesh still aches for hers.
With a long, weary sigh, I shut off the shower and wrap a towel around my waist. I slide the curtain aside with a vicious gesture, scowling down at my unrepentant cock.
“Jace. Look at me.”
My heart stops. The air turns to concrete in my lungs. I look up and see the woman I love in front of me, still in her dress uniform, her aqua eyes like oceans of feeling and her Hollywood hair still tousled from where I kissed it earlier. Despite everything, my stomach flips over with an idiotic, naïve flip. I still want to see her. I still want her even though I know better, and it’s frustrating as hell.
“What do you want?” I ask, irritated that the words come out husky and curious when they should come out cold and flat. But I can’t help it. I can’t help anything about how I feel about Cat. She could rip out my heart with her bare fingers and eat it in front of me, and I’d still want to pull her into my arms.
But she doesn’t look like she’s come here to eat my heart. Instead, she’s sinking her teeth into her bottom lip and twisting her slender fingers in the department-issue necktie she’s wearing with her dress uniform.
She looks…well, nervous.
But every second she doesn’t speak reminds me that I’m damp and wearing nothing but a towel—and that towel has an oblivious erection twitching underneath it—and I finally say, “Look, we can talk later—”
“I haven’t told you everything about Frazer’s death,” she blurts out before I can finish.
Her eyes widen fractionally, as if she can’t believe she really just said those words, but then she takes a deep breath and forges on while I stand frozen in my to
wel. “That night—that call—I got there first. The dispatch notes said someone heard a woman screaming inside. Now we know it was the perp screaming, but then we thought it was someone else he was hurting…”
She trails off, and I nod because I know. Lots of situations require backup—but sometimes they require an officer’s immediate intervention more. If she thought someone was in danger, of course she would have gone in alone. I would have too.
But that doesn’t stop my pulse from spiking with worry, no matter how long ago this happened, and I think I possibly understand how Frazer felt when he realized she’d gone in there without him.
“The power had been turned off. I told you that, but did I tell you how hard it was raining that night? Flash floods all over town. The streets were like rivers. Every other step I took, there was a clap of thunder or a fresh gust of wind. Scared even me, and when I found the perp, he was huddled in the back room, crying and frightened. Abject, utter terror. Hearing him cry like that was…bone-chilling.”
Cat takes another deep breath and looks at the ceiling to gather herself. “I started talking to him. It took a minute or two, but he began to settle down. He told me it wasn’t a storm at all but people trying to kill him, and he was so, so scared. Had a kitchen knife with him in case ‘the people’ made it into the house. But I managed to get him to set it down, managed to get him to make eye contact, was able to say over the radio that the subject was alone and compliant and that we were in the back bedroom.”
“But then Frazer…”
A tear spills over Cat’s eye, and she wipes furiously at it as she nods. “He kicked in the back door—maybe because he thought it would be closer to the bedroom? If he’d just entered through the front door, which I’d already broken open, or if he’d just trusted that I’d call out on the radio if I needed help…”
“Cat, it was the suspect he didn’t trust, not you.”
She shrugs, and I know she thinks the distinction doesn’t matter. And maybe it doesn’t. The outcome was the same, after all.
“It startled the suspect. He grabbed his knife and pushed past me and went down the hall toward the noise. It was so dark, so fucking dark, and I tried to follow him, but I was tripping over all the trash in the hallway, and I—” Another tear, but she doesn’t flinch away from her next sentence. “I was too late.”
Her words hang in the cool, damp air of the locker room. I give her time to find her next words.
“He didn’t have to die,” she finally whispers. “Nobody had to. If only he’d waited or taken a minute to think and come through the front…he might still be here with me.”
Oh God. Suddenly I see exactly where this is going. “I’m not Frazer.”
She shakes her head. “No. No, I know you’re not. I can’t fault Frazer for trying to keep me safe, and I can’t fault anything you did with Pisani either. But I’m just trying to explain…why…”
I soften. “I know why, baby. It’s never been a secret to me.”
She looks down at her hands, still twisting in her tie. “I just thought if I didn’t let anyone in, then they’d be safe. And I let you in…and you got shot. You did the same thing he did, and you rushed in and you almost got killed. You can see why that’s hard for me.”
I wince. I hate how this is between us, this mountain of causality. This reality of our job, jagged and insurmountable. “Cat.”
She doesn’t let me cut in; she keeps going. “But you know what? I’m tired of the hard things keeping me from what I really want. I’m tired of the walls and the precautions and the ice. I was wrong, Jace. Wrong about what I wanted.”
Her words hit me good and hard, like a cold shot of top-shelf vodka. I think I feel those words buzzing in my veins.
