“Okay, I’m gonna head out.” I put my phone back in my pocket. “Parker’s fine. She’s with Kennedy.” As I whistled for Daisy, who’d made herself comfortable under Danny’s dog tags in the living room, I gave Emma a hard glare. “Next time, check with the other part of your weird little threesome you girls have going on. Especially before you call the police.”
Emma blew a raspberry at me. “I figured Linc would be the one to get the call. He told me he was working in this zone all month.”
My ears flamed at that, but I didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to know I’d snaked this particular call out from under her brother.
“Later, Emma.” I gave her a mock salute and left, Daisy at my side.
When we both looked over our shoulders, I realized that something had to change. I couldn’t keep mooning after Parker Hayes. It wasn’t doing me any good.
Linc stood in the bullpen waiting for me when we got back to the station. He held out a treat for Daisy, who took it like the princess she always pretended to be in public.
Ignoring the question on his face, I checked the large clock on the wall. “Shift’s up in five. You wanna go grab a beer?”
Studiously ignoring the fact that it was barely two in the afternoon, Linc shrugged. “Sure. But you’re buying.” He sighed dramatically. “Since you stole my call, I’ve had to sit here doing paperwork for the last hour, instead of breaking into my sister’s house.”
Questions buzzed in my head as I thought about exactly what he’d said. I had a few things I needed to get straight, and Linc was probably the only man in the world who might have an answer for me.
“Hey.” I turned to see him watching me with a strange expression. “Is everything okay?” He looked around to make sure we were alone. “I’m all for day-drinking. But you’ve never been that guy. Not since the funeral.”
I wiped my lip with the back of my hand, trying to think of the best way to say it without actually saying the words. In the end, I didn’t need to say a word. The officers for next shift came in, walking through the doors like fuckin’ superheroes, breaking the unspoken tension that somehow managed to fill the air between us.
“Hey, Dom.” Linc turned to the new arrival with a wry smile. “Remy’s taking me out for a drink right now. How’s it feel to be stuck with the new guy?”
Carter Malone, who’d walked in right behind Dom, flipped Linc off with a grimace.
“Dick.”
“Don’t worry, Carter. One day you won’t be the rookie anymore.” Linc laughed at his own joke and walked away.
“One day…” Carter shook his head. “Hell, one day I’m gonna make him eat his words. He does realize that I’ve been a cop for longer than any of you, right?”
“Yeah.” I stood next to him, watching the locker room door where Linc had just gone. “But we all served together overseas. Trial by blood.”
The door to the locker room flung open from the inside, and Linc marched out still in his uniform. The only thing that had changed was his body cam was no longer attached.
“I’m ready. Let’s get this shit show on the road.” Linc shimmied his hips, dancing around slightly to adjust his pants. Then, while we were laughing at his idiocy, he shoved me out of the way, pushing me in the direction of the locker room while he dropped his duffel bag on the ground and untucked his shirt. “Hurry the fuck up, Remy. I even gave you the whole locker room to yourself. I’m just gonna change when I get home so I don’t have to wait for your ass.”
When I wasn’t moving fast enough for him, Linc groaned. “Come on, man. You’re the one who wanted to go for a drink. I just wanna go home and take a fuckin’ bath. My knees hurt.”
As soon as he had a beer in his hand at Lucy’s, though, all the complaints melted away.
“Was it the dog tags? Is that what threw you into an episode?”
I choked on the beer I’d barely had a chance to swallow and shook my head while I tried not to die.
“No…” I gasped for air. “No.” Coughing didn’t seem to help, either. Not for a few long seconds.
Linc shrugged and then drank his entire beer in one go. “Oh.” He belched. “I figured since you were in the house, you saw Danny’s dog tags and must have had a flashback. It’s happened to me a couple of times.”
I motioned to the bartender for another beer because we’d started to talk about shit that I definitely couldn’t do completely sober. Once he nodded from the other side of the bar, I downed the rest of my drink. New drink in hand, I had everything I needed to get right to it.
“I think we need to talk about Parker and Danny.” When Linc’s eyes met mine, I saw the truth there. The secrets he’d kept for his brother.
I fucking loved her. The words froze in my throat before I could get them out. Before I could do anything that would hurt our friendship. So, instead, I waited. And I fucking fumed. I loved Parker, and I had pushed her away all because I was afraid. The next thing I knew, everyone was saying she and Danny were in love. Then they were pregnant and getting married, and I couldn’t even fucking stop it. How could I? I loved her, and all I wanted was for her to be happy.
Linc stared at me hard, for a long minute, as if he could see every single thought going through my head. When he’d seen everything he was going to, he smacked his lips together and then slapped the bar top twice in a quick succession.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess we do.”
9
Parker
I was right, but then again, I usually was. As soon as I saw Rose and Emma sitting on my front porch with a massive pitcher of iced tea, I knew they were up to something. How did I know? It was too easy. Because sweet tea was my weakness, and both of them knew it.
“It better have more sugar than water in it,” I called out when I opened the back passenger door for Nox to climb out of my car. Then I braced myself for the onslaught that I could see coming from a mile away.
The last week had been a nightmare. Between the concussion, catching up on work, and Nox being out of school with an ear infection, I was ready to jump on a plane and go anywhere for a vacation.
After a fake gasp of outrage, Rose fanned herself dramatically. “Of course it does.” Then she put her hand over her chest like I’d insulted her pride. Except we weren’t from the South, and Rose most definitely wasn’t a lady.
She swore more than her husband, drank every man I knew under the table, and still managed to look as good at almost sixty as she did in pictures I saw of her from thirty years ago.
So what was I right about? The fact that Rose had gotten it into her head that I needed a partner.
“I set you up on a date tonight.” Rose didn’t even bother beating around the bush, and I’d barely had a cup of tea in my hand before she started in on me.
Nox stayed out on the grass in the front yard, kicking his soccer ball over and over again into the net that Linc had set up for him on his birthday.
I took my time wrapping my mind around what Rose had planned, and at the same time I watched how Nox played by himself. The kid definitely had skill, and he could run too. Just like his father had in school.