Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
His jaw twitched again.
Damn, the man had a great jaw.
His dirty blond hair once again fell into his eyes, and I had to force myself not to reach up and push it out of the way for him.
“I hate that this happened to you,” he started to say. “But one of these days, you’re not going to get an understanding cop like me, and they’ll take you to jail. You need to leave. Go home, stop whatever it is you’re doing to make his life a ‘living hell’ like Alana said, and move on.”
That’s when I got angry.
It was unfortunate; this man hadn’t done a damn thing to me.
But he had the poor timing to say I needed to move on when I fucking couldn’t.
I tried, dammit!
Stiffening my spine, I moved into him, poking him in the chest.
“I can’t move on from this, Officer Carter,” I snarled. “You want to know why?”
“Why?” His left eye twitched.
“Because, whether he claims it or not, he’s directly responsible for…” I started.
He interrupted me, though.
“That’s not his fault.” He was already shaking his head sadly.
“It is!” I cried out, throwing my hands wide.
He caught both of my hands, then pulled me in close. “It’s not.”
The way he said it made me pause, as if he was speaking from experience.
“But…”
“My sister took her life four years ago,” he said softly.
I stiffened.
“She was seeing a man who treated her like shit. Like your friend, he was likely responsible for a lot of her issues. But in the end, she chose to end it. She chose not to talk to someone. She chose not to come to us with her issues. She chose not to let anyone know she was having a hard time, and she chose to take her own life,” he said softly. Too softly, as if he was scared I would break. “I had to stop blaming myself for not noticing the signs. I was the last one to see her. I went over to Germany to visit and I missed every single sign.”
My shoulders deflated. “Shit.”
“So yes, he’s an asshole. Yes, he could’ve handled things a hell of a lot differently. But in the end, she was the one to do it. Nobody else,” he said. “And you have to stop making it hard for everyone else because you feel like he’s responsible. It’ll get you in trouble, and do you think Keda would’ve wanted that?”
He remembered her name?
“You remember her name?” I repeated my inner thoughts.
“I remember almost all of my victims’ names,” he answered. “The only ones I don’t are the ones who were very early in my career, and they weren’t actually my cases.”
I sighed, blowing out a breath.
“And, just sayin’, but if I catch you anywhere near him again, I’ll arrest you. I don’t care if it’s just you accidentally ran into each other in the grocery store. Keep your shit straight,” he ordered harshly.
I stiffened, all the niceness he’d managed to coax out of me vanishing with his words.
What an asshole.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe what Taite did to Keda wasn’t actually his fault. He didn’t tell her to go kill herself. He didn’t hand her that bottle of sleeping pills. He didn’t hit her that night she was in the accident.
But Taite was still an asshole.
The motherfucker had tortured a young woman.
He had no clue what these people were going through. He didn’t know that his jokes were detrimental.
Pulling myself away from the asshole cop’s delicious heat, I twisted and started moving toward the mouth of the alley.
Since I’d planned out the entire day, being sure to take note of all my exits, I knew where I was and what direction I needed to head in.
I was also very aware of the footsteps that followed behind me the entire way to my car.
Fishing the key out of my bra, I shoved it into the door and fell inside.
The moment I was in, I locked the doors like any smart girl would do upon entering her vehicle, then started the car up.
If there was one thing I could say about my shitbox, it was that it always started, no matter what.
It may have looked like a POS—piece of shit—on the outside, but the motor was pristine, and I made sure to keep it fully tuned.
I changed my own oil every four thousand miles in the parking lot of my apartment complex. When I needed to do more maintenance on it—something I’d learned from a teenager who used to live on our street when I was growing up—I went to the now grown teen’s shop and did whatever I needed to do there.
Kinny Fink had shown me the ways of the world. He was well over six years older than me, saw a scrawny, scraggly, pain in the ass thirteen- to his nineteen-year-old self, and took pity on me since he saw the way my parents and siblings treated me.