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She snorted. “You will not be setting anyone straight, Ford.”
I refrained from saying ‘watch me’ by the skin of my teeth.
I might as well have, though, because when her eyes met mine, brows practically at her hairline, I knew she’d heard what I hadn’t said.
“You can’t protect me from that, Ford,” she said softly.
I shrugged. “I can protect you from anything that I want to protect you from.”
She shook her head.
“I know you think you can, but…” she started, but I interrupted her.
“You’re mine, Ashe,” I told her bluntly. “You’re mine, and I’m yours. And that comes with certain things that I’m allowed to do when others are not. Telling people they can go fuck themselves is one of those things that I’m allowed to do.”
She gave me a laughing smile, then shook her head.
“Just don’t get me in trouble, okay?” she asked. “I don’t really want to have to work in a hostile environment.”
I thought about that for a long moment.
“You haven’t had much time with the detectives,” I pointed out. “Are they bad?”
I wasn’t close to the detective team. I knew of them, but all of them were veterans of the force and had quite a few more years of experience than I did. Not to mention, the SWAT team was in an entirely different building as them.
It was a rare occasion that we even interacted at all.
“Hobbs, Kershaw, and Hastings are great,” she said. “I don’t know about Tanney. I don’t know her very well, and when I do have a chance to speak with her, she always finds a reason to leave.”
“That’s because Tanney hates Luke. And you’re Luke’s niece,” I told her. “I’m not sure why, but she’s always been like that.”
I took the exit off the freeway and looked in my rearview mirror once before returning to our conversation.
“Tanney is about six months from retiring, anyway,” I continued. “Derek told me that. So don’t tell anybody else. I’m not sure if it’s public knowledge yet or not. But she’s going for her twenty years and then getting the hell out.”
“Meaning I’m kind of her replacement,” she sighed. “Figures.”
My lips twitched as I came to a complete stop at the stoplight.
“We have about an hour before visiting hours are over.” I paused. “Do you have time to stop and get some dinner? Or do you need to go home and study for that test that you’re trying not to worry about all weekend?”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
“I got a little studying done on my phone,” she admitted. “In between people telling me how awful their pregnancies were, as well as what kind of birth plan I should take, and whether I should breastfeed or bottle feed.”
My brows rose.
“They really went into that much detail?” I questioned.
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes. “I had one of the family tell me that she tore from her tailbone to her clit. And said that it took her six months to have sex again.”
I must’ve blanched, because her mouth turned up into a smile.
“I also had one tell me that her birth went so fast that she had the baby in the ambulance,” she continued. “And then there was my mother, giving me every gory detail known to man. I think she was doing it as punishment for not telling her that I was seeing you in the first place, though.”
I snorted.
“Your dad told me he would chop my dick off and shove it up my own ass if I ever hurt you,” I told her. “And my dad only laughed.”
She gestured toward the light that had turned green, and I accelerated through it just as it turned yellow.
“Whoops,” I murmured, looking in the rearview mirror at the line of angry drivers behind me.
She leaned forward and shook her hair out, pulling a ponytail holder off her wrist and then putting it up at the top of her head.
“I don’t know anything about birth plans, what I want to do after the baby is born, or anything like that. I’m glad I have some time once school’s over to really focus on that.” She paused. “But right now, I’m just going to enjoy being pregnant and leave it at that.”
I squeezed her wrist.
“You’re sure you’re happy?” I asked carefully.
“I’ll let you know when I’m not, then you can fix it,” she teased.
I snorted and let go of her hand to pull into the parking lot of the hospital.
“You know,” she said. “Life would be so much better if self-driving hover cars were a thing.”
I snorted and pulled into a parking spot that wasn’t anywhere near the entrance and got out.
Ashe met me at the front of the truck, and together we walked inside the building, hand in hand.
When we stepped off the elevators for the floor that Lacy was on, I was honestly surprised to see Luke standing there.
