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“Back acting up again?” I questioned.
He grunted. “Been acting up for the last thirty years.”
I snorted. “If I keep this leg, I have a feeling that it’s going to do the same damn thing.”
“You’ll feel it every single time the weather acts up,” he promised.
I was not looking forward to that. Not even a little bit.
I’d been in the Army for three years as an MP—military police—before getting out and joining up with first Benton’s police department, and then almost immediately moving to Bear Bottom PD.
Needless to say, those three years in the Army had not been kind to my joints. We still did quite a bit of patrolling while carrying gear in the military police. Some of the places we had to investigate in the Middle East would never be kind even to the healthiest of people. We investigated murders, missing soldiers, domestic violence, anything that might happen in the states, just in worse conditions.
Now, add on being shot in the thigh, and that wound not healing correctly…I had a feeling I was really fucked.
“Great,” I muttered, closing my eyes.
The couch beside me depressed, and I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that Landry had just taken the spot between me and my father. She was so close that I could feel the heat of her along my left side.
Everything inside of me urged me to throw my arm around her shoulder and pull her in close to my side.
I debated it for all of three seconds before I said “fuck it” in my head and did what I wanted.
Lifting my arm, I didn’t bother trying to act smooth, as if pulling her into me was just something that happened.
Nope. I went ahead and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, cupped her elbow, and pulled her into my side.
At first, she stiffened, and I was sure that she was going to pull away.
But then she surprised the shit out of me by not only staying where I put her but also laying her head against my pectoral.
Everything inside of me soared.
Everything.
My heart raced. My hopes lifted. The throbbing in my leg faded into the background.
Hell, even my bladder that’d been protesting for the last hour had paled in comparison to how it felt to have her in my arms, back where she fucking belonged.
We stayed like that for thirty blissful seconds before my uncle Jimmy came out of his office and said, “All right, boys and girls. Y’all can come back now.”
I grunted as Landry used my full bladder to push herself away from me, scooting to the edge of the couch and opened one eye to glare at the man.
He was grinning at me.
I silently curled my lip at him and flipped him off for good measure.
He shrugged.
“Can we have the meeting right here?” I requested. “I have to pee, my leg hurts, and if I have to get up again, it’s not going to be good.”
“Why don’t you pee then?” Uncle Jimmy suggested. “There’s this new modern invention called the toilet. You go in there, lift the lid because your aunt Martha will kick your ass if you pee on her seat, and then take a leak into the little porcelain bowl. It’s great. You should try it.”
I flipped him off again and closed my eyes once more.
“Because walking to the bathroom might very well make me throw up right now,” I told him honestly. “My leg hurts really fuckin’ bad.”
Jimmy’s face went soft. “We can do it out here,” he agreed. “But I can’t promise that my next client won’t walk in during the middle of it.”
“If that happens,” I sighed. “Then we’ll move. But until then, this couch has accepted me as one of its own for the time being.”
Landry settled back into the couch but didn’t move back into my side.
My parents, who’d been quiet up until this point, both started talking at once.
“So, let’s get this shit over with. What’s the deal?” my father asked at the same time my mother said, “Tell us already, please.”
Jimmy walked over to the receptionist’s desk, who wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and rolled the chair over before sitting down in the middle of the waiting room.
It was then that I saw a stack of papers in his hands.
I frowned, the signature on the paper at the bottom looking achingly familiar.
It was our divorce papers.
Something inside of me perked up, and I clenched my hand as I repositioned myself so that I was now leaning forward.
“What?” I rushed out.
He looked at me, then moved his eyes to Landry, who was mimicking my pose.
“Well,” he said, sounding worried. “I’ll just go ahead and start, I guess. I got a call earlier this week from an FBI agent who said that he was calling about ninety lawyers to tell them the same thing that he was telling me.”
