Page 37 of American Sweethearts

I looked around to see if anyone was watching before I answered Bri. “It’s not that deep. We’re just hanging out.”

Bri wasn’t buying it and stretched his neck, hoping to get a look at my very NSFW text conversation. The messages between J and me had always been a bit on the filthy side, but he’d been keeping it PG, not wanting to cross boundaries. In the past few days though, things had gotten decidedly more heated.

I glanced at the message bubble, trying hard to keep from turning the phone away so Bri couldn’t see what Juan Pablo would send. But I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it either. So I kept my hand off the screen when the bubble popped up. As soon as I saw what he’d written, I yelped and pressed the phone to my chest while Bri lost his shit next to me.

I put my finger over my lips, trying very hard to keep a straight face. “Shhh stop, Bri.” He just cackled harder. “Oh my God, why are you so loud right now?”

“Let me read it again.” He was literally choking from laughing so hard, but I kind of wanted to re-read it too, and it wasn’t like he didn’t know what J and I were getting up to.

I looked both ways to make sure no one else was coming by, then turned the phone so he could see it, and as soon as he read it, we were both howling again.

Imma make that kitty purrrrrr for me tonight.

“This is amazing, Priscilla. He and Reyes need to meet ASAP.” Okay, double date suggestions were definitely dangerous territory. So I focused on responding to J’s dirtbag text.

How could that bastard have me busting up and so turned on I had to literally fan myself all at the same time?

Are you using pet names for my body parts, Juan Pablo Campos?

Those three dots popped up almost immediately and when I read the message, I actually giggled.

Don’t matter what I call her… She always comes for me.

This light-skinned cornball was going to be my undoing. That didn’t stop me from encouraging his ass.

We’ll just see who’s purring first.

I pocketed my phone as we were about to walk into our weekly team meeting, needing to focus on my job regardless of how entertaining I found Juan Pablo’s constant bullshit. As always, Bri and I were the first two to arrive. Bri had his tote bag with the usual array of goodies the Child Advocacy Center provided for the meeting. Soon we were arranging everything on the table and getting the coffeemaker started as Bri did his best to interrogate me before the rest of the people started arriving.

“So are you still doing the whole ‘we’re fucking and sharing our deepest darkest secrets, but not dating’ thing?”

I didn’t have to look at him to know he was probably barely keeping a straight face.

“When you say it like that, you make it sound really stupid.” I wasn’t even faking sounding hurt. I was all fucked up about it. So far, every time we hit a snag that in the past would have ended in a breakup, J somehow managed to navigate it with a cool head. And that’s what had me thinking about a future. About getting back together, again, which was so not where my head needed to be.

I lifted a shoulder as I fiddled with a cherry I’d grabbed from the bowl Bri had set on the table. “I just don’t want to fuck with this. J’s exactly like he used to be except now the sharp edges, the cluelessness, those are gone. Did I tell you about the ginger tea?”

Bri dipped his head, a lopsided smile on his lips. “Yes. He does seem like he’s moved into a new phase. A man that doesn’t shy away from being a nurturer, that’s sexy as fuck. And not in the creepy ‘let me feed you from my hands’ way.” Bri shuddered and I laughed. We’d had one too many conversations about shifter romances. “It sounds like he’s actually paying attention to what you need.”

“I know.” I felt all warm inside just thinking about it. “It’s been good, and honestly I just don’t want to muddy the waters with anything that’s going to start a disagreement or an argument.”

That elicited a disapproving groan from Bri. I knew he would not be happy about me avoiding hard conversations to keep the peace, but it wasn’t like that. Not really.

I raised a hand to suffuse whatever he was thinking. “Nothing’s even come up. I mean stuff…about here,” I said in a lower tone of voice, as I circled a finger in the air in front of me. “I’ve told him I’m not as happy as I used to be on the job, but that’s it.”

Bri gave me an assessing look and was about to say something when Joseph Sanchez, one of the child protectiveworkers on our team, walked up, talking closely with Chase, another one of the other detectives in my precinct. I looked at Bri and raised an eyebrow in question. Chase worked in Vice, so he never came to these meetings.

As soon as Sanchez looked up, I knew something bad had happened. His eyes were bloodshot and he had huge circles under his eyes, like he’d had a very rough night. And long nights in child welfare work were usually the stuff of nightmares. Chase acknowledged me with a nod but pulled out his phone as Sanchez came over to the other side of the room to talk to Bri and me. My heart pounded as he got closer, all the warmth of the conversation from a few seconds ago replaced with dread.

“The stepdad ended up in the hospital last night. Admitted with a leg injury. Maybe a knife. We have a feeling it was her.” He didn’t need to explain. I knew he was talking about April.

“It was him; he was probably trying to come after her.” Bri’s face blanched as my voice boomed in the room. “She probably was sleeping with something to defend herself. “

Sanchez looked back at Chase, whose face was unreadable, then turned to me again. “She didn’t say, Priscilla. We asked her multiple times.” He looked to Bri for some backup, but my friend was not going to help him out, not with this.

Usually I was more diplomatic about stuff like this. It was a team, after all, and I tried hard to not talk over people, but before Bri could even speak I was talking again. “Of course, she didn’t say anything. We never interviewed her alone. We never pressed the mother—orhimfor that matter.”

Sanchez put both hands up, like he had no idea what I was so worked up about. When he responded, it was in that “she’s getting hysterical again” tone men used with me all the fucking time in the workplace. “I get you’re angry, but we can’t go on hunches. Not when it comes to taking kids from their homes. There was no imminent danger, and protocol is protocol.”