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Grant stood backas everyone said their goodbyes, wishing Mia a happy birthday and making their way to their cars parked at the side of the house, others at the side of the road.
Maynard Timmons and his boyfriend, an enemies to lovers romance if there ever was one, were some of the last to leave.
Chief Walker and Lorraine were also stealing away with tubs of leftovers. While Cindy and Wallis Wahim hightailed it to their car with their screaming son, Jasper, causing a scene. To them anyway.
Grant helped with cleanup and returned all of the fold-out tables and chairs back into Lucas’s garage slash gym. Drawing out the time when he would have to jump into his truck, drive across town, and spend another sleepless night alone.
Thinking.
Playing the woulda-coulda-shoulda bullshit all night.
“You okay?” Lucas asked with a side-eye, always so damned insightful.
“Never better,” he replied, after having it out with Lucas and Birdie as to why he felt it necessary to promise to buy Mia a car for her sweet-sixteen birthday. Which was a year away, which should give him time to save enough to buy a car that was both reliable and safe.
He couldn’t explain the rash decision for such an extravagant gift and went with the excuse that he wanted to be the one to load it up with state-of-the-art tracking devices, making the car and his niece easier to locate, given her penchant for unauthorized road trips.
Truth be told, he’d been making all kinds of rash decisions.
One of his officers wrote a report missing a pertinent detail that, in the past, he would have railed him over. Instead, he told him to go on home to his family and get to it the next morning.
Just the other day, he let that little artistic genius aka property defacer, Wyatt Olsen, go, without so much as a ticket or threatening him with juvie.
Kid reminded him of her.
Reckless, fearless, and full of passion and bravado.
He was wrecked.
Mostly because he hadn’t heard from her. Not since that day at the Four Seasons. Had half expected her to show up at their hotel room, raising hell at him for leaving her behind. With Morales.
But she didn’t. And he just knew.
He knew it would have been a tearful goodbye. One where she was apologizing and he was the one holding back the damned tears.
Fuck that shit.
And fuck Morales.
The guy who had pretended to be one thing, but turned out to be someone else altogether. Someone who she’d be instantly attracted to. Your standard FBI SWAT leader, who faced danger without hesitation, willing to do whatever it took to stop the insurgent or to gather intel. Even if it meant seducing his mark.
Jesus. No matter the mark’s age and amount of skin elasticity.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
You couldn’t unsee that shit.
But there was one thing he knew. There was a fine line between love and hate. And what he saw was Tati Northrop teetering between the two while gazing at a guns blazing Alpha Morales.
Although, he was still short, barely hitting five foot five. It wasn’t much, but something. Nevertheless, he couldn’t compete with everything else.
Now, Grant knew he was a good-looking guy. Never had a problem finding a woman of equally noncommittal intentions to slake his desires.
But he was also measured. Tempered.
He liked working doggedly through pros and cons and rules and protocols. Those were the boring things in law enforcement, in his mind, that kept people safe.
Especially those he loved.
