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“Just take me back to Metro, and I’ll get my car. I appreciate the ride.”
“Are you sure you should drive?”
“I’m fine enough to drive.” She lied smoothly. She was anything but fine, but she desperately wanted to be alone. It was a frantic need that beat against her chest. A numbness replaced everything else, suffocating her.
She didn’t say anything until they pulled up next to her car. “I’m sorry about this, Randy, but…things change. You are a good guy.”
“Yeah, I get it. Don’t sweat it. It was just sex between friends.”
Okay, she let him have that. She opened the door. “I’ll see you in a week. I’m on leave until then. Stay safe.”
He said nothing as she closed his car door. She watched him drive not for a moment kidding herself about how she really felt about Randy and what she had never let go of with Dean.
She walked slowly to her car, fatigue rolling over her like a rogue wave. She leaned against the driver’s side, her chest still radiating with pain even though she’d taken what they gave her at the hospital.
The heat made everything sticky and oppressive. She opened the door and slipped inside, turning the air conditioner up to full. She drove home, her hands tight on the wheel to keep them from shaking.
She made it into her house and to her bedroom, where she stripped out of her dusty, sticky clothes. She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, got inside and washed off the grime and sweat. Ophelia stood there as the water pounded her chest. The pain was a welcome distraction from the thoughts swirling in her head. Dean, Randy, being shot, and the regrets. It wasn’t until the water turned cold that she snapped out of it and turned off the water.
Stepping out, she wrapped a towel around herself and pushed away the mist on the mirror with the palm of her hand.
She stared at herself and shivered. Her eyes dropped down to that starburst of damage and a sob caught in her throat. She pushed it back.
Had she pushed so much of her life away? She’d been so young. She should have known that the boy she wanted would never be suitable for her parents. It didn’t matter what Ophelia wanted.
They had sent her away to a private school, out of his reach, away from his influence. But at seventeen, she knew she’d compromised something special, beleaguered and pressured as she was. They had offered her what she had so desperately needed. Her freedom.
When her little sister, Katie had been born, her parents’ attention turned to the tiny daughter they could manipulate. Katie had been everything they could have hoped for. She’d thought they’d focus on her and just let Ophelia live her life. Boy, had she been wrong.
She turned away, dried her body and hair, put on a loose-fitting top and shorts, took some more painkiller, and got into bed.
Had she lost something back then? Something she hadn’t realized until the lean, hard-muscled Dean Teller walked back into her life? Is this why she felt so hollow? Had she sold her soul?
* * *
Dean got to the Harley Street property early and he worked steadily, only waving to Granny when she came in. She was methodically hiring people and he was happy to have her do that. It had been a week since her birthday, and he hadn’t been able to get O off his mind. By lunchtime he gave up trying to work hard enough to stop the memory of how she’d felt in his arms and the smooth sensation of her skin against his.
He hurriedly showered and then headed to Metro, picking up lunch along the way.
“Officer Barr, please,” he said when he arrived at the front desk.
The desk sergeant looked up at him and frowned. “I’m sorry, sir, but Officer Barr isn’t in today.”
A man stopped and said, “You Dean Teller?”
Dean nodded. “I was looking for O.”
“Hi, I’m Randy.” He reached out his hand and Dean shook it. “She got shot two days ago. She’s home.”
In that red-tinged moment, hearing those words galvanized him. His heart stopped, paralyzed by fear. And then it raced, leaving him drenched in sweat and mind-numbing terror. “What?”
“She’s fine,” he said hurriedly. “Her vest caught it, but she was bruised up pretty bad.”
Fuck!He turned and bolted out of Metro and sprinted to his jeep. He’d driven the jeep instead of his motorcycle because he had picked up lunch for them to share and because the pipes on the Harley always made the cops a little nervous. It was a damn good thing. At the moment, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to keep the hog upright. His feverish mind just played the words over and over in his head.She got shot. Shot…shot…shot…
As a SEAL—he gripped the steering wheel— a former SEAL, he knew what it was like to get shot. He’d had several close calls before, and any brush with death made him reassess life. It was inevitable. Both of them were in dangerous jobs, and with it came the possibility of it being over in a blink of an eye. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was more afraid of letting down his teammates. Was she scared? Were the thoughts of looking death in the eye giving her nightmares? His team had been there for him. Was hers there for her?
He wasn’t going to wait to find out. As soon as he got to her front door, he banged his fist against it a little harder than he meant to do.
