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“You literally dragged me out of the trash, Hart.”
My name on his lips did weird things to me, bubbles in my stomach and chest and the back of my throat, and I had to stop this before it went somewhere I didn’t want to let it go. Or, rather, somewhere I really did want to let it go, but that I knew would end in catastrophe and pain.
“Doc would’ve done it if I hadn’t,” I pointed out, trying to be practical.
Taavi gave me a look. I knew that look. Fucking hell. I knew this man. I’d lived with him for two fucking months. Shared my food, my couch, my bed with him—but the way you’d share those things with a fuckingpet, not another person.
But hewasa person, and I’d known that. And I hadn’t cared.
See what I mean about being an asshole? I’m about as big of one as they get.
“Taavi, you aren’t attracted tome. It’s because I took care of you. That’s all. Trust me.” I wished it weren’t. Fucking hell, I wished it weren’t. But I knew better.
“I trust you, Hart,” is what he came back with, his gaze penetrating. “And I even thinkyoubelieve that line of absolutecaca.”
“Look, I’ll make you a deal.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, purple cotton stretching over his biceps, his tattooed left arm on top, and gave me a look that was half a challenge.
“You still want to kiss me in six months, call me.”
He reached into his back pocket and handed me the cheap phone the shelter had given him. I stared at it for a second before I realized he wanted me to put my number in it.
“You’re just going to delete it in a month when you realize it was all just adrenaline,” I told him. “Stockholm Syndrome.” Yeah, I know it’s not the same thing, but I did kinda kidnap him. Sort of. Although I suppose he could have left at pretty much any point, since it’s not like I locked him up or anything.
He just looked at me. One brown eye, one white.
I punched my number into his phone. The only other number in there was the shelter.
It wasn’t until nearly three hours later that I realized I’d put in my full name.Valentine Hart.
Fuck me, I had it bad.
29
“Hart!”
I looked up as Villanova’s voice rolled across the bullpen.
About six people were currently not speaking to me because I’d come back to work without ‘Anubis,’ giving the excuse that his original owners had been located by the vet’s office. Which… okay, so it wasn’t the vet’s office, but technically it was true, since he was his original owner.
But I couldn’t fuckingtellpeople that.
So instead I’d spent the last two days wondering whether or not I should actually get a cat because my apartment felt really fucking empty.
I got up with a sigh and headed into the captain’s office. “Sir.”
He looked at me from the other side of his desk, his dark eyes critical over the top of his plain black mask. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you, Hart,” he said, and I scowled. “I need you to drop the Oldham case.”
That was not what I was expecting. “Sir?”
“Drop it, Hart.”
I crossed my arms and studied him. Jeremiah Oldham was currently in prison—we got a fortunately Arcanid-sympathetic judge who had literally laughed at Oldham’s lawyer’s attempt to negotiate bail—but the case I was working was his wife’s murder. And I didn’t actually like Oldham for it.
“May I ask why?”
“No.”
