AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The next thing I picked up was my curling iron.
I had two pictures of Penelope, both of which had her hair straightened. Except Mr. Stanley wanted her hair in curls, because he hated that she straightened her hair. He also hated when she wore makeup. Unfortunately, I had to since she’d used her face to debark a tree.
“Have you always been a c-cop?” I asked shyly.
The fact that he was a cop still bothered me, but not as much as it once did.
I still had a problem with cops in general. However, Loki was different. There was just something about him that made everything right in my world.
Sadly, that trust didn’t extend to his friends.
Trance had shown up at his place to borrow a car jack yesterday, and just the sight of him in his uniform had sent me into a near panic attack.
It was Loki’s reassuring arms around my shoulders that kept the attack from going into full out panic mode.
I was sure, with time, it would get better, but in the interim, I had a lot of work to do.
“No. From seventeen to twenty-three I was in the Coast Guard, I went to school part time and got my paramedic certification. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I got out. While she was doing treatments, I got my peace officer and firefighter certification,” he told me.
The curling iron in my hand dropped down to hang parallel to my leg, and I stared at him open mouthed. “Holy shit! You’re like...quadruple certified!”
He chuckled. “Triple certified, and yes.”
“Hmm,” I observed. “Then why did you choose to be a police officer?”
“My stepdad was,” he said, as he stood and stretched his arms up high over his head.
The move showed off the tight expanse of his belly, as well as the gun and badge at his hip.
He didn’t hide them around me, and I was grateful. I’d never get over my phobia if I wasn’t facing it, and it wouldn’t do to have a panic attack every time I saw my boyfriend’s friends.
“When did your mom remarry?” I asked.
He smiled fondly as he walked over to the bulletin board on the side of the room that had pictures of the funeral home staff.
“When I was seventeen,” he told me. “I fucked up and got sucked into a gang when I was eleven. When I was sixteen, I decided I needed out and I went to the gang resource officer for help. He helped all right, and told me what I should do. The next day, I went to the leader, Mick, and told him I was out. He said if I could survive the exit, I was free to leave. I thought I was in the clear, too, until some little wannabe came out of fucking nowhere and landed on my back. He’d already slit my throat by the time I realized anything was even wrong.”
I stood up straight as I listened to him talk, and stared at his back with open mouth shock. “He slit your throat?” I gasped.
He turned and gave me a sardonic smile. “How did you think I got this pretty scar?”
As he asked, he fingered the scar at the base of his throat.
It was so much a part of him now that I didn’t even realize he had it most of the time.
It was only when I would run my lips over his neck, or absently run my hand down his jaw to his collarbone that I’d feel it and remember it was there.
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t that,” I snapped.
His blasé attitude pissed me the hell off.
“At the time, it was a big deal. I remember laying there feeling the warmth spreading from my throat; I knew I was about to die. But I crawled out of the abandoned building that The Crimson Horde used to inhabit, right into the path of Officer Zeth Merritt. He held his hand over my throat, staunching the flow, while he waited for medics to arrive. Held it all the way to the hospital and into surgery. When my mom met him, he was covered in my blood, and she loved him instantly. The relationship was a slow build, and they waited nearly a year before he asked her to marry him. It was the best day of my life when that happened.”
“What happened? Did they not slit your throat and arteries? I thought you always bled out really fast when that happened. Or, at least, that’s what happens in the movies,” I said as I went back to curling Penelope’s hair.
Her hair was very brittle as if it’d been colored way too often, and never treated. Which made me have to be very careful or I’d burn off her hair.
“The kid was about two inches over five feet. He had to jump on my back to slit my throat, and missed the jugular. Got a hundred and twelve stitches, though,” he winked.
