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I placed a hand on Alex’s shoulder from behind him, and his body tensed up.
“Yara, I…I can’t…” His words stumbled from his tongue. “I can’t have you here right now, all right?”
“What? No. I’m not going to leave you.”
He turned to face me, and I saw his eyes were bloodshot from the tears he fought to keep from falling. “No, you don’t understand. I’m seconds from losing my shit, and I can’t lose my shit in front of you I can’t. I, I can’t—”
“Breathe,” I finished for him, seeing it in his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. I saw him choking on each inhalation he was trying to discover. I saw him struggling to form his sentences. He was having a panic attack. He was seconds away from falling apart. And everyone in town was watching him about to descend to nothingness right before their eyes. A few even had their cell phones out, recording it like a television show.
“Come on,” I said, taking his hand into mine.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
“You can. Just follow me,” I ordered, pulling him out of the eyesight of others. I pulled him toward the refrigerator, and we stepped inside. I shut the door behind us, and Alex bent down to his knees and covered his face as he began to try to grasp any breath he could find. I bent down beside him and wrapped my arms around him.
“Slow down,” I instructed him, like he had me when I fell apart. “Just slow down, Alex,” I begged. “And then break. It’s okay to break.”
With that instruction, he allowed himself to fall apart. He began to sob against my shoulder. He lost himself as reality set in on how much damage had been done to something he’d worked so hard to create. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. I couldn’t comprehend the demons at work trying to destroy his thoughts. All I could do was hold him and let him know he wasn’t alone. All I could do was stay by his side when he needed me the most.
* * *
“We can’t stay in here forever,” Alex whispered after he calmed down enough to be able to find his words. “You’re freezing.”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine,” I lied again.
“Goldie,” he said, his voice low. “It’s okay. I have to talk to the cops outside. I need to face this.”
“I’ll help,” I said, rising as he stood. “Whatever you need.”
“No. It’s fine. Really. I need to do this on my own. There’s probably a lot of paperwork and calls I have to make. Make sure your family is all right and tell them I’m sorry for ruining their evening.”
“Don’t you dare apologize for that, Alex.” I couldn’t even believe that thought crossed his mind. “But I’ll ask a few people to see if they saw anything. All hands on deck.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Yara.”
“Of course. And, Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Everything will be all right. I don’t know how, but it will.”
He gave me a smile that felt like heartbreak. His beautiful brown eyes looked defeated before he walked off to speak to a few officers.
As I stepped out of the building, I saw that the most important person on the staff was missing from the investigation—the scumbag chief himself.
* * *
“What are you doing, Cole?!” I barked as I stormed into the police station to find him sitting at his desk, shoving his mouth full of a Thanksgiving dinner plate Lindsay had probably dropped off to him.
He looked up and cocked an eyebrow. “Uh, my job.”
“The hell you are. You’re the chief in this town. You should be at Alex’s restaurant, seeing what’s happening and figuring out who damaged that place.” I gestured to the other officers in the office. “The whole team should be down there. It’s a mess, Cole.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes messes happen. I sent out a few boys to check it out. But it’s hard to get a good read on who could’ve done it. It appears they wore masks, so there’s not much we can do.”
“Not much you can do?” I huffed. “You could at least pretend to care?”
His voice dropped an octave, and he snickered at me. “You expect me to go out of my way for the man you’re seeing, Yar? I could think of a million other things I’d rather be doing than helping that dick. Like eating my mama’s sweet potato pie,” he said. He lifted a forkful of the pie, and I swatted it out of his hand before throwing the whole plate against the wall.
“Whoa!” he snapped, shooting to his feet. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Have you?!” I spat back at him, my chest rising and falling from anger. I’d never felt so disgusted by a person in my life. He was really doing this. He wasn’t helping Alex’s business because he was jealous of me moving on. “You’re acting like a coward. A weak ass who was given a job he never deserved or earned.” I turned toward the other officers and pointed at them each. “And shame on all of you for not standing up to him. For covering for him and for not doing your jobs.”
