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“So you choose to not speak at all?” I drop my head back against the cold steel and look up at the ceiling. “He needs to know, Fifi. He’s still trying to keep her around.” Exhaling a deep sigh, I bring my focus back down again. “He’s trying to raise that little girl with two, healthy parents. He put Jada into rehab, and he’s trying to force that relationship. But if she’s using again… or still… then he needs all the information to make informed choices.”
“Mia deserves better.” Her breath shudders, her chest jumping with the movement. “That sweet baby deserves so much more. But mom is in the club sucking cocaine off a pimp’s dick, and dad is sticking his into anything with two legs and a vagina.”
I choke out a soft laugh that results in spilling coffee over the lip of my mug. But it helps break the tension bouncing throughout the elevator.
“You’re showing your cards.” I slide my tongue along my wrist and collect the dribbling drops of coffee racing across the blue lines of my veins. “A woman who has no romantic interest in a man has no interest in the vaginas he may or may not be sticking his wang inside.”
“His wang?” She rolls her eyes and presses the button to restart our elevator. “Really, Chief? I could have you up on sexual harassment in the workplace by speaking that word alone.”
“Possibly.” I step away from the doors before they open. “But the fact remains: you like Detective Fletcher and his sweet little girl. And it scares the shit out of you.”
“Of course it scares me! He has a daughter, Mayet. I don’t even like little people like that. And what if I actually decide to like-like him? What if I decide to like him enough to spend time with them? Then he puts his wang somewhere else, we stop spending time together, and now his little girl has lost another adult from her life? What then?”
“Well…” A long, slow smile works its way across my lips. “I think it’s cute you like him so much you’re already thinking about how that will affect Mia. I think you’re entirely too fricken icy to make decisions without having first put real thought into the outcomes, so if you decide to spend time with Fletch’s wang, it’ll be because you’ve considered the consequences.”
Fifi purses her lips, unimpressed.
“Then, if the wang thing works out and you decide to be in Mia’s life more, once again, it’ll be after careful consideration. You’re not running your ass over there today, Fifi. Or next week. Or next month. You’re gonna try the wang thing out for a while to make sure everything fits the way it should.”
“This conversation is wildly inappropriate.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the one bringing it into my building during work hours. If you want to give you and Fletch a try, do it. If you don’t, don’t. If you decide to be in Mia’s life, have at it. And if it all falls to shit and you decide to move back to Idaho, then don’t worry, Mia will still have me and Aubs. We’ll be her constant, so Fletch can wing his wang any which way he wants.” I turn to the elevator doors as we come to a stop on the ground floor. “Tell him what you saw, Fifi. Or I can. I really don’t mind. But he needs to know.”
I exhale a deep breath and startle when the doors open and reveal both detectives and Aubs, waiting with matching expressions.
“What the hell?” I lean back and study the control panel of the elevator. Then I straighten out again and meet Aubs’ frantic eyes. “You ran down nine flights of stairs, all because you didn’t want to miss out on the gossip?”
“What gossip?” Instead of letting us out, Archer marches forward and walks me to the back of the elevator. “Why’d you hit the emergency stop button?”
“Because Fifi and I needed time to discuss something in private.” While Fletch and Aubs file in, I look to my right and find Fifi’s face deathly-white. Her trembling hands, fisted by her sides.
Fletch studies her the way someone might study a painting behind bulletproof glass.
She’s beautiful to him.
I mean, hell, she’s beautiful to everyone.
But to Fletch, she’s the kind you stow your casual wang away for a while. A repeat one-night-stander, celibate because he, too, likes someone special.
They’re both idiots who lack reasonable communication skills.
Or they excel in stubbornness.
The latter, enough to keep Fifi’s mouth shut despite the elevator doors closing and Fletch’s curious stare.
“You get one chance,” I announce cryptically. “Ten seconds to decide. If you don’t wanna do it, I’ll tell him myself.”
Like a switch, Fletch’s eyes turn fiery. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t…” Fifi can’t stand up under the detective’s penetrating glare. She can’t meet his eyes and tell him his wife is not a recovering addict. But rather, a current one. “I can’t.”
Fletch swings his arm out, barely missing Aubs with his hand, before he slaps the emergency stop button and brings us all to a screeching halt for the second time. “Don’t keep secrets from me, Sera.” Archer, Aubree, and I may as well not exist. Because it’s just Fletch and Fifi in this elevator. “I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m done with the bullshit. My daughter is being babysat by the mob today. My career is hanging on by a thread. I don’t sleep. Ever. My current suspect probably didn’t do the crime. And my nanny is about ninety-seven-years-old. So we all know I’ll have to deal with that before long. Now you’re standing in front of me, paler than a dead guy?—”
“That’s what I said,” I mumble. But Archer snakes his hand up to the back of my neck and gently squeezes to silence me.
“So tell me what the fuck is wrong,” Fletch finishes. “Give me a chance to deal with it.”
Fifi drags her eyes from the ceiling, misty and exhausted from holding on to her secret. “Charlie…”
