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Note to self: When this is all over, go to therapy.
Unable to face Billy, she stared down at her trembling hands that were folded on the tabletop. Leaning forward he covered her hand with his. The warmth of his palm spread through her entire being. His words had comforted her for a moment, but his touch did more than that. His touch felt like safety. His touch felt like home. His touch felt like love.
Maxi fought the craziest impulse to throw her arms around him and jump into his lap. She wanted more than just his hand covering hers, she wanted to be wrapped up in him. She wanted to absorb his strength and security. She wanted to lose herself in it.
Slowly, she lifted her eyes to meet Billy’s. What she saw there stole her breath away. Billy wasn’t really known for showing emotions. Unless it had to do with fighting or his other favorite f-word, he kept things right at the surface. So seeing the depth of emotional waters crashing behind his eyes was almost more than Maxi could handle.
The door opened and Maxi snatched her hand away, suddenly feeling like they’d been caught in a compromising position. Which was ridiculous. They hadn’t been doing anything, no matter what it felt like.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Detective Grover took a seat opposite Maxi. “Thanks for coming down on such short notice. I would’ve spoken to you sooner, but there have been quite a few developments over the past couple hours and I wanted to sort them out before speaking to you.”
“Okay.” Maxi nodded her head anxious to hear what the detective had to say.
Her foot began tapping, the way it always did when she was nervous. She probably wouldn’t even have noticed but when Billy’s large hand settled over her knee beneath the table he stopped it. She waited for him to remove it, now that her heel had stopped moving up and down, but he left it there and she didn’t want to admit how happy she was that he did.
“As you know, we received an anonymous tip that led us to believe that Mr. Simpson was a person of interest in your case. We went to his residence and asked him to come down to the station to answer some questions while we obtained a search warrant. He cooperated. That’s when I contacted you with the development. Once we got the search warrant, we were able to hand Simpson’s computers over to our cyber department. They worked in conjunction with Mr. Holmes from Elite Security and were able to prove that the evidence recovered was not authentic.” Turning his attention to Billy, Grover continued, “Thank you for all of your help.”
“Your help?” Maxi didn’t know what the detective was talking about.
“Mr. Marshall has been coordinating efforts between his firm and the department. Without his efforts, this wouldn’t have been resolved in a matter of hours. It could’ve taken days, weeks even.”
Maxi was so confused. She wasn’t sure what the detective had just told her, or what Billy’s role had been, but she had more pressing questions that needed answered. “Is Carter here? Does he need a lawyer? Bail?”
“Mr. Simpson was never arrested. He was being held for questioning but was released approximately thirty minutes ago.”
“Okay,” Maxi took a deep breath and tried to calm her frazzled nerves. She reminded herself that the most important thing was that Carter wasn’t being arrested and his name had been cleared. But she might lose her job over Grover’s request for her to be here. She had questions and she deserved answers. “Why did you need me to be here? You said an anonymous call, what did they say?”
“They claimed to be a student in one of Mr. Simpson’s classes and said that he’d been bragging about having naked pictures of a hot girl in the building that he works at. They said that he’d shown them pictures of you in the shower and in various states of undress and talked about how he was going to put more cameras in your apartment.
“The pictures from the gym were on his computer, I originally wanted you to verify their authenticity, but with the help of Mr. Holmes our team was able to determine that they were inauthentic, meaning someone put them there. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
Maxi couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Sorry for the inconvenience… She’d just wasted two hours sitting here while her career was sinking faster than a bowling ball in quick sand. Not only that, they were no closer to finding the responsible party. In fact, things appeared to be getting worse.
In an attempt for clarity, she asked. “So someone tried to set him up?”
“It looks that way.” Grover stood when his radio went off. “That’s all we know for now, but we’ll be in touch.”
Both Billy and Maxi stood and shook the detective’s hand.
Maxi felt like she was operating on autopilot as they walked out of the station, her mind was filled with what ifs. What if this was just the beginning? What if they never caught who was behind this? What if another innocent person in her life was targeted?
She didn’t have any of those answers, but she did know that the only thing keeping her from losing her mind was Billy. His constant support and protection would be so easy to get used to, to start depending on. But she couldn’t do that. This was temporary and she needed to keep that top of mind. Unfortunately as he guided her through the station, his hand resting on her lower back, she knew that would be a lot easier said than done.
In the past few days, Billy hadn’t just inserted himself seamlessly into her daily life, he’d shown her things that she hadn’t even known were missing. Like waking up to someone that you’ve spent the night dreaming of. Like having someone to share little moments in your day with. Like having someone that stays after scary movies. Like the tingling sensation that his touch sent spiraling through her. She’d definitely been missing that in her life. And after this was over, never feeling it again scared her more than anything else that was happening.
