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“Put it down, Libby.”
“Hell I will. Turn around, slowly lower to the ground, and put your hands behind your back. Drake, cuffs?”
I turn toDrake. “If you pass her a set of cuffs, I’ll rip your trachea out and make it so you need help wiping your ass for the next seven years. Don’t fucking test me.” I turn back to Libby. “Put your gun down.Now. I’m not your enemy, Elizabeth. And I will not tolerate being treated like a criminal.”
“You are a criminal! You came to my home, you followed me for twenty-five miles to another home, and then you let yourself in without that homeowner’s permission. Oh, and you’re arrested for breaking and entering. Add that to your list. Turn the hell around, slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Lizbeth, darling.” Drake’s smooth voice irritates me beyond reason. “Honey, you gotta lower your piece. He’s unarmed, and you’re pointing it at his face.”
“What?” She turns to him. “No. He broke into your home!”
“I know. I hear you, babe. He also fucked up what would have been a good time for me.” His taunting eyes come to me. “Lord knows I enjoy being inside you. But that’s Theo Griffin, and he’s unarmed. I’m saying, to keep your career, I’m gonna need you to lower your piece. I’m trying to help you.”
“That’s not fair!” she cries out. “He deserves to be sent away.”
“And you deserve to maintain a clean record. I know what it means to you.” Stepping forward, Drake sidles up so his body, half-fucking-naked body, presses against her ribs and arm. One hand rests on her far hip, and the other slides along her arm toward the pistol. “I’m saying you’ve worked your whole life to be who you are, and killing a jealous boyfriend isn’t how this is gonna go down.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she snaps. “I literally don’t know…” Her voice quivers and ends on a strangled cry. “His eyes, Drake. It’s his eyes.”
He nods, and as his hand wraps around hers and begins lowering the piece, his lips press to her temple and set me alight. “You can arrest him. We’ll toss him in the cages at my station and keep him in for a while to give you space, but I’m saving you from yourself. I know you’ll regret shooting him.”
Rage shoots off inside my body. Through my blood. Electrical charges zap my every limb, painful but energizing. “You’re a cop?” I look into Drake’s green eyes, then I turn to Libby and narrow mine. “You’re fucking a cop? That’s disgusting. Way to keep it in the family, Lib.”
“You offered to fuck me today,” she snaps. “That would mean you’re willing to fuck a cop. Way to maintain hypocrisy, you stupid ass.”
Once the gun clears my face and most of myinstant-deathspots, I begin to relax, to set the half-naked cops at ease. “I didn’t offer to fuck your badge, Libby. I said that I would fuckyou. I would fuck the woman who has a six-pack, enviable shoulders, and dick-sucking lips.” I snap my hand out when she lowers her guard, fold her wrist back until she cries out, and tear the gun from her hand. I release the slide from the frame and let both pieces drop to the tile floor, then I lean in closer so all three of us are in the same space, and adrenaline skips from one body to the next. “Don’t ever aim a gun at me again, Elizabeth. Don’t you ever look at me like I’m your enemy.”
I’m not a stupid man. I’m not naïve, nor do I believe my money keeps me above the law. Coming to this apartment today was bad. I knew I risked arrest simply by following Libby – a cop – but when Drake turns out to be a cop too, I consider my freedom gone, if only for a little while.
But that’s not what happens. The guy who stands head and shoulders taller than Libby, whose hands splay across her belly, whose eyes watch me, merely smiles when Lib and I stand nose to nose like raging bulls ready to charge.
She’s mine, and she has been since she was nine years old. It’s like he knows this, somewhere deep in his heart, he knows who she belongs to, so he neither arrests me, nor does he challenge me tosettle this like men.
Instead, he grins and passes Libby her shirt while she murders me with her eyes.
“I can see that, despite this being my apartment, maybe I’m intruding on something personal between you folks. Lizbeth, darling, you didn’t tell me your circumstances had become… complicated.”
“This is not complicated,” she snarls. “I met him for the first time in my life just two days ago. He has a staring problem, and boundary issues.”
“He sure looks like he knows you, darlin’. Are you scared of him?”
Her nostrils flare with rage. “No.”
“Has he ever hurt you?”
She sees the rage in my eyes. Hurt, that she would consider me the enemy when in reality, we’re the only two people on this team. She doesn’t know that this is our team from forever ago, she’s blind to what I’m not, but she can’t know I’m that boy. He’s dead, so she needs to get the fuck on this new team.
“No.”
“Do you want to talk it out with him? I see your inclination is to rearrange his face with federal ammo, but that’s against policy, baby girl. He’s unarmed, and he looks hella invested in making sure you and I don’t fuck. Somehow, I don’t think he’s here to toss my home. He just wants you to not sit on my cock.”
He paints these pictures in my head, these images of her riding him in bed, and forces more shots of rage through my blood. He’s had something I never have. I claimed her when I was eleven, when I held her hand and sat with her in the cold. But he claimed her body when she was a woman, and she’s sookaywith it that she initiates it, and comes back after the first time.
“I do not want to discuss anything with him.” Lib steps back and takes her friend with her. One step, then two. “I do not want to discuss anything with him. I’m going to file a report at work, I will document this evening, and I will begin the process of keeping him five-hundred yards from me at all times.”
“Libby…” I step forward and try to take her hand. She holds it against her stomach, cradling it where I might have hurt it. “You just need to–”
“Nothing,” she inserts. “I need to do nothing. You have secrets, Theo. Big, ugly, horrible secrets that bring me nightmares.” She hurriedly pulls her top over her head and down over her torso. Squatting fast to collect her gun, she puts it back together with a fast one-two slide and click, then she grabs her purse and meets my eyes. She looks at me the way she looked at the sour-sisters a lifetime ago. Untrusting. Hurt. “Stay away from me, Griffin. Go back to your home and stay there. There’s no room for you in my town.”
