AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mmm.” A lazy smile works its way across my lips and down into my heart. “Yeah, she admits it. She’s pissy about it,” I snicker. “She hates that she loves me. But it’s there. And I kinda figured out a way to resolve our issues.”
“The dangerous wolf?” He steps off the escalator a single pace ahead of me. “You figured out what to do about your new pet?”
Sure. If bywolf, he means the fact Minka stalks the streets at night and kills killers.
I needed my best friend to be my sounding board in a crisis, but just like it would be stupid for a mafia family to display stolen organs on their mantel, it would be just as silly to tell another cop that my girlfriend kills folks when she gets the hankering.
Fletch and I used to be friends without secrets.
Now… we haveone.
“We’ve kinda decided to take care of the hypothetical pet together,” I concede. “I don’t like it. But as long as I can make it safer for her…”
He nods. “So long as she lives.”
He huddles into his jacket as we emerge into the cold air outside our police precinct. We stop in place, because he has to turn left to get back to his apartment, whereas Minka’s is in the opposite direction.
“I’m going home.” He clasps his hands, brings them to his mouth, and puffs warm air between them. “It feels weird.”
“That’s because you’d usually head to Tim’s and find a new hole to fuck.”
He chokes out a fast laugh. “Basically. But now I have Mia at home. I guess it’s time I became a respectable kinda guy.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not heading to Tim’s to fuck, either.” I clap his shoulder and take a step back. “Have you heard anything back about Jada?”
Immediately, his lips flatten into disapproving lines. “It’s only been a little while, she’s still not taking my calls. She’s pissed, Arch. But the dude who owns the place said it’s normal for the addict to be angry. He said it’s best if I give her space and wait for her to come to me. She’s in for a minimum of six weeks, regardless. So I guess we’ll see what happens over that time.”
“You did the right thing.”
Thoughts of Minka still working have me taking a step back. The idea she’s running on zero sleep and half a burrito makes me take another.
She won’t stop until she has all the answers… or until she passes out. Neither is ideal tonight. So I take a third step, and when Fletch turns on his heels, I do the same and head away.
“I’ll contact you in a few hours,” I call back to him. “Get some sleep. Maybe set an alarm for five, and we’ll meet up again before Tiffany takes this public.”
“Yup.” He continues walking, but lifts a hand and shows me two raised fingers to say goodbye. “I’ll see you in a few.”
Lowering my head in defense of the wind, and digging my hands into my pockets, I leave my truck in the station parking garage—since I can’t put it anywhere else without double parking and pissing people off—and I head toward the George Stanley.
Moments later, I shake my head at the way the ninth-floor windows are lit up like Christmastime.
Of course, I could blame that on the night-shift, but my heart knows. My intuition screams. As two o’clock comes and goes, and the middle of the night makes way for those last couple of hours before morning, I know Minka is working herself to exhaustion.
It’s who she is. And it’s behavior I’ll have to accept. To adapt and embrace, if I want a future with the woman who is anti-marriage.
I can’t change her, and there isn’t a cell in my body that wants her any way except exactly how she is now.
But if I let her, she’ll work herself to illness.
Stopping at the secured revolving doors, I hold my badge against the glass for security to see, then pass through when they release the locks and let me in.
Keeping the entrance sealed in the middle of the night is smart business. There’s absolutely no reason for random members of the public to come and go in the darkness.
But I’m not a rando, not a looky-loo, so I cross the starkly lit lobby and step into the elevator.
Hitting level nine and waiting for the silver doors to close, I shake away the cold that seeped into my jacket from outside.
It’s not December anymore. The blizzards have passed, and the storms aren’t likely to come back until next winter. But that doesn’t stop the wind from being cold enough to eat bones, or the darkness from being so black that a cop and a doctor almost stumble into a dead body while out on a date.
