I watched with satisfaction as the lady cop progressed like a paint sampler from rose to vermillion red.
Then, I continued.
“And just to add, you aren’t half as smart as you think you are if you believe I’d date a man for four years, let him beat me and treat me like shit for the last two of those, just to wait until he finally tried to rape me in order to kill him for the betterment of my ‘daddy’s gang’? Which, correction again, bitch, is a fuckin’ club of motorcycle enthusiasts.”
I leaned back in my chair, trying not to let a wince of pain ruin my smug grin. Bitch Cop’s face was screwed up so tight she looked like an ad for constipation medicine.
“You’re done.”
I startled slightly even though I’d vaguely been aware of a commotion outside the room. Just as quickly, I settled back into my smug grin because I knew that voice and I knew what it stood for—justice, peace, faith—and what it stood behind—me.
Danner rounded the table, all grace and coiled power, a great cat stalking its prey and doing it boldly because stealth was nothing next to the other tools in his arsenal.
“Stand down, Jacklin. The Captain’s watchin’ and you don’t want to make any more of an ass of yourself than you already have,” he said as soon as he reached Bitch Cop’s side, leaning down heavy into the table so that his face was looming over hers.
A hissing noise of irritation built in the back of her throat. “You’re not even supposed to be in here, Danner. You’re not even supposed to be in the goddamn station, the position you’re in. The fact that you are says a hell of a lot, none of it fucking ethical about your relationship with Miz Garro.”
“You wanna talk ethics when you’re sitting there blatantly insulting a victim of fucking sexual assault after she had to take a life to save her own?” Danner roared, so mired in his rage that I worried he was going to go all The Hulk on everyone.
I reached over to hook my finger in one of his belt loops and tugged so his fury twisted face turned to me.
“I’m okay,” I told him, my voice pitched low, just for us.
Ever since I could remember, Danner and I occupied our own space together, a separate frequency of sound bubbled up around us so that it was us and only us who understood the other. It ballooned around us now, close and intimate, eradicating our three-year separation into dust.
“You’re not,” he protested gruffly.
His strong hands were flat and stiff on the table before me, lined with veins and muscles that extended up each thick finger and around each wide palm. They were such capable hands, calloused from shooting and guitar, strong from sports and yet tender as a feather touched against my cheek.
I placed one of my hands over his on the table and stared into his furious eyes. “I will be. Just get me out of here. You know cops give me the creeps.”
Humor cracked through the anger in his face like a broken pane of glass. “I’m still a cop, you know, H.R.?”
“Oh, I know, but at this point, it’s the devil you know versus the devil you don’t,” I said with a blasé shrug because I knew it would make him smile.
It did, just a slight twist of his lips but it was enough for me.
“Sorry to interrupt this intimate moment,’ Bitch Cop said scathingly. “But we weren’t finished with her and you shouldn’t risk your ass by being here, Danner.”
Danner practically snarled at her and I wondered if it had been the last three years that turned him feral or the fact that I’d almost been raped.
It didn’t matter. The Lionel Danner I’d known was now only a gilded frame around whatever kind of man he’d become, one I got the sense was much, much darker than the one before.
“You’re done, you need a follow up then you contact Miss Garro tomorrow. She’s still covered in her abuser’s blood, Jacklin, have some empathy.”
Bitch Cop opened her mouth to spew more poison, but the pretty cop beside her laid a restraining hand over her arm and shook his head. “Danner has a point. Let the girl get cleaned up and rested. We can make a house call tomorrow.”
Her eyes flashed but then she looked over her shoulder at the one-way mirror and I knew she was remembering that Danner had said the Captain was back there watching.
“Let’s go before I get hives,” I muttered to Danner, clutching his stiff hand in mine as I moved towards the door.
I was trying desperately to be light-hearted, to hide behind that titanium coating of barbed humor and faux confidence but I’d been born an outlaw and the walls of the police station were closing in on me.
And I couldn’t afford that claustrophobia, not when my family was no doubt gathered in the police station front room, braving their severe hatred for all things law to see me as soon as humanly possible. I needed to batten the fuckin’ hatches, cage the break down that thrashed like a wild thing inside my chest. I could feel it eating at my heart, gnashing into it with hard, sharp teeth and ripping away big, bloody chunks, but I didn’t flinch, promised myself I wouldn’t tremble.
At least, not until I was alone, sequestered in my daddy’s house like an MC Rapunzel safe in a chain link protected metal tower.
“Rosie,” Danner interrupted my thoughts just before I could descend the stairs.
I closed my eyes tight against the pain of that pet name and took a deep breath before I said, “Yeah?”
He tugged at my hand gently so I swirled to face him. His face was heartbreakingly beautiful, stern features softened by pain and concern, his eyes so green they glowed against his golden tan, his thick brown lashes. I blinked hard then looked away, angry with myself for being so easily bedazzled by him. Firm fingers took my chin in their grip, tipping my head back slightly so I was forced to look up into his face. His gaze swept over every corner of my expression, detailing every scar, every angle, plane, and curve of my features. I wondered if he was matching reality to memory, if I looked different than I had three years ago. There was a scar on my left cheekbone, just under my eye where one of Cricket’s rings had broken the skin, and another on the lower right corner of my bottom lip where my tooth had cut through the flesh when I’d fallen to the ground during one of his rages. One hand moved to cradle my left cheek, his thumb swiping over the slightly scar, while the other thumb dragged over my mouth, pulling it open into a pout.
Tears pricked my eyes even though I tried to steady myself with short, shallow breaths. “Stop,” I breathed.
He ignored me, his features metal hard and melded into shape with the heat of his rage and the cold of his pain. He leaned down into my face and spoke softly into my open mouth, hoping to feed me the words in a way I could easily digest.
“I want to apologize, but how can I when there are no words to erase what was done to you? You know, I’m a man of action, not words, Rosie, and fuck me, if I could, I would bring that bastard back to life and write a poem for you on his body with my fists and his blood. And you know, I’m not religious, because fuck that, but for you, I’d pay penance every day with a flogging, write lines until my fingers were numb and broken, self-flagellate until I was mutilated, if it meant taking this pain, this memory and especially, my part in it, away from you.”
I shuddered under his hands, sucked in a breath so big it ached in my lungs, and then let it out low and slow. I needed the air to prop me up, to inflate my shape for just a while longer so I didn’t dissolve into a puddle of tears right there on the floor.