“You want to tell me what happened there?” he asked.
I swallowed my hurt at the tone. The cop tone.
This was not just a man coming to visit a woman.
This was a police officer coming to interview a criminal.
Again.
“Who wants to know?” I retorted acidly.
“I do,” he almost growled.
I narrowed my own brow. “You, Deputy? Or you, Luke?” I pretended to pause. “Oh, wait. They’re one and the same. I bumped it, Officer. Didn’t realize that was a crime.”
Luke’s eyes turned liquid for a moment during my words, betraying something behind his façade. Not for long enough, though.
“Jesus, Rosie. You hurt your fuckin’ hand. I just wanted to know you’re okay.”
I pretended the visceral tone didn’t affect me. “I’m peachy, Luke. I’m always okay.”
It was a lie. One of many I told when Luke was around. I told most of them to myself.
Like the one I was telling myself right then that his moving a little closer so I could feel his breath on mine didn’t do anything to my heartbeat or my panties.
“You don’t have to be,” he whispered.
“Have to be what?” My normal tone was harsh against the soft air he’d created.
“Okay.” He searched my face and his gaze was somehow like a physical embrace, like we’d tumbled down some rabbit hole where Luke could whisper to me like that, where he could look at me like that. “You don’t always have to be okay, Rosie.”
I stared into his eyes, the welcoming water in them, urging me to show myself to them. Emotionally skinny-dip in them.
I almost did.
Even leaned forward slightly so our torsos brushed.
But then, even I wasn’t about to get into that much trouble.
I snapped my body back, so quickly I got emotional whiplash. “Whether I am or am not okay is not why you’re here,” I stated.
He stared at me with those liquid eyes once more before they solidified. “Saw Ginger this morning,” he said, his voice firmly back to professionally detached.
Though that was what I’d pretended I wanted, it hurt.
I didn’t let it show, of course.
“I hope you got yourself a course of antibiotics,” I said.
He chose to ignore that. “She was pretty banged up.” He looked pointedly at my hand, which I didn’t try to hide.
“Being a meddling and evil whore is a dangerous job,” I replied dryly. “You’re at risk of having all sorts of accidents.”
He pursed his lips.
“I’m guessing she didn’t make a statement?” I continued.
I knew she didn’t. She wouldn’t. No matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she wanted revenge, she wasn’t that stupid.
“No,” he gritted out between his teeth.
I tilted my head. “Then I don’t exactly know why you’re here, if it’s not to arrest or accuse me. Not blatantly, at least. You’ve got no proof, no statement, so no need for handcuffs. I know you won’t like to use them in the way I like, so I repeat my earlier pondering, why are you here?”
Luke’s body was rigid, eyes glittering. He stepped forward and I itched to retreat, but I was too stubborn for that, so I let him come close, let his scent envelop me, his fury caress me.
“You know I’d never fuckin’ arrest you, Rosie,” he rasped. “You know.”
He pressed the weight of his last visit heavily on the air, without saying anything.
I breathed heavily, gazing at him through hooded eyes. “Do I, Luke? I would think it’d be a prize, arresting one of the big bad outlaws.”
“You’re not one of them,” he clipped.
I glared. “Yes I am. That’s exactly what I am. You just can’t reconcile that in your head. What do you want me to be, Luke?”
He stayed silent, eyeing me, not answering.
“Yeah,” I whispered, then stepped back, not caring about it being a sign of weakness at that point. “You’re so convinced that I couldn’t belong to something you think is so evil just because it’s not normal. It’s spectacular. Not always good, not always bad, never fitting into labels like that.”
My eyes found his cruiser, parked at the curb. I wondered how many people would see that, how long it would take to get back to the club. My gaze went to the perfectly manicured lawns beyond it.
“Look at it.” I thrust my hand outward.
“At what?” Luke’s eyes didn’t move from me, seeming like he wouldn’t move that gaze if the world was burning around us.
Or maybe that was just another little fantasy.
“This fucking lifestyle you’re trying to preserve,” I said. “This hamster wheel that begins with preschool, elementary, high school, college. Then a shitty entry-level job. Find a woman, one who maybe started out okay, but then due to constant demands, leaving the seat up, kids who ruin her vagina, a husband who ruins her identity, she gets shitty too. And then both of those people grow to hate each other, resent their kids, and hate themselves most of all. And they work at it, all of it, until they die.” I wrenched my gaze away from the yards back to Luke’s eyes. “And they’re all wearing masks. All so fucking unhappy. That’s what you’re trying to enforce. A life like that. You’re trying to destroy people who refuse to get on the hamster wheel, who refuse to settle for shitty and decide to look for spectacular instead. You’re trying to ruin that because it fucks with your status quo. It’s anarchy, and you live for order. You enforce order, so you have to destroy the spectacular. If I have anything to do with it, you won’t. Because that’s destroying me too, whether you choose to believe it or not. I’m anarchy too. You’re order. Let’s see who wins. I’m thinking it’ll be neither, but I’ll be okay with that.”
“Rosie…,” Luke said, his voice almost a whisper, all professional façade crumbling away with my words.
I didn’t react. “Get back in your cruiser, Deputy. To your order. You won’t find that here.”
He looked at me for the longest moment, too long. Too short too.
Then he turned on his heel and left.
Emerging from the memory, I sat there staring at the rapidly disappearing images of Luke and me, of the variety of interactions that had both broken and swelled my heart, if that was even possible.
I sipped my wine, hating that I was so fucking stubborn. Why didn’t I find him? He was in the same city, for fuck’s sake. It would be a lot better than sitting on my own, drinking a glass of wine and feeling sorry for myself like Bridget fucking Jones.
But then I thought of the image with that starlet. Of his life he was trying to rebuild that didn’t have broken girls with wild hearts and chaotic lives blowing everything up with the drama that came with her.
That was her.
That was me.
So I sat there, drinking my wine, pining after a guy I couldn’t have, like a million other women.
So fucking cliché.
Chapter Thirteen
One Month Later
Settling into civilian life—well, my version of civilian life—was hard.
Hard for a variety of reasons. Killing people and risking your life on a daily basis became my norm for six months. Not just that, it somehow felt natural amongst the unnatural feeling of heartbreak and loneliness.