Inked

by Drew Elyse

“I get why you’d think that, but—”

  She didn’t let me finish. “I’d think it because it’s true. However long it was, I saw you with my own eyes. So was it really that you couldn’t wait to get back, or is it just your misplaced guilt that has you here? Once I got attacked, you felt bad?”

  “You really believe that? You think I fed you a bunch of lines to get you into bed, took off, came back with no intention of starting that up again, then came here spinning more lies just because some sick fuck hurt you?”

  She gave me a shrug that said she at least was considering that crazy shit. “I don’t know what to believe. Maybe the pierced, tattooed chick was fine for Jackson, but not so much for Braden the cop. Maybe you decided to move on, but knowing I’d gotten hurt—you feeling like it was your fault or not—made some protector instinct win out. And here you are.”

  My head was throbbing with the sheer insanity of this conversation. “So you think I have a victim fetish.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I came after you because a protective instinct won out? How is that different? You think I’m here because you were attacked.”

  “Aren’t you?” she demanded, but she wasn’t looking for the truth. Not really. She was lobbing an accusation and thinking I’d buckle under the pressure of being called out.

  “No!”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  I wanted to rip my own hair out. She was bound and determined to assume the worst of me, and letting my anger boil over was only going to give her cause to think she was right. I forced a breath before I spoke again.

  “If that was true, there’d have been no reason for me to be outside your building ringing the buzzer up to your apartment for ten minutes that morning, there’d be no reason for me to have driven to Sailor’s Grave asking for you. I did all that before I got the call that you were in the hospital. I didn’t know about that at all until well after you’d given your statement to Andrews. When I heard, I fucking raced to the hospital, just missing you leaving. But before I knew, before I could develop any fucked up complex about you, I’d already been trying to find you all morning.”

  Some of the righteous fury in her eyes faded, For the first time, she was hearing me and not able to twist the words to fit a narrative she’d already written for me.

  “How do I know that’s true?” Even her voice was softer.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t ignore the reality of the situation. This woman had been assaulted. The evidence of that was all over her. We were in the doorway, having this entire conversation for anyone to walk through and hear. Not the right time, not the right place. She was the right woman, no question, but the rest was all wrong.

  “I don’t know, Jess,” I said, calmly. “You can try to find out, or you could try trusting that I’m not some creep that fetishizes victims of violence. Because if I were, why would I be pursuing you? Why would I have wanted you before? Hell, why would you even do it for me now getting in my face rather than cowering?

  “I know there are a lot of reasons for you not to trust me. I know I started all of this wrong, and this is my own consequence. I know that we haven’t had the time to build up something you can believe in. But I’ll say it right here for you, and you can believe it or not, I’m not lying. The only lies I’ve told you were about the job. Everything else has been true. You just have to decide if you’re willing to give me a shot to prove it.”

  Then, like I’d had to too many times even though it killed, I walked away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Braden

  I didn’t leave entirely. Maybe I should have with how much fighting with her worked me up, but I didn’t want her to be alone there. So I went back down to my car, keeping watch for the next few hours until Parker got back.

  The image of her standing there in the doorway wouldn’t leave my head.

  I had to admit, over the last weeks, there were times where I had to question what the fuck I was doing. We hadn’t had some long relationship while I was undercover. Sure, we’d gotten to know each other some in the times we’d crossed paths in the building, or when I’d intentionally show up way too early for my appointments with Sketch just to have time around her. That still only put us maybe at the level of casual friends except for the one night we were definitely more. None of that should add up to her driving me so crazy, to me being glad Jack potentially put both our asses on the line with the department by telling her I’d been undercover, to this driving need I had not just to get the chance to take her out, but to make her mine.

  Having her right in front of me again confirmed I hadn’t just built her up in my head like I’d started to think.

  Jess wasn’t like any other woman I’d met. It didn’t take a lot of time to get to know her. Not to say that she wasn’t deep, that being in her life wouldn’t continue to give me more and more, but to know the heart of her, you didn’t need to dig. She didn’t wear a mask. Jess lived every day as her whole self. She said what she thought, dressed how she liked, literally got her vibrant personality inked all over her skin. Even when she was pissed and throwing attitude at me, the blinding brightness of her was too captivating to ignore.

  And, fuck, we were definitely sexually compatible.

  I tried to focus on all of that, that consuming confirmation that she was all I’d built her up to be, rather than the full intensity of the fire her injuries lit within me. If I let myself think on that too much, I’d be driven to do whatever it took to hunt the fucker down and dispose of him on my own.

  Knowing I couldn’t go back to my apartment and stew on that without losing my mind, I called Jack.

  “What’s up? Tell me it’s a reason to get out of this house.”

  Jack was engaged. He and his fiancée, Cassie, were getting married soon. Since he loved her, despite the way he bitched about all the wedding planning, he was typically all about getting home and staying there at the end of the night.

  “Why? You piss Cassie off?”

  “If I pissed her off and tried to leave, she’d chop my balls off.” If I wasn’t so into Jess’s temper, I’d think he was crazy for the laughter in his voice as he said that. “No, a friend of hers got cheated on and dumped. It is not a friendly environment for anyone with a dick about now.”

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “Delilah’s?”

  “See you there.”

  I was seated at the bar, beer already in front of me, when Jack got there. I moved my attention from the baseball game I wasn’t following anyway to see him looking haggard.

  “That rough?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t get out the door without passing them. Then it was a bunch of ‘you’re a guy, would you ever’ shit. As if it wasn’t obvious that I wasn’t going to fuck around on my fiancée. And Cassie didn’t even stop it.”

  “She’s smart enough not to try and defend a man right now.”

  Before he could respond, the female bartender that served me came over. “No Cassie and you look like you’ve been through the wringer. What’d you do?”

  “Not you, too, Tamara,” he pleaded. “Cassie’s consoling her friend whose man screwed around on her. I just left one penis-haters club meeting. What the fuck my fiancée was doing there, I couldn’t tell you.”

  Tamara laughed as she grabbed a bottle and set it in front of him. “Sounds like my kind of place. I could preach the gospel of pussy eating to those poor souls.”

  “That holy word is alive and well in our home,” Jack assured her.

  “Good man.” She tapped the bar as she wandered off to serve a couple down the way.

  “Finally taking a break from your stake-out?” Jack turned on me.

  “Had to.”

  “Uh-oh.” He caught the anger still simmering in my tone.

  “She reached out today.”

  He gave a low whistle. “Didn’t go well?”

  I took a long drink and laid the whole thing out for him.

  “Sh
it. You think she’ll come around?”

  “No clue.” Jess was just as likely to give me a chance as she was to write me off as an asshole and never say a word to me again. I hadn’t yet learned if that fire meant she held a mean grudge or if it usually burned out quick.

  “Cassie was like that,” he commented.

  “Like what?”

  “Trust issues. Early on, I had my doubts I’d be able to get her to trust me at all. It nearly ended us at one point. I’d never lied to her, but she was too busy protecting herself to notice.”

  “How’d you get past it?”

  “I did what you did. Laid it out for her. She didn’t have to give it all to me right then, but she either had to try actually trusting me, not believing me when I had evidence, or I had to walk away. It would have killed to do, but we wouldn’t have made it if things kept on that way. She had to make the choice to let me past those walls.”

  I wanted to find that reassuring, but I didn’t have that time showing her the proof that my word meant anything. I was trying to make the demand right up front.

  “Just give her time.”

  I’d try it, but it would be a lot harder knowing that it wouldn’t be me walking away like it would have been for him. It would be Jess shoving me out.

  Things in the air or not, I kept up my watch when I could. It couldn’t be every day. Coming out after a day or night on patrol wouldn’t be worth it. Being half asleep in my car wasn’t going to deter anyone or help me identify a suspect. Reversing that and being worn out on patrol was a risk to both me and Jack that I wouldn’t take. That meant it was a few days before I found myself in the familiar position of being parked out on the street, my eyes on my surroundings.

  In that time, I’d become no more reassured that walking away, or even having gone up to try to talk to Jess in the first place, was the right move. But more importantly, I’d started to fixate on part of what she’d said.

  “Maybe the pierced, tattooed chick was fine for Jackson, but not so much for Braden the cop.”

  Did she honestly think that her appearance was somehow an issue for me? That I’d be ashamed to have her at my side? The more I’d thought on all she’d said, the more that one thing bothered me. It was easy enough to guess where her accusations of me feeling drawn by her being a victim came from given my line of work. That, however, struck me as so out of left field.

  Jess, from what I knew, was all sass and confidence. Even just walking down the apartment hallway for her was a strut like she knew all she was working with. And yet those words belied something else entirely. The very idea that she could think I’d be that hot for her only in secret pissed me off, if only because someone planted that there. Those words hadn’t been hers, not really. They’d belonged to someone else that taught her to believe they were true.

  They’d festered in my mind until I’d finally thought up the move I planned to make today. It had taken a couple days to get together—or to get Jack and Cassie’s okay for what I was about to do. Now, I was just waiting for Parker to get back to the apartment. The only hope I had of this working was if he helped me out, which meant convincing him to first.

  As soon as I spotted his car, I was on the move. I was walking into the side lot where residents park by the time he was getting out, eyes already on me. The confirmation he was being watchful was welcome. I’d run his information through the system at work, trying to gather what I could. From the minimal details there, I could still guess he hadn’t had it easy. Things probably would not have gone well for him if he hadn’t learned to watch his back.

  He kicked back against his car, letting me approach. His silence as I got close said it all. He was waiting.

  “I just need you to give her something.”

  “Not sure she’s going to want anything from you after your visit.” He was just saying it straight, no animosity. Still, the truth stung.

  “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” I admitted. “I left to give her time to think things over, but I don’t want her thinking that I’ll disappear now.”

  “What is it?”

  I pulled out the purple envelope. Cassie had even taken the care to inscribe Jess’s name on the front in the same gold script the others had been. Inside was an invitation to her and Jack’s wedding the following month.

  “My partner is getting married next month. They let me add on a plus one late.”

  Jess had some demented idea that I didn’t want to openly claim her. Well, this ought to tell her something. Not only would Jack obviously be there, I was pretty sure they’d invited the whole damn department. Jack had a lot to say about the size of it, but he vented that out elsewhere and let Cassie have the wedding of her dreams.

  “I’ll put up with anything that gets her bound to me by the end.”

  Short of walking into the department with her and making a spectacle of us both by announcing that Jess was mine—which I figured she wouldn’t be thrilled with for multiple reasons, including the Neanderthal claiming part—there was no more obvious way to make it clear I was anything but ashamed to have her on my arm if she’d agree.

  Parker took the envelope, studying it for a minute. “Anything she needs to know about this?” There was a speculation in his expression, but also a vague respect. I didn’t know how much Jess had shared about our situation or that shit she’d twisted up in her head, but he at least was getting the point of the statement I was making.

  “Just that Jack is my partner that she met before, and it’ll be well attended by the HPD as a whole.”

  He gave me a nod, straightening from his car. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll give it to her.”

  It was all I could ask for. I didn’t expect him to try to fight my corner. Whatever Jess decided had to be all about her.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “You going back to guard duty?”

  “No, I’ve got a shift starting at ten.” Overnights were always a tricky shift for anyone but the guys that did them regularly. Things could get deceptively calm when it got very late, but that never meant that you could let your guard down.

  He nodded. “She checks.”

  “What?”

  “She checks out the window for your car. Tries to play it off like she’s just getting stir crazy, but she’s a shit actress.”

  It wasn’t a lot to hold onto, but, for now, I’d take it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jess

  Three knocks and an announced, “It’s me,” preceded the sound of the key in the lock, then the warning beep of the alarm. Park had started that system after he’d freaked me out coming home the first day I’d stayed alone. I could only imagine what the neighbors thought if they heard it—or the standoff with Braden days ago—but fuck whatever they thought. I was coping the best I could right now.

  “Coping” mostly consisted of bad daytime TV, too many snacks, and hours on my laptop doing everything I could for Sailor’s Grave remotely. That day, it had also meant six calls to Sketch, each shorter than the one before, to attempt to convince him that it was time I come back to work. The bruises had all faded to the point that makeup would do the rest. My ribs still needed to be handled with care, but they no longer hurt constantly without me moving. My wrist was still in the brace for a bit yet, but I could type either way. And the frequency with which I was having anxiety attacks was down by a lot.

  Though I still wasn’t managing to sleep very well without being woken by nightmares, but I didn’t share that part. I could only hope Park didn’t, either.

  He came through the door, eyeing the computer still on my lap. “You know part of recovering is actually taking time off work?”

  “I’m not working,” I shot back.

  “Then what? Online shopping?”

  No, I’d had to stop even looking after spending nearly five hundred dollars in two days. I was learning now that Park was going to work again and I was panicking about that less, that I was really bad at keeping myself busy.
/>   “I’m looking at adoptable dogs.”

  He stared at me, face blank.

  “I think, once I get out of your way, that I might adopt a dog,” I rephrased.

  He set his stuff down, then came over to the couch, looking at the page full of dogs that needed good homes. “Are you going to start taking up weird hobbies?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Like macramé or stamp collecting or some shit.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what macramé was except that it was some kind of craft thing, and I didn’t craft anything. There were people on the internet that would make shit like that for you. I would know, that was some of where that online shopping spree money went.

  “I said I wanted a dog, not that I’m starting some sort of life crisis.”

  “I’m just trying to be prepared.”

  Jerk.

  “You know, I think I liked it better when you never talked,” I sassed.

  “You spent all your damn time trying to make me talk.”

  I did. And not just to me. I was like a helicopter mom worried her little angel wasn’t socializing enough.

  “Well, now it’s annoying.”

  He just shook his head, handing over a purple envelope.

  “What’s this?” I took it, seeing it had my name on it. My pulse quickened, worried he had something delivered here, that he knew where I was, that…

  “It’s from your cop.”

  Oh. I let the air flow freely again. Okay, that was fine.

  Except, “He’s not my cop.”

  Park was already up, heading into the kitchen. “He’d say different.”

  Maybe.

  “What is it?” I asked, staring at the envelope like it might magically speak the answer.

  “Try opening it.”

  Ass.

  Using one of my more intact nails—several were unfortunate casualties of that night—I lifted the top flap, doing my best not to rip the envelope. Inside, I found a gorgeous lace pattern gold paper held together with a ribbon tie. Releasing that revealed the wedding invitation beneath.