by Maria Luis
Yeah, sometimes it was best to leave the past where it belonged, in the past.
The Special Operations Division was located in an old warehouse along the Mississippi River. As he stalked back to the lockers, the brick walls seemed to close in, ramping up his anxiety and turning his mood even more foul.
The guys were all in there when he stepped in, and a collective silence took hold.
It wasn’t disappointment he saw in their eyes but pity.
Gage had been in S.O.D the longest; he’d seen and done shit half of them never would. He’d worked during Hurricane Katrina with no sleep, determined to do his job for his city and to make his father proud. He’d handled hostage situations, snipers, drug busts, natural disasters.
And now this.
Fourteen years of working for the NOPD, and he’d crashed and burned and nearly took his entire unit down with him.
“Yo, Harvey,” said Cardeaux, seated on one of the metal benches, “how many days until I can see your ugly mug again?”
“Twenty-one.” Twenty-one-motherfucking-days, and it might not even be enough. His head wasn’t screwed on right.
Gage unclipped his badge from his BDU, and then slipped his police identification card from his wallet. He stared down at the photo he’d taken years earlier. Same black eyes, black hair, same jaded sneer. He yanked out his duffel bag from his assigned locker, and dropped the badge and I.D. inside. Grabbed his extra uniforms off their hangers and shoved those inside, too.
“Your spot will be here when you get back,” O’Connor said, approaching him. He rested his shoulder against the locker next to Gage’s. “It’s yours.”
There’d be a replacement for twenty-one days. That’s how the department worked. Supply and demand. If Gage had any luck on his side, the filler would be an idiot who shit his pants every time they filed into the bearcat.
And what if Brauchard found someone good?
There was a decent chance Gage wouldn’t have a place in the unit when his twenty-one days were up.
“Hooah, brother.” Gage clapped O’Connor on the back, then zipped up his duffel and folded the strap across his chest.
“Hooah.” Luke’s green eyes narrowed. “You know you’re welcome over to my house, right? I don’t give a shit if you’re suspended.”
Yeah, he knew, but it was one thing to hang out with your buddy when you talked work, swapping crazy stories about the days on the job, and another thing entirely when one was on the outs through no one’s fault but his own.
He gave another clap to his boy’s back, because he didn’t have much else to say, and then waved to the rest of the unit. They all assured him he’d be back. They didn’t sound convinced, and neither did Gage.
Badge and I.D. were left at the front desk, as was his gun and the keys to his take-home vehicle.
Looked like he’d be calling a cab, because there was no way in hell he’d walk the five-mile trek to his house in this damn heat.
He pulled out his phone when he stepped outside, intending to call the cab service, but stopped when he saw two text messages. He opened the first, from Owen: Dude, you’re late to you’re own shit. EOCC meeting tonight, remember? The one your sponsoring for the evening?
Fuck, was it Tuesday?
He ignored Owen’s misspellings, squinting his eyes at the date on this phone. Shit, shit, shit, it was Tuesday. He’d been preparing for tonight’s meeting for months, ever since he’d jumped on Owen’s case to let him approach the Entrepreneurs of the Crescent City about supporting CBR. His speech—hell, his ride—was all at his house, but there wasn’t any time.
It was six now, and he was due on stage to talk to the city’s upper crusts in exactly an hour.
Cab. ASAP.
He called the first service on Google, trekked it across the parking lot, and waited.
Glanced down at his phone and saw he still had one unanswered text. He tapped it open, feeling a fissure of warmth slide through him when he saw Lizzie’s name.
So, crazy thought about an adventure idea . . . I’m going to this event tonight, and I know it’s not going to be all fancy, but I’m still excited. Any interest in going as my date?
The message had been time-stamped for two-twenty-seven. In other words, hours ago. Might as well feel guilty all the way around, then, because he didn’t even have enough time to get home and change, never mind meeting her for a night out.
Can’t, he typed back, shit went down at work, and I’m running late to a meeting. Rain check?
Gage stared at his phone, watching the little bubble icons forming and then receding as she typed out her response.
Sure. Text me later if you want xoxo :-)
Tires squealed as the yellow cab pulled up in front of him.
As he settled in the back seat, it occurred to him that he’d be giving a speech about supporting first responders’ mental health tonight . . . and that for the next twenty-one days, he wasn’t a police officer. No badge. No. I.D. No gun.
A civilian for the first time in fourteen years, and he sure as hell wasn’t ignorant about the irony.
28
“Yes, girl, that color,” Lizzie’s friend Shaelyn said, selecting a purple lipstick out of one of Lizzie’s many makeup drawers. “Do me up.”
Tonight was Lizzie’s first EOCC meeting, and even though she knew it wasn’t meant to be fancy, she’d still invited the girls over for makeup and hair. Both Shaelyn Taylor and Anna were already members, thanks to the fact that they co-owned the lingerie boutique, La Parisienne, down in the Quarter. The cousins were nothing alike: Anna’s fairylike features to Shaelyn’s dark hair, Anna’s classy demeanor to Shaelyn’s snarkier attitude.
“You’re really going to go for purple?” asked Jade from her perch on Lizzie’s cushioned leather bench. Although Jade didn’t own a business, local or otherwise, they’d planned to squirrel her inside the event anyway.
No one said that girls’ nights out in one’s thirties had to be boring.
“I’m sorry,” Shae said, “who’s the one with the baby at home already? You don’t even want to know the last time I wore a lipstick that wasn’t nude. I’m starved for excitement here, y’all.”
Snickering a little, Lizzie uncapped the liquid lipstick and felt a little burst of joy when Shaelyn glanced up at her. Long lashes. Peach blush. Dusty, neutral color eyeshadows. “The purple will look good. Just be prepared for it to stain your lips.”
“Perfect,” Shae said with a wink, “it’ll just give Brady a chance to kiss it off of me.”
“Because he needs a reason to kiss you at all.” Anna paused at the full-length mirror, admiring Lizzie’s makeup masterpiece. She’d chosen a sultrier look for the blonde: red lips, black, winged liner, shimmery highlight across the crests of her cheekbones. “Every time I come over to your house, there you two are making out like teenagers.”
Smugly, Shaelyn shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? I’m irresistible.”
Jade laughed. “I used to be irresistible. Now I’m just the size of a beached whale.” She curved a hand over her belly. “Did I tell y’all the last time I saw my vagina?”
“No,” Lizzie said, swiping purple in expert strokes along Shae’s lips, “but I have a feeling you’re going to tell us.”
“Thirty-six days. Thirty-six days! They don’t tell you that crap in those pregnancy books. I forget what it looks like.”
“Good thing your husband hasn’t,” Shaelyn muttered, earning a sharp bark from Lizzie, and an even louder, “Rules! Remember rule number seven, please.”
“No sex talk about Lizzie’s brother in her presence,” intoned Jade. “Anyway, we can’t have sex anymore. It’s really sad and I think I saw him limping the other day.”
“Blue balls will do that to a guy.”
Lizzie swatted Shae playfully on the arm. “I told you, lady, no sex talk about my brother. I have sensitive ears.”
“Hey, Liz, your phone is ringing.”
Maybe she shouldn’t
have thrown herself at Jade so obviously, but there was nothing to be done about it. Be Gage, be Gage. She’d texted him hours ago about him joining them at EOCC, and it was perhaps the reason she’d dolled up tonight more than she had recently.
Blown-out brown hair, fake lashes, burgundy lip color. Her dress was silver and just a little shimmery under the light, but still remained perfectly respectable. Professional. Yup, that was her.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the phone from her sister-in-law, her heart in her throat.
His name on her screen made her belly all fluttery. She opened the text.
Felt her shoulders droop with disappointment a moment later.
“Is that Gage?” Anna asked softly. “He can’t make it?”
“No, he can’t.” Lizzie moved over to her vanity mirror, sent him back a quick text, and then shoved her phone in her purse. She had no reason to be disappointed. Life happened; sometimes you didn’t get everything you wanted. Plus, she never minded a night out with her friends. “Y’all ready to go?”
By the time they arrived at the restaurant where the event was taking place, down in the French Quarter, Jade barely made it in the front door before excusing herself for the bathroom.
“Pregnancy pees are the worst,” Shaelyn announced loudly as they received stamps on their hands at the entrance, taking note of the male attendant’s pinched expression. “Do you want us to ask her to come back over here when she’s done?”
“Uh . . . no, you’re good.” Name badges were shoved at them. “Tell her she’s all set. Y’all have a good night now.”
Tossing a wink in Lizzie’s direction, Shaelyn linked her arm with Anna’s, and sauntered into a large dining area.
Why Lizzie had expected a scene out of a homecoming dance, she didn’t know—but it was nothing like that. Men milled about in business casual attire; the women were dressed in more variety: skirts, dresses, pants.
Lizzie tugged down the hem of her dress. When she’d attended a makeup brand’s launch party some months back, her dress had been perfect and she’d blended right in with the other beauty influencers. Tonight, she was definitely on the top scale of overdressed.
Even her friends had gone with traditional pant suits.
Her shoulders squared. Well, once a YouTuber always a YouTuber. Her version of casual would always be a few notches closer to the extreme.
Her gaze caught on a familiar figure across the space, over by the buffet table. “Oh, look, Owen’s here already. C’mon, let me introduce y’all.”
He must have sensed their approach because he turned at nearly the same time, grabbed a bottle off the table, and headed toward them as well. He didn’t smile in greeting, but she figured that wasn’t quite his thing.
“You made it,” he said, his voice so very similar and yet radically different than Gage’s. “I hoped I didn’t have to eat the food by myself again this month.”
Laughing, Anna leaned forward and held out her hand. “Anna O’Connor. My husband works with your twin?”
“Yeah.” Owen nodded slowly, dark hair falling forward. “Luke’s come in a time or two when Gage has been working at Inked. Nice to meet you.”
Not to be left out, Shaelyn introduced herself and immediately went in for the kill: “What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever tattooed someone before? Don’t spare us the details, please.”
“Tattooed or pierced?” Owen asked and then sank one hand into the front pocket of his black slacks.
Shaelyn’s hazel eyes went wide, purple lips parting. “Both?”
“It has to be the tongue for the tattooing. It’s more common than people think, but I hate it every single time. As for the piercing . . .” His dark eyes flashed with muted humor. “Anytime someone walks in wanting a Prince Albert, I have the most ridiculous urge to hand the job over to Gage.”
“A Prince Albert?” Anna echoed.
Lizzie felt her lips curl upward. “You’re evil, Owen Harvey.”
To Anna, he said, “It’s when a dude gets a barbell on the tip of his dick.” Then, he met Lizzie’s gaze. “And you have me to thank for your butterfly. How do you think Gage wound up with that one?”
She shook her head slowly, fighting back a laugh. “Totally evil. I mean, I approve of this one-hundred percent, don’t get me wrong. But no wonder he’s always grumbling about how many butterfly tattoos he’s had to ink.” She paused, a thought occurring to her. “Does he know you manipulate the system?”
“You can ask him when he gets here.”
Every muscle in her body froze. Or maybe it was just her knees locked tight and her arms clapped down against her side. “He’s coming here?”
“Yeah . . .” In that quiet way of his, Owen watched her steadily, as though gauging her reaction. “He runs CBR—tonight’s sponsor? Didn’t he tell you he’d be here?”
Well, no. Or rather, he’d mentioned running late to a meeting and she’s figured it had to do with work. She tried to rack her brain for whether she’d told him she’d be attending EOCC specifically, but no, she didn’t think she had.
Obviously, he hadn’t realized she’d be here. A simple mistake, really. It wasn’t as though he’d purposely withheld the information from her.
Although she had absolutely no idea what CBR stood for—had to be a cop thing. Snagging a water bottle from the table, she cracked the lid and turned back to their small group. “I didn’t realize that he ran any organizations.” She sipped the water, placed the cap back on. “Pretty fancy if you ask me.”
Owen scrubbed a hand over his beard. “Yeah, I don’t know if it’s all that fancy or not.”
“What does he do?”
“He really hasn’t mentioned any of this to you?”
Was she missing something here? She checked over her shoulder, searching for any sight of the man who’d captured her heart. Nothing, not yet anyway. “No, he hasn’t.” What could she add? We’re taking it really slow, as in, usually I have to browbeat the information out of him. Or, alternatively: we’re really just fuck buddies, but I made the mistake of falling in love with him, even though I knew it was a bad idea. Oops!
Yeah, neither of those would go over remotely well.
Shaelyn gently bumped her shoulder. “Brady’s mentioned it a few times in passing, I think. Cure for Blue and Red, maybe?”
“Care,” Owen said in a low voice, “it’s care, not cure.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right.” Keeping her shoulder pressed to Lizzie’s, Shaelyn added, “Brady said it’s been great for a lot of the city’s first responders. Providing hotline services for those who need to talk anonymously. Therapy sessions at their facility . . . I can’t remember where the office is based out of, but it’s local. I didn’t realize Gage was the man behind the curtain, so to speak.”
“He keeps a pretty low profile. Generally keeps media focused on the organization as opposed to his involvement with it.” Again, Owen stared at her, and this time Lizzie knew that something had to be up. “You’re really sure he didn’t mention this at all to you?”
She bristled at his incredulous tone. “He didn’t, no.” Lizzie ignored the sting. How many times had they slept together now? How many times had they spent minutes, hours, in his truck just . . . driving? Enough. Not that she’d show her ace, not in front of everyone. “I think it’s great,” she said, twisting and untwisting the bottle in her hands. “I mean, sometimes we all need a little help now and again. I’m glad Gage is able to do that with . . . CBR? Right, CBR.”
“CBR?” said Jade as she strolled up to them, waddling like a penguin after a long stint in the water. “Nathan’s mentioned them a few times over the last few years, and that he often saw Gage at one of the therapy sessions.” She paused, her dark eyes blinking back at them from an array of the false lashes Lizzie had stuck on. One was askew, a clear sign that Jade had already scrubbed her eye without second thought. “Is Gage the one who runs it?”
“Yes.” How had everyone known but her? Had she lived unde
r a rock for the last however many years?
No, you’ve just been involved in the makeup world.
Great, now she sounded shallow even in her own head.
“What aren’t you saying, Owen?” Dark eyes flicked away, strained, and Lizzie pressed on. “I don’t get why this is such a big fuss or a secret. It’s good that Gage does this for the NOPD. I mean, isn’t that what we want our officers to be? Healthy, both mentally and physically?”
“It’s not the fact that he runs it, Lizzie, it’s the why behind it all.”
The why behind it all? That didn’t even make sense.
God, between the twin Harvey brothers, she was tired of constantly going in circles. Whatever they said had a secret meaning—hell, two secret meanings—and it was exhausting. “Owen, just spit it out, would—”
His voice cut over a microphone, and Lizzie whirled around, the start of a smile already on her face. It faltered when she saw him, still dressed in his black BDU’s, his NOPD hat drawn low over his head, shielding his eyes.
His shoulders, the line of his spine all indicated that he was done.
Shit went down at work—hadn’t he said that in his text earlier? She knew from watching her brother and stepfather that living the life of a cop was more than a little difficult.
Unable to stop herself, she stepped forward, closer to the raised stage, closer to him.
“Sorry, y’all,” came his rugged, west Louisiana-tinted voice over the mic, “I unfortunately had some minor difficulties at work. Actually, they were pretty major—I’m already rambling.”
The crowd laughed lightly, as though charmed to have a rough and handsome police officer within their midst.
“I had a speech,” he continued, “and obviously it’s at my house, along with my civilian clothes. I guess y’all are gonna have to put up with whatever I come up with for the next few minutes. If I ramble, just . . . don’t ignore me.”
“You’re too sexy to ignore!” shouted a female voice from the back of the pack.
Lizzie glared, then tugged on the hem of her dress again. Guess she wasn’t the only not-quite-professional person they’d let inside the doors tonight.