by BJ Harvey
Walking into the station, I bypass the living area and go straight to the locker room. After stowing my keys and bag, I make a beeline to the captain’s office, finding him sitting behind his desk.
“Hey, Cap. You got a minute?”
“Yeah, Cohen. Take a seat,” he says, waving a hand to an empty chair across from him. “I’m guessing you want to know who you’re working with today?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I don’t even try to sound invested because right now, this is a job, and the only thing I’m focusing on is getting through the next twenty-four hours so I can get back to my couch. Who the hell am I? And do I even care?
He tilts his head, lifting his hand to his chin, his eyes studying me. “You want to tell me why I got a request for an urgent transfer?”
“Not particularly.”
“Going by your current demeanor, I probably don’t want to know. There are already questions being asked. At least this way, I have plausible deniability if I’m asked straight to my face.” I nod, and he continues. “What I will say is I’m damn disappointed to lose her and the look on your face says whatever happened, it’s hitting you hard too. But I have a firehouse to run and if that means getting you a new partner—whether that be a permanent or temporary one—in order to make sure that happens with as little disruption as possible, then so be it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think this is likely to be a permanent thing?”
“I damn well hope not.”
He nods, a small smile making a brief appearance before his eyes bore into mine, and I’m pinned in place. “It’s not my place to say this, but you’ve got to make this right, Co. You’re both fine members of this station and I’ve never seen you mesh with a partner as well as you do with Skye. You don’t even have to talk to communicate, and that level of trust and understanding can take years to get with someone, let alone months like it did with you two.”
“Yes, sir,” I reply.
“But until you do whatever it is you have to do to get her back here again, I’ve found you the next best thing.” He glances over my shoulder and lifts his chin. I spin in my seat and look up to meet the eyes of a familiar face that has me huffing out a breath. Pushing up to my feet, I wrap my arms around my new partner and pull him in tight. “Corey fucking Price,” I say, stepping back and smiling for the first time in days.
“You look like shit, Co.”
I shake my head and chuckle. “You’re the last person I expected to see today.”
“Aww, shucks. You sound disappointed,” he says with a grin.
“You’re nothing on my last partner, but you’re a hell of a lot better than anyone else.”
“Well, at least I come in above the rest of the riffraff,” he replies wryly.
I hold my fingers up. “Only just.”
“You guys are due to start, so I’ll meet you in the conference room shortly,” the captain says, interrupting our reunion. He walks up to Corey and shakes his hand. “Glad to have you back, Cor, for however long we need you,” he says with his mouth, but his eyes say ‘until you fix whatever you fucked up.’ I nod in understanding because it goes without saying.
“Good to be back,” Corey replies, turning to watch the captain leave before facing me again.
“You totally screwed the pooch, didn’t you?” he says, not holding back. “Because the golden couple of the CFD who could do no wrong would not split for any other reason.”
“I fucked up.”
“And I’m going to help you fix it ’cause I’ve got bigger fish to fry, and in order to get back to doing that, I need to sort you out.”
“I’m fine… or I will be.”
He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Well, considering Marco and Luca are clueless, I’m guessing whatever went down between you two has been flying under the radar, which means we’ve got to work fast because rumors are like bad attitudes. They spread wide and fast.”
I bark out a laugh. “When I get my head straight, I’ll let you know. Until then, young Jedi, let’s start the shift, and we’ll take it from there.”
“I’m serious, Co. I’d do anything in the world for you, even stand between you and the Rossi gang and take the first punch—if it came to it—but I need to know what we’re looking at so I know when to block the hit.”
“I’m a big boy, Cor. I can take my own punches.”
He locks eyes with me, and again—just like I did with the captain—I feel the meaning of his words. “And I’m saying you’ll get a lot further a lot faster if you stop bottling shit up and crying into a bottle of Jack on your couch.”
“It wasn’t—”
“Okay, vodka, gin, tequila, beer, whatever. I’m saying, while I’m making your work life bearable you can sort your shit out,
“When did you get so smart?” I ask with a smirk.
“Definitely not from you, Cook. ’Cause if you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t have gone there with the brat.”
“I didn’t—”
He snorts and slaps me on the back. “You can lie to me some more once we’re on the road and out of harm’s way.”
“Cor, it’s not—”
“Let’s go, Cook. By the way,” he says, reaching into his pocket and spinning the keys to the bus around his fingers, “I’m driving.”
“Maybe I will go see Marco and take my chances,” I mutter, following him. The difference being that I do it with a smile.
A week later of not seeing, speaking to, or working with Skye, and I’m finding it impossible to focus on anything else. I keep thinking back to the times we spent together. It’s not even the sex I miss—it’s her. The citrus smell of her hair when I buried my face in it, her soft almost imperceptible snorts when she sleeps in my arms, the way she lights up a room simply by walking into it, her compassion with scared and sometimes inconsolable patients, her spirit, her heart… her everything.
I pushed her away because I was afraid of losing her. In the end, all I succeeded in doing was losing her anyway.
It may not be my place—as much as I plan it to be—but I’ve been keeping tabs on her, sending Dion texts to check that she’s doing okay. All he’s said is I have to fix it.
And weirdly, he said I’m just as screwed as she is, but he wouldn’t explain what that meant.
But if the past week and a half has shown me anything, it’s that it’s time to stop sticking my head in the sand.
I’m in love with my best friend, and I have absolutely no idea how to fix this. I want her back, but not in the way I had her before because she deserves more.
I’m determined to prove I’m the man who can be everything she needs. Whatever I do, it has to be big and leave her with absolutely no doubt in her mind that I want her by my side, in my life, and in my bed.
To do that, I need help. Which is why I’m on my way to a new indoor virtual driving range for our standard golf night. This time it’s just the guys; Jamie, Jax, Bry, Ezra, and Cade.
When I arrive, all the guys are waiting just inside the front door. We pay for two hours, grab our drinks, choose our clubs, and take the stairs to the upper floor.
“You’re quiet. Everything okay?” Bry asks, lagging behind to walk with me.
“I will be. I just…”
“Baby brother, you look the same as you did when Jax took your favorite Matchbox car and catapulted it into the sewer, never to be seen again.”
I snort, chuckling at the memory. “It was a 1968 white custom Camaro replica.”
“And by God did it fly,” Jax says, turning around and smirking.
“Totally should’ve made you go get it.”
“And mess with this pretty face? I don’t think so
“Modest and without remorse.”
“Aww little Co-Co, are you still sad about your little-bitty toy car?” Jax says right before he walks into a carpet-covered post. “Shit.” That does make me laugh.
“Ouch,” Bry starts rubbing his own back. I frown and quirk a
brow. “Twin sense,” he replies.
I scrunch up my face. “You two are so weird.”
“Bry’s the weird one. He got the brains. I got the good looks,” Jax muses.
Bry smirks. “And no intelligence, as he just admitted.”
“At least I got the bigger dick,” his twin says.
“Should we let your wife determine that?” Bry shoots back. Ezra and Jamie groan. I just shake my head at the restarting of the great dick size debate, which has been a running joke ever since Ronnie and Jax started calling themselves Barbie and Ken, and Bry—single at the time—became GI Joe. Now he’s married, there’s only one question left to be answered.
“If we’ve got Barbie, Ken, and GI Joe, what does that make Faith?” I ask, half expecting the resident geek—Bryant—to answer.
“Wasn’t Scarlett the female member of the GI Joe Team?” Jamie says, coming to a stop outside our assigned golf simulator.
We all stop walking. Jax’s mouth drops open. Bry bumps into him while Ezra and Cade just start laughing again.
“How on earth do you know that? I thought it would be GI Jane,” I ask, incredulously.
Jamie shrugs. “You forget that all of those comics you guys had were mine first. And now Axel has them. It just so happens we came across Scarlett last week.”
“Well, damn,” I say. “You never fail to surprise me, big brother.”
“I’m not just a pretty face.”
I snort. “Nah, that’s Jax, apparently.”
“Do you guys actually hit balls, or do you just sit around and talk shit?” Cade asks, quirking a brow.
“We do both, Doctor Carsen,” Ezra says, wrapping an arm around Cade’s shoulders. “But if you stay quiet and just sit back and watch, it’s quite entertaining. Sometimes they forget I’m even here,” he stage whispers.
“And that, everyone, is why Ezra never comes out on top,” Jax says with a laugh.
“That’s not what she said,” I mutter, but Ezra’s death glare tells me he definitely caught it.
“So, are we playing golf or what?” I say.
“The grump has spoken,” Jax says, rolling his eyes but doing it with a half-smirk.
“Yeah, so about that. Want to tell us what’s crawled up your ass?” Jamie asks, launching right on in there.
With my golf club in hand, I stand and walk over to the console, selecting my name. “I’ll go first then, shall I?” Avoidance, thy name is Cohen.
“You can talk and swing. It hasn’t stopped you before,” Ezra adds. I narrow my eyes, and he just shrugs, his gaze full of challenge.
Letting out a loud sigh, I roll my shoulders and crack my neck by moving it side to side. I adjust my stance and get ready to take a swing, feeling everyone watching me.
I carry out my swing and watch on the big LCD screen in front of me as the virtual reality simulator shoots my ball down the computer fairway for a 150-yard shot.
When I turn around, all five of them are staring at me expectantly.
Jamie lifts his chin. “The floor is yours, Co. You wanted us here, so I’m guessing you’ve got something to say, something to ask, or something you need.”
“Okay. So I slept with Skye.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Bry deadpans.
Bry reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, grabbing a twenty. “You called it, Cade,” he says, handing it off to our brother-in-law.
My gaze moves back and forth between them. “What the hell?”
Jamie snorts and shakes his head before looking up at me. “A bet was made the first time you brought Skye around. Seems Cade won.”
My eyes bug out. “That was over a year ago.”
“Yep?” Cade says, leaning back in his seat and looking rather proud of himself. “But it’s not actually me who won. I made a bet on behalf of someone else.”
“Go Abs,” Jax says with a laugh.
“Not her either.”
I gasp when it hits me. “It was Mom, wasn’t it? No, don’t answer.” I let out a surprised snort. “My own mother. Damn.”
Cade grins. “She knows her son.”
“Oh, c’mon. It was so obvious,” Jax says. “Even when Co talked to me about it before Thanksgiving, I knew it was a foregone conclusion. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.”
“Wow. So when we walked in on Skye in a towel, we totally cock-blocked you. Didn’t we?” Bry asks, looking far too pleased with himself. I’m the only one out of all of us—Abi and Cade included—who hasn’t been interrupted before or during sex.
Ezra sighs, locking eyes with me before glancing away. “And here was I thinking I’d guessed first.”
I sit in the hard plastic bucket chair gathered around the table, because it seems golf has been forgotten, my love life now a hot topic.
“Hold up,” Jamie says, putting his hand in the air. “Why am I the last to know about this?”
This time, I speak up. “Are you really though? I came to you the day after Bry’s wedding when Skye and I kissed.”
Jax, Bry, Ezra, and Cade’s heads all swing from Jamie to me like they’re watching tennis. “Whaaaat?”
“So, what did you do to screw it up?” Jamie asks.
I proceed to give them a rundown of Christmas Day, then New Year’s, and Skye’s break-up speech afterward. I get a few grimaces, nods, and winces, but nobody says anything until I’m done.
“… So ten days, no contact. She hasn’t been back home either. I kind of need advice from people who’ve screwed up and groveled,” I say, finishing the story.
“I never screw up,” Jamie says, puffing his chest out. I arch a brow, knowing exactly how he almost ruined a good thing with April. “Well, apart from that.”
“I’m the poster boy for the claim that friends with benefits always leads to one—or both people—catching feelings. In our case, we also pretended to have a fake relationship too, so your sister and I were delusional from day one,” Cade explains.
“Co,” Jamie says. “What did I say to you when you told me about the kiss?”
“Don’t let your dick break what isn’t broken?” I reply.
Jax snickers. “That’s what she said.”
Jamie shoots him a sharp-edged glare. “No. I said don’t do it because I knew you needed to go all-in with your heart, or I said don’t do it because I knew you’d never listen to anything I said. Your dick is what was stopping you from getting the best thing.”
“A blow job?” Jax asks. I grab my empty plastic cup and throw it at his head, barely missing him.
Bryant sighs. “No, Ken. He means—”
“I thought it stopped and ended with sex, when in fact, there was always going to be so much more, with or without sleeping together.”
Ezra nods at Jamie. “Wise one are you.”
“Here’s the thing, Co,” Jamie says, matter-of-factly. “It’s easy. Go big or go home. You either want Skye back or you don’t. We can always find another tenant if she decides to move out, or else we’ll sell the building. It’s not every day you meet someone it’s hard to live without. Take it from a guy who has everything he’s ever wanted—and will ever need—waiting at home for him. If that’s Skye for you, you’ve got to fix this.”
“Whatever it takes, Co. We’ll help you however we can,” Cade says. “I saw her a few days ago, and she’s not the bright-eyed firecracker she usually is.”
Dammit. That makes me feel worse.
“I’ve been touching base with her best friend. He keeps telling me I’m as screwed as she is. Whatever that means.”
Bry enters the fray. “I know exactly what it’s like to lose someone you love. Don’t make the same mistakes Faith and I did. If you love her like you say you do, prove it to her in a way that means she’ll never doubt it again.”
“Offer her a kidney,” Jax muses.
“Don’t propose!” Ez says. “That’s how marriage number two started.”
That earns a round of laughs.
“You’ve got t
o go big, Co,” Bry says.
“Huge,” Cade adds.
“Offer to not have sex,” Jax says. Five heads snap his way, our expressions varied versions of what the fuck. Jax holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Even I can admit that’s taking it a bit far.”
“You think?” Jamie snickers.
All I do is nod, my mind racing with possibilities. I know what I have to do and why. I just need to work out how.
I should’ve known the guys would come through for me like they’ve always done in the past.
Now to recruit some reinforcements, and luckily for me, I know just who to go to.
“Now, can we finally stop playing agony aunts and play some damn golf instead? I don’t have a five handicap for no reason,” Cade says.
“Uh, yeah, you do. They hand those out like candy at medical school, don’t they?” Bry says, earning the bird from Cade.
“Yeah, yeah,” our brother-in-law says. He stands and walks over to the golf tee, getting into position before looking over his shoulder at us. “Care to make it interesting?”
“You’ve got more money than all of us, Carsen,” Jamie says dryly.
“Who says I’m betting for money? I’m betting for babysitters. I’m a father of three who loves his wife naked. I’m prepared to do anything to have that happen uninterrupted.”
That has four out of the six of us gagging and looking for the nearest trash bin, and the remaining two laughing their asses off.
For the record, Cade wins, and I come a close second. Ezra is now the next babysitter up in the Cook family rotation. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when that happens.
24
Cohen
The next day, I’m sitting in my sister’s living room, surrounded by “the wives,” with two babies being passed around like we’re playing pass the parcel.
This is my next plan of attack: to pick the brains of April, Ronnie, Faith, Abi, and her best friend—and Zach’s wife—Dani.