Текст книги "Hold On"

Автор книги: Kristen Ashley

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Hold On

Kristen Ashley

Discover other titles by Kristen Ashley:

Rock Chick Series:

Rock Chick

Rock Chick Rescue

Rock Chick Redemption

Rock Chick Renegade

Rock Chick Revenge

Rock Chick Reckoning

Rock Chick Regret

Rock Chick Revolution

 

The ‘Burg Series:

For You

At Peace

Golden Trail

Games of the Heart

The Promise

Hold On

The Chaos Series:

Own the Wind

Fire Inside

Ride Steady

The Colorado Mountain Series:

The Gamble

Sweet Dreams

Lady Luck

Breathe

Jagged

Kaleidoscope

 

Dream Man Series:

Mystery Man

Wild Man

Law Man

Motorcycle Man

The Fantasyland Series:

Wildest Dreams

The Golden Dynasty

Fantastical

Broken Dove

The Magdalene Series:

The Will

Soaring

The Three Series:

Until the Sun Falls from the Sky

With Everything I Am

Wild and Free

The Unfinished Hero Series:

Knight

Creed

Raid

Deacon

Other Titles by Kristen Ashley:

Fairytale Come Alive

Heaven and Hell

Lacybourne Manor

Lucky Stars

Mathilda, SuperWitch

Penmort Castle

Play It Safe

Sommersgate House

Three Wishes

www.kristenashley.net

*****

Kindle Edition, License Notes

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Kristen Ashley

First ebook edition:  September 1, 2015

First print edition: September 1, 2015

Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

About the Author

Discover other titles by Kristen Ashley:

Dedication

At the end of this series—

a series precious to me because it’s based where I learned how to be me—

it’s apropos to dedicate this book to my readers.

Thanks for going home with me.

Thanks for liking being there.

I tip my Hilligoss powdered sugar, chocolate buttercream-filled donut to you.

We might be done with this version of The ‘Burg…

But here’s to many adventures to come.

Chapter One

Worth Every Penny

Cher

“I’m stayin’.”

“I got this.”

“I’m stayin’.”

“Go.”

“I’m stayin’.”

“Go.”

Darryl looked at me standing in front of him, his back to the back door, then beyond me into J&J’s Saloon.

I knew what he saw and that meant I knew why he wanted to stay.

What I didn’t know was how this was going to go. Darryl didn’t have a lot going on between his ears, but he was loyal, worked like a horse, was strong as an ox, and, since getting hacked with an ax by a serial killer in order to protect his boss, was insanely protective.

But he knew me. He knew I could take care of myself. Saying that, I didn’t know if he knew what I’d be putting myself through, taking on what was right then sitting alone at the bar.

He looked back to me and jerked up his chin, ordering, “Get his ass in a taxi.”

“You got it, hoss,” I muttered.

He opened the door and kept bossing my ass. “Lock this behind me. Code the security for doors and windows.”

I rolled my eyes but moved forward so I could do what he said, even though I would’ve done that anyway.

I’d learned to be smart, to go out of my way to stay safe and not to take any chances.

I locked up, moved to the security panel, coded it, then took a deep breath and moved down the back hall into the bar.

It was after three thirty in the morning. We were closed. The glasses washed and put away. The trash taken out. The fridges restocked. The cash register cleaned out, money in the safe in the office. The bar top and tables wiped down. Chairs up on the tables all ready for Fritzi to come in in the morning and mop the floors as well as clean the bathrooms and stock them with toilet paper, so when Feb got in tomorrow, she could just unlock the doors and start the day.

He was at the side curve to the bar, had his back to me, ass to a barstool, feet up on the rungs. He had his elbows to the bar, and since I’d poured it for him, I knew he was nursing a glass of top-shelf whisky sitting in front of him. Whisky that set him back a whack, more so seeing as he’d had five shots of it along with the seven beers he’d sucked back the last five hours.

When I’d followed Darryl to the back, I’d left the hinged section of the bar open. I rounded it and took the two steps to stand in front of him.

The minute I stopped, Garrett “Merry” Merrick, lieutenant on the ’burg’s PD, tall, dark, gorgeous, and the last bastion of good guys available in the ’burg—that meaning he was single—grabbed his glass. He put it to his lips and threw it back.

I watched him do it, my palms itching, my eyes to the muscular cords working around his throat.

He slammed the glass down and lifted his beautiful blue eyes to me.

“I’ll call a taxi, Cher.”

I didn’t say anything even as his hand went to the jacket he’d thrown on the stool beside him.

Instead, I moved to the back of the bar, reached high, and grabbed the bottle of whisky that had stayed at its level for months, seeing as it was fifty bucks a shot, until Merry had brought that level down that night.

I grabbed another glass, put it in front of him, and I knew his eyes were on my hands as I filled both glasses, his and mine.

“On me,” I muttered, setting the bottle aside and looking at him.

He tossed the phone he’d gotten out of his jacket to the bar and caught my eyes.

“You know,” he stated. His words weren’t slurred. Merry could hold his drink. He’d had more than his normal that night, for sure. But he wasn’t sloppy drunk. Just, I hoped, feeling no pain.

Or less pain. The kind of pain he was drinking away didn’t really ever go away.

“I know,” I told him.

And I did. Everyone in the ’burg knew.

The finale to a fairy tale that didn’t have a happy ending.

He looked at me a second, then grabbed his glass and lifted it toward me. He didn’t wait for me to grab mine. He took a healthy swallow of his. He didn’t shoot the whole thing, but he wasn’t fucking around.

He set the glass back to the bar.

I wrapped my fingers around mine and leaned into my arms on the bar top.

“She’s a dumb fuck, Merry,” I said softly.

He didn’t look up from his contemplation of his whisky when he replied, “She isn’t. But I sure as fuck am.”

“That just isn’t true,” I returned, and he lifted his gaze to me.

It took a lot, but I didn’t flinch at the depth of pain and strength of anger burning from his eyes. The bad kind of anger. The worst.

The kind where you’re pissed as all hell at your own damned self.

“Got shot of her,” he declared. “Fucked around when I knew I shouldn’t in gettin’ her back. Watched Feb and Colt get it back. Watched Cal get his head outta his ass, find Vi, and hold on. Tanner and Rocky got their shit together, and when they did, Tanner told me. Pointed that shit out to me. Warned me what would happen if I fucked around. Mike nearly lost Dusty, bein’ stupid and protecting himself against somethin’ good, but he pulled out all the stops to get her back and keep her. All that goes down, what do I do?” He shook his head. “Dick.”

He lifted his glass, took a sip, and lowered it.

When he did, he muttered to his glass, “I did dick.”

“Your ex lives in the ’burg too,” I pointed out.

He looked at me, brows slightly pulled together. “And?”

“She also did dick.”

It was true. She did.

Mia Merrick did dick.

Which made the bitch the single stupidest female on the planet.

I was not around when they were married. I was not around when they got divorced.

I was around when every decent man in the ’burg got nailed down and happily allowed the ball and chain to be clamped around their ankle. And that meant I was around, and Mia Merrick was around, seeing all that and waiting for Merry to make his play to get the wife everyone in that ’burg said he loved more than anything back in his bed.

And now I was around, alone at J&J’s Saloon, the bar where I worked, watching Garrett Merrick drown his sorrows because the news made the rounds that day that Mia Merrick got engaged to another man. Not only that, he was a professor, had worked at IUPUI in Indianapolis, but this semester he’d taken a new position down at IU in Bloomington.

So she was getting hitched and leaving town. The For Sale sign had gone up in front of the house she’d shared with Merry that very day.

Moving on.

Leaving Merry behind.

“Was my play to make,” Merry told me.

“Yeah? How’s that?” I asked him.

“Cher, babe,” he said gently, “it’s cool you’re tryin’ to be there for me, but you don’t know.”

“I know she did dick,” I shot back.

His lips tipped up in a small, sad smile.

“Was my play,” he repeated.

“No,” I declared, leaning into my arms on the bar. “That’s bullshit, Merry, straight up. You got good, you don’t let it go. It lets you go, you hold on. It slips through your fingers, you pull out all the stops to get it back. You got somethin’ worth fighting for, you fight for it. You do not sit on your ass waitin’ for it to come back to you. You show whoever that is they mean something and you go all out on that, and the only way you go down is doin’ that shit swinging.”

Merry stared at me, which was good since I had his attention and I wasn’t done.

“I get you. I been around this ’burg for a while now so I get you, the kind of man you are,” I stated. “You think, you got a dick, you gotta do the work. Make the plays. Give the chase. Fight the good fight. But you’re wrong. It’s not like that woman was not in the know you had some serious history, and the seriousness of that history was the kind that hangs around a while. Your sister sorted out her gig with that because she had a good man at her back who kept her standing and swinging. But that isn’t the only way it goes. Any woman worth that kind of devotion, she takes her man’s back so he can stay standing. She does not wait for him to sort out his shit and then find her and kiss her ass.”

Merry continued to stare at me before one side of his lips bowed up in a small but not sad smile.

“Don’t hold back, Cher. Hand it to me straight,” he teased.

When he did, I felt it. I felt it like I felt it every time he was in. Every time he gave that kind of thing to me. Every time he gave anything to me.

The sting. The sting that made itself known. The sting that was a thorn that lived with me. A thorn I’d had so long that I could sometimes ignore the pain.

A thorn buried deep under my skin. A thorn that was Garrett Merrick.

A man who liked me. A man who laughed at my jokes. A man who smiled at me regularly. Who teased me often. Who shot the shit with me. A man who liked me a lot.

A man who was my friend.

A man who thought of me as a friend.

The man I loved more than breath.

“How long you known me?” I asked.

He just gave a slight shake of his head, his mouth still curled up on one end, making the beauty of his face a playful beauty that felt like a gift from God. A gift I wanted to call mine. A gift I wanted aimed at my son so he had a good man who could make him laugh, make him feel funny, and teach him how to be decent.

A gift that I got just like that, the way he was giving it to me now.

It was there.

But it would never be mine.

“A while,” he answered my question.

“I ever go soft?”

That got me a full smile and I knew I should feel lucky.

I never went soft. I was all hard. I’d built a shell around me no one could crack. I had reason. A really fucking good reason.

Problem was, I built that shell so hard, even I couldn’t break out of it.

That wasn’t exactly a bad thing. It could be considered good. It meant I couldn’t open myself up to the likes of Garrett Merrick, or the rest of the male population who were shades or whole freaking strides less than him, to walk all over me.

Still, I should feel lucky because Merry didn’t mind the hard. He looked past it to be my friend. A lot of folks didn’t.

That was good too. You didn’t put in the effort, why would I bother with you?

Merry put in the effort. A lot of folks in that ’burg did when I’d moved there, even after what had happened to make me move there.

Which was why I stayed.

Not for me—for my kid.

Ethan needed people around him like that.

“You aren’t drinkin’,” Merry pointed out, tipping his head to my glass.

I lifted it and shot the whole damned thing.

Merry burst out laughing.

I slammed the glass down and grabbed the bottle to pour more.

“Only you would shoot a fifty dollar glass of Feb and Morrie’s finest Scotch,” Merry noted.

I topped his off and poured myself another one.

Then I again shot it.

When I did, Merry burst out laughing again.

Which was precisely why I blew one hundred dollars I could not afford in less than thirty seconds.

Laughter like that coming from Garrett Merrick was worth every penny.

* * * * *

The bed moved and my eyes opened.

I closed them immediately as the sick hit my gut and the throb of pain made itself known in my head.

It took me a few beats, but I heard the noises.

A man was getting dressed and doing it quiet.

Shit. What did I do last night?

It had been a while since something like this had happened. Around about the time I got hooked up with Ethan’s dad, thought I’d hit the mother lode, found myself knocked up, and got myself left behind when the asshole evaporated. Hard to live wild and have a good time pregnant. And a single mom at twenty-four, you got your shit together. So, between working to keep my kid fed and in babysitters, I didn’t have many shots at living wild.

Ethan, however, was right now at a friend’s house. A sleepover.

And expending effort I didn’t have in me, considering I was totally hungover and maybe still a little drunk, I remembered that last night, for the first time in years, I’d lived wild.

I’d done this shooting the shit with Garrett Merrick, polishing off a bottle of scary-expensive whisky, chasing that with beer, going all out, putting everything I had into it to do what I could to ease the heart of a brokenhearted man.

Somewhere between polishing off the bottle and moving to a less expensive one, things turned.

We got a taxi.

We came to my house.

We fucked, we did it wild, and we did it for a long, long time.

And now it was morning, I felt like I had twenty seconds of sleep, and he was up before me, quietly dressing.

It had been a while, but I knew the drill. I knew those careful sounds he was making.

He didn’t want me to wake up. He wanted to get his ass out of there and get home. Get a shower to wash himself clean of me. Get his head straight enough to kick his own ass that he did something as stupid as banging me. And, only since he was Merry and Merry was that kind of guy (other guys wouldn’t bother), finding it in himself to determine the right time to make his approach and make it clear where we stood.

We’d fucked.

But nothing had changed.

Friends, even though he knew the taste of me and I knew the feel of him.

I always thought everyone got it wrong, and lying there, eyes closed, pretending to sleep to let Merry have what he needed—a clean getaway—I thought it again.

It wasn’t walking out of a house into a taxi or your car in your clothes from the night before that was the walk of shame. You wanted what you wanted, you went after it, you got it, then you left it and went on with your life. There was no shame in that. None.

The shame was lying naked in your own bed listening to a man be quiet while dressing because he woke up next to you not wanting one thing to do with you. It didn’t matter how that happened—if you gauged what was going on with him wrong and he was just out for a fuck, or if you both got trashed and things got out of hand when you didn’t mean them to.

I lay still feeling the burn of that shame that singed deeper because the man who wanted not one thing to do with me was Merry.

It would be okay. For me, it’d be totally okay.

Okay, right. Not really. That thorn had driven itself deeper, knowing how he kissed—the range of intensity, the level of expertise—not to mention knowing a whole lot more about what Garrett Merrick could do.

But I’d make myself okay to keep him as I had him.

I’d have to work him.

He’d start out cool. Definitely. He’d be cautious with me. He’d see to my feelings. He’d be sensitive in his badass cop way, but he’d still do it.

But he’d be embarrassed. Losing control like that. Stooping so low as to fuck the bartender at his local. The bartender who was a single mom and who used to be a stripper. The bartender who got played by a serial killer.

I’d work him, though. I wouldn’t let it slide to awkward. I’d show him it was all good. I’d show him we could be who we were; we didn’t lose what we had. It happened. It was good (I hoped for him too). It was a one-time thing. And now…onward.

I kept silent and still, breathing steady so he’d think I was asleep, wanting it to be done. I had shit to do that day. Ethan was going to be gone in the morning, still at his friend’s. I had the day off work. It was Saturday. I had groceries to buy. A house to clean. Bills to pay.

And then I would have my son and it would be all about him.

I tried to take my mind off Merry, thinking first up was my hangover cocktail. Then, depending on the time, the grocery store, but only if it was early and I could beat the crowds.

People annoyed me. They were rude. And the more people there were, the ruder they were. They totally did not get that we were all in this game of life together and playing on the same team, working toward the same goal. Every single one of us had something to do, and we just wanted to do it without a lot of hassle and eventually get home safe.

Somewhere along the way, people got the idea that whatever they had to do was the priority and everyone else could eat shit. So they drove like lunatics. They were impatient in lines. They were assholes to clerks when a clerk could no way memorize the price of everything in the entire store at Walmart so they wouldn’t have to inconvenience some jerk to call for a price check. They acted like waiting the whole five minutes it took to get that price check was akin to torture. Then again, the number of folks who ran orange lights that were only a hint of yellow, instead of waiting the whole maybe five minutes for the light to change to green, was the same damn thing.

Everyone was in a hurry. Everyone was out for themselves. No one gave a shit about anyone else. Long ago, kindness, courtesy, and civility had taken a hike.

So, yeah.

People annoyed me.

These were my thoughts as I felt the bed move again, and the bed moving freaked me way the fuck out.

So I opened my eyes and got freaked out a whole lot more.

Merry was not sneaking out of my room.

He was instead clothed and sitting on the edge of the bed, chin dipped, dark hair the good kind of hot mess, some of it falling on his forehead, sleepy, gorgeous blue eyes aimed at me.

He also had a hand coming my way, and I tensed when he used it to brush the hair off my neck, then curl it warm there.

God, no man had ever touched me like that.

Not one.

Not in thirty-four years.

“Hey,” he whispered.

What was happening?

“Hey,” I whispered back, uncertain how to proceed in this unprecedented situation.

“Didn’t wanna wake you.” He was still talking quietly. “But also didn’t wanna disappear on you.”

At his words, I felt something weird happening to me. Like the beginning of a release. A release that was both pain and relief, the kind that comes as a splinter is being pulled out.

Or a thorn is working its way out.

“I’m on this weekend,” he continued. “Gotta get home, shower, change clothes, get to the station.”

That was when something weirder happened to me.

I felt like I was going to cry.

The last two times I shed tears, I remembered.

One was sitting in Mimi’s Coffee Shop, listening to Alec Colton be cool to me after what I’d thought was a death blow had been delivered. Not a literal one, but definitely a figuratively emotional one.

The other was when I’d heard that Dennis Lowe was dead.

The first were tears of bitterness, sadness, defeat, and shame.

The last were tears of happiness.

Considering Merry was talking, I realized I had to pull my head together and respond.

So I said, “Okay.”

“I’m on all weekend, but we’ll talk later,” he declared.

I stared into his face, my eyes tipped up his way, not moving my head from the pillow.

I tried to read something, anything that would tell me what was going on in his mind.

He just looked sleepy and kind of cute.

This was shocking.

Garrett Merrick was all man, not all-cute man.

He was a cop. He was built, muscular but lean. His tough, sinewy frame, which I knew from my time as a waitress, then a stripper, and finally a bartender, concealed the power packed in his build. He wasn’t a hulk, and therefore, you might think you could mess with him when you absolutely could not. I knew this from looking at him. But he’d broken up three bar brawls in my tenure at J&J’s Saloon, so I’d also seen it firsthand.

Further, he was handsome in a smooth way that didn’t quite succeed in hiding the fact that, under the surface, he was not smooth at all. He was rough.

His sense of humor was wicked.

And his personal sense of right and wrong was razor-sharp (if perhaps a little crazy). There wasn’t a lot of gray in the world of Garrett Merrick. There was black and there was white. He had a reputation in that town and I was a bartender in that town, so I knew his reputation. He was a cop for a reason. He was about order and justice. There was just a part of him that was compelled to decide what kind of order there should be and how justice should take place.

He had a good ole boy exterior.

Under that was something else entirely.

I got this. I knew his history. There were several ways to go on with your life after what had happened to his family and none of them were good.

Except the one Merry chose.

So he was not cute.

Not at all.

Until right then.

Sleepy and cute and not even looking a little bit hungover.

“Cher?” he called.

I blinked away my thoughts and muttered, “Sorry, kinda out of it.”

He grinned, the cute took a hike, and a miracle occurred.

I had been completely hungover, freaked out, and uncertain.

Witnessing that cocky grin, I was straight up, full-on turned on.

He knew what he did to me last night. He knew how much I liked it. He also knew I might have participated fully, but he’d dominated the play and he got off, but he got me off spectacularly.

Five times.

My legs shifted and Merry bent closer.

“Rest up,” he murmured. “Get some aspirin in you when you wake up. I’ll call you later.”

I nodded, head sliding on the pillow.

He bent deeper, and I didn’t know whether to brace or turn my head just in case he needed a straight shot to my mouth because he intended to give me a kiss.

I found he was giving me a kiss. A sweet one. Brushing his lips lightly along my cheek, he moved his mouth to my ear.

“Never forget last night, babe. None of it,” he whispered there, then gave me another kiss, touching his mouth to the skin in front of my ear before he finished, “Thank you for that.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. It was sweet, but was it final?

Or was it a beginning?

He pulled his head away but slid his hand from my neck to my jaw, where he used his thumb to sweep the apple of my cheek as he caught my eyes.

Another touch no man had ever given me. A simple maneuver, only his thumb moving, but it still felt like it spoke volumes, every word beauty.

“I’ll call you.”

That said beginning.

Oh God, were Merry and me beginning?

My heart clutched.

“Okay, Merry,” I replied.

He grinned. He winked. My stomach curled in a nervous, excited way I almost didn’t recognize because I hadn’t felt it since I was fifteen years old.

Then he straightened from my bed and walked out of my room.

* * * * *

I did not go back to sleep to get rest I desperately needed (considering I had slept about twenty minutes).

I also did not get up to go to the grocery store.

I got up and went to the bathroom.

I brushed my teeth and looked into the mirror, thanking God for the first time that I’d perfected the art of makeup application through my stripper days so that shit would not move unless it was removed. The day before, I’d worked a shift with it on. I’d gotten drunk after that. I’d gotten royally laid after that, and it still looked awesome.

Nevertheless, I took it off.

I then went to the kitchen and got my hangover cure-all: two ibuprofen, two migraine pills (caffeine and aspirin), one Tylenol. I sucked that back, then power-slammed a huge glass of cold water. After that, I grabbed a Diet 7UP, made a pot of coffee, and hit the shower.

I did the hair gig. The makeup gig. The clothes gig. The jewelry gig.

Once ready, I called a taxi.

I could walk to J&J’s from my house, but I wasn’t going to do that, and not because I was wearing high-heeled boots. I could walk a mile in high heels. But the taxi ride would only cost five dollars, and I wasn’t doing what I was going to do with the hangover hovering and my energy zapped from hoofing it to the bar.

Or the station.

I sat in the taxi, knowing what I was about to do was a risk. A huge one, and not one I’d taken in years.

Then again, I hadn’t let anyone in in order for there to be a risk to take.

Not to mention, even before I built my shell, I’d never known with absolute certainty like I knew right then, that it was a risk worth taking.

I had to do it. I had to make that statement. I had to communicate without delay where I was. I was not going to make the same mistake as the stupidest bitch on the planet.

I was going to share what needed to be shared.

That being, I didn’t just like getting laid by Garrett Merrick last night.

I liked him.

And if this was our beginning, I was all in.

The taxi let me out in front of J&J’s, and since I knew the driver—he drank at the bar and he’d given me a ride more than once—I tipped him one hundred percent on the five dollar ride.

I didn’t go to J&J’s or through it to get to my car in the back.

I went to Mimi’s Coffee Shop.

I bought two lattes and two of her blueberry muffins with the sprinkles on top.

Luckily, my girl Mimi was in the back, baking, so I didn’t have to take time to chat. Two of the kids she employed were manning the counter—one who was a cheerleader at the high school, and the yin to her happy-go-lucky, my-life-is-golden yang—one who, this time, had green hair and, if I was right, two new piercings.

I got the stuff, balanced the tray of coffees and the bag, and left.

I hit the sidewalk and headed down the block to the station.

I made it there, climbed the steps, pushed through the door, and saw Kath at the reception desk.

Her eyes got big when she saw me.

“Hey, Cher!” she cried.

“Hey, Kath.” I smiled at her and jerked my chin up the stairs that led to the bullpen behind her. “Merry up there?”

She shook her head.

From her seat at the reception desk at the ’burg’s PD, she knew it all before anyone but the cops knew it. She also drank at J&J’s, so she knew me. And, of course, she knew Merry.

She’d seen me shooting the shit with Merry, so she also knew we were tight.

But more, she knew Merry wouldn’t go for me. Merry went for a lot of tail since he’d left Mia; however, I was not the kind of tail he went for.

So she wouldn’t have any thoughts about why I was there…at least not the correct ones.

“He’s out back,” Kath didn’t hesitate to tell me. “Mike needs a ride. Think Rees has his truck and Dusty’s doin’ somethin’ and needs hers, so Merry took off to go pick him up.”

Shit.

“Left about two seconds ago, so you could still catch him,” she went on.

I nodded, turning and moving swiftly back to the front door, calling, “Cool. Thanks. See you later.”

“Later, babe,” she called back.

I was out the door and hoofing it around the station, taking my shot at catching him before he took off but not thinking I’d get that chance. Merry would go out the back door, which led direct to the parking lot where he’d left his truck last night and walked down to J&J’s so he could get hammered. He’d probably be gone by the time I made it around the building.

I was about to turn the corner to the back when I heard a familiar voice that came from a familiar man, this man being Alec Colton, that voice raised and irate, saying, “What the fuck, Merry? Jesus Christ. Did you bang Cher?”

Holy fuck.

How could he know that?

I stopped dead, out of sight at the corner of the building.

“Colt.” I heard Merry rumble.

“Feb went in this morning to do paperwork. I dropped her. Cher’s car there. Empty bottle of whisky you like on the bar. I get to the station, see your truck in the lot where it was parked yesterday. I walk up to the bullpen, you can’t meet my eyes.”

Shit.

Cops.

They figured out everything.

“Sorry, brother, gotta get Mike. Greetin’ you like a happy puppy was not top of my priority list,” Merry returned, voice not raised but instead sarcastic and also irate.

“Bullshit. Darryl walked in before I left Feb, said he left Cheryl with you, you drunk, her lookin’ to mother hen you. You take advantage of that?”

I peeked around the corner and saw them both in front of Colt’s truck. They were in standoff mode. Merry was pissed. Colt was more pissed.

“You need to stand down,” Merry warned.

“You take advantage of that?” Colt repeated when Merry didn’t answer, and I watched around the corner as Colt got an inch closer to Merry, and Merry’s already taut and alert frame got more of both. “You fuck your cares away, Mia gettin’ a ring on her finger not yours? You bury that shit in Cher?”

I watched this going down having no clue what to do.

Normally, I would charge right in. Take Merry’s back.

But I’d never had anyone but my mom take care of me the way Alexander Colton, his wife, February, and their family and friends took care of me when my life turned to shit. Took care of me. Took care of Ethan. Didn’t do it from guilt or pity; they did it out of kindness and then love.