LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 2

       Royal

      When my phone, which I had left lying right next to my head the night before, went off the next afternoon shrieking Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” I almost rolled out of bed onto the floor in my haste to turn it off. I felt terrible. Partly because I was hardly sleeping anymore, so slipping into a restless catnap in the middle of the day was all that was sustaining me, but mostly because the number on the phone was the one I had been waiting for week after agonizing week to show up.

      I silenced the bubblegum-pop song with a swipe of my finger across the screen and tried to sound more alert than I actually was when I gasped out a shaky greeting. I didn’t care what anyone thought of my awful taste in music. I slummed in the gutter all day long. I tangled with junkies, and wife beaters, and parents that neglected their kids every single day. I refused to listen to anything that wasn’t upbeat and full of infectious pop. My job wasn’t always fun, so I tried really hard to make sure the rest of the things in my life were.

      “You do know I’m busting out of here today, right?”

      I shoved a tangled hank of dark red hair out of my face and scrambled up to the edge of my bed. I chomped down on my bottom lip and tried to regulate my breathing. Of course I knew he was getting out of the hospital today. What I hadn’t known was if he was going to want me anywhere around him when he finally got the green light to go home. I squeezed my eyes shut and was so grateful that we weren’t face-to-face. Dominic Voss knew me better than any living soul on this planet, and if we were in the same room he would be able to feel the guilt and self-loathing I had been drowning in lately. Hell, if my current state of distress was apparent to someone as disconnected as Asa Cross, there was no way my best friend and partner could miss it. Dom being Dom, he would know it all came from what had happened to him on that callout from hell.

      “I know. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come or not. I know your sisters are coming to stay with you until you get back on your feet and I didn’t want to get in the way.”

      I sounded pathetic and ridiculous to my own ears.

      Dom and I had been inseparable since we were five years old. There had never been a time when he didn’t want me around. There had never been a single moment in our friendship where I was ever in his way, and his entire family thought of me as one of their own. I think that made what had happened weigh even more heavily on my shoulders.

      I heard Dom sigh and then he swore. His deep voice sounded strained as he gently scolded me. “Get your cute ass here, Royal. I’ve let you sulk for two goddamn weeks. Get over it. Shit happens and it’s gonna keep happening because that’s what being a cop is about. I’m in a fucking cast from my ankle to my junk. I have a broken shoulder and I can’t breathe without it feeling like I’m drinking acid. I look and feel like hammered dog shit, and my best friend hasn’t been around for any of it. Can you maybe knock it off now?” I couldn’t stop the tears that were starting to leak out of my eyes. I used a knuckle to swipe at them as I climbed to my feet. His next words stabbed through me like I was sure he intended for them to do. “I need you here, girly.”

      We had always needed each other, both in our day-to-day lives and on the job. That was why I felt so bad. It was why I couldn’t get my head around how badly I had let him down. I was supposed to have his back like he had always had mine, and instead I had almost gotten him killed.

      “I’m on my way.”

      I hung up the phone after he barked at me that it was about time, and rushed around my apartment trying to make myself look presentable. After a hard night of drinking I never exactly looked great, but throw in a sleepless night and yet another rejection from an outrageously sexy, southern bartender and I probably could match Dom in the looking-like-crap department. I had dark shadows under each eye, I was way paler than normal, fine red veins threaded through the white in each eye, and I had really ugly bruises surrounding each of my wrists, which made shame and regret battle the guilt for the top spot in the flood of emotions I was choking on.

      I knew better, I really did. I wasn’t the type to go out and lose control. I rarely drank, and when I did I always acted responsibly because I had a big picture to think about. Only lately that big picture had narrowed to tunnel vision and all I could see was Dom getting hit by bullet after bullet and falling over the edge of the fire escape on the side of the building. When I wasn’t seeing that, I was seeing the wife of the officer that hadn’t survived the shootout collapsing in the hall of the ER as another officer told her that her husband hadn’t made it. If that wasn’t enough to eat at my soul, the memory of my lieutenant telling me I had to turn in my gun and badge and go on administrative leave while the department conducted an investigation danced around in my head every second of every day.

      In order to shake some of those awful thoughts loose, I was determined to do things I never did, things that made me feel free, so that’s why I was hanging out at the Bar. That’s why I was drinking like a fish, and really that was why I was unabashedly throwing myself at Asa Cross. I had never had to chase a guy. I had never been interested in the kind of guy that oozed charm and trouble the way Asa did. And I most definitely had never been one to mix business and pleasure. I knew Asa was bad news, barely tiptoeing on the right side of the law, and it was a firm rule that I never got involved with anyone that had been in the back of a police cruiser. Well, Asa had not only been in the back of my cruiser, but he had also been in and out of jail since before he was old enough to drive. The guy liked to make up his own rules and he didn’t have a very pretty past. Cops shouldn’t be romantically interested in criminals, even reformed criminals. But I was. In fact I was more than interested, but every time I made a move on him and he turned me down, it made me wonder if he could see the failure that was haunting me. I wondered if that was why he kept saying no.

      I mean, I knew what I looked like. I knew that when we stared at each other there was interest and attraction glinting dark in his bronze eyes, and I knew he was the kind of guy that liked a sure thing. I was a sure thing. I needed something that felt good. I was searching desperately for something that would help me forget, even if it was for only a second, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I wanted him. I made it so easy for him to say yes and yet he kept turning the other way. I didn’t understand it, so it only made me feel even more lost and adrift than I already did.

      If he really wanted me to find another bar, I would. I only went to the dive he worked at because I wanted him to take me home. I wanted him to pull me across the bar and kiss away all the hurt and ugliness that was filling me up. I knew I was going about it the wrong way, knew that a guy like Asa had no use for someone that enforced

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