Chapter 4
Brock
A nother day of desk duty passed slowly, and I was not excited about it. My muscles had all been sore as fuck since Dani started kicking my ass four days a week, made worse by sitting all day at work. I knew it took me in the direction I wanted to go. Back to active duty. Back to watching my best friend’s back.
Of course, there was a glaring problem with it all. I’d almost kissed Dani at our last training session. More than that, I think she actually wanted me to.
I’d had a thing for Dani since we were teenagers. She’d picked up MMA when she was sixteen or so, and I was in my last year of high school. I remembered going to their house to see Josh and catching her shadowboxing in the backyard or doing some crazy cardio routine. She stood out, something she seemed to hate but that I couldn’t get enough of. She had this intense passion for fighting that was mesmerizing to watch. It didn’t hurt that I found her long legs and strong round ass to be sexy as hell.
Now that we were spending time together in the gym, my crush on her was getting harder to ignore. Something I’d almost made glaringly obvious at our session at my place the other day. She’d been correcting my form, close enough to touch. Her eyes roamed my body in a way that was professional for her but excruciating for me. I could smell her skin, feel its heat, see the smoothness of her lips, and I almost went for it. She caught my eye, and I held it, debating on making the move. She’d moved away before I could decide on yes or no. That was probably for the best. It was bad enough that I was leaving my partner without backup while my leg healed. If I went and kissed his sister on top of it? I wasn’t sure our friendship would recover. He didn’t think I had a long-term relationship in me. I didn’t think I did either, unless it was with Dani. I couldn’t prove to Josh I was serious about her without dating her, and I couldn’t date her without losing my best friend.
I’d known this catch twenty-two existed for years. I’d worked around it. I had a lifetime to get over her, to get under someone else. Everything would work itself out. That line of thought died screaming in the last month for two reasons. One, I was spending way more time with Dani than I used to, and two, I could have died that night. The knife that plunged into my leg could just as easily been aimed at my neck. That kind of thing gives a man a new perspective on life.
It had been a stupid ass mistake that had gotten me stabbed in the thigh. Nate and Liz had come to the station to talk to me about a man who was stalking Liz. The situation escalated when the man, who turned out to be her ex-boyfriend, broke into her apartment. It needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.
The two had left the station in separate vehicles. Liz had arrived home, and when Nate didn’t, she gave me a call. Rather than be smart about the situation, I’d jumped in my patrol car and went looking for Nate. I’d found him in the ditch, having been run off the road by the man who was after Liz. By the time the two of us pulled into Nate’s driveway, Liz had wrestled the stalker to the ground and had him pinned. If she hadn’t known basic self-defense, I don’t know what would have happened. I had gotten down on the ground with her to put the cuffs on the bastard, and then things went wrong. I should have let my partner know where I was going. I had ignored every protocol and just jumped in the car and went cowboy on the situation. A millisecond of distraction and I had a knife in my thigh. One bad decision had led to surgery, pain, and weeks of rehab.
Being a police officer was a dangerous job. I knew that. I had never been on a scene where an officer had been killed, but I had marched in more than one funeral parade. Trailing after a coffin containing a man or woman who had done the same job I did. It wasn’t until that knife hit my thigh that I really realized how quickly it could happen. It didn’t have to be a series of fuck ups. It could happen in one heartbeat.
Kamloops wasn’t a dangerous city overall, but like most cities, it depended on where someone went. We were surrounded by mountain ranges, farms, lakes, and rivers. Endless, beautiful places to hunt, fish, hike, bike, and boat. In the winter, we had a luxury ski resort just a twenty-minute drive away, not to mention ice fishing and snowshoeing. The list went on.
We also had a drug epidemic. The city had been a small working-class kind of place. Boarded by two rivers and the Secwepemc First Nations Reservation, where I grew up. In the last few decades, things had changed. The population increased to more than a hundred thousand people. The mine, mill, and factory jobs dried up—thanks to an epidemic of pine beetle that killed off a lot of the lumber—and year after year of forest fires. Now, the city was an interesting mix of old houses and new high rises. Blue collar and white collar. Lifted pickup trucks and luxury electric cars. None of that was necessarily a bad change. What was a bad change was the number of people living on the streets with nowhere to go. It wasn’t just a problem here but everywhere. This province officially had a drug crisis going on thanks to fentanyl. Everyone from cops to social workers to librarians at the public library has noticed the difference. Families, schools, hospitals, and businesses had all felt the effect.
It was easy to get jaded. To see the mess, the vandalism, and the discarded needles and blame the homeless and the addicted. That was one thing that, as a cop, I prioritized not doing. These were people who needed help. They needed rehab, homes, treatment, a hot meal, whatever it was. I couldn’t let myself grow cold towards those who needed help. Being stuck on desk duty was making me cold towards the whole goddamned job. I couldn’t sit all day and file paperwork. Sometimes, we got people walking into the station who needed help, so at least I could do that. I wanted to be out there, on the streets, in the patrol car, helping people, preventing crimes, and most importantly, making sure my best friend and partner didn’t get hurt on the job the way that I had.
Pent-up energy, training with Dani, an injury that could have been so much worse, and a job that meant it could happen again led to one thing: I couldn’t get Dani out of my head. There had to be a way I could have her and not betray my best friend. I just didn’t know what it was.