Chapter Seven
Detective Gigi Dominguez was, in fact, going crazy being sidelined from work and life as she recovered from injuries sustained in an altercation with her now-former boyfriend, Ezra, who was receiving in-patient treatment for bipolar disorder.
After he’d taken her mother, sister and nephews hostage in her mother’s home, Gigi was done making excuses for the man who’d been part of her life since high school.
It’d been bad enough that he’d given her a concussion and ruptured her spleen, which had to be removed in an emergency surgery, but when he’d involved her family…
That was the end of the line for her. Yes, she’d promised she would check on him while he was in treatment, but she’d agreed to that only to get him to release her family.
She would keep her promise to check on him.
But she would never see him again.
She shivered, reliving the night when she’d tried to get him to a hospital and how he’d exploded with outrage that she’d suggested anything might be wrong.
No, she couldn’t think about that, because when she did, her entire body trembled with the bone-deep fear she’d experienced at realizing he’d become a threat to her personal safety.
And she’d missed that.
How had she missed that? She was trained to spot those things and hadn’t with him until it was too late to stop him from seriously injuring her.
Weeks later, she was still trying to unpack the emotions from that night and the one a few days later when he’d held her family at gunpoint, demanding to be allowed to see her.
Tears burned in her eyes as she relived the horror of her beloved family members being in mortal danger because of her.
She refused to give in to the tears, fearing that if she let herself fall apart, she might never recover.
Between battling her own difficult memories and the relentless coverage of the shooting in Des Moines, her emotions were all over the place.
A soft knock on her apartment door drew her out of the dark place her thoughts had gone.
“Just a sec.”
She was still moving slowly, uncertain which was worse—abdominal surgery or a severe concussion. At the moment, they were tied for first place. Before she opened the door, she looked through the peephole and saw her colleague Detective Cameron Green.
What’s he doing here—again?
Gigi took half a second to tighten the belt on her robe and to run her fingers through her hair to straighten wild curls.
After disengaging the new locks that Cam had installed for her after she came home from the hospital, she opened the door to her handsome blond colleague.
Smiling, he held up a brown bag with handles. “I got some more of that Mexican you liked last week.”
He was too sweet and too kind and too everything, including sexy. She’d noticed that long before her life had exploded in her face. But she’d been with Ezra since high school, and thus Cameron Green had remained firmly in the friend-and-colleague category.
“Come in.” She stepped back to admit him, reminding herself for the umpteenth time since the incident with Ezra that she had nothing to fear from this man, or the others she worked with who’d been by to check on her.
Her squad had made it their personal responsibility to keep her fed and entertained, but no one had been more faithful than Cameron.
“I can drop and go if you’re not up for company,” he said.
“Did you get food for yourself, too?”
“Yep, but I can take it home if you’re tired.”
“That’s okay. We can eat together.”
“Great,” he said, flashing a smile that belonged in a commercial for perfect teeth.
Gigi couldn’t understand why this colleague was different from the others. When he smiled at her, her belly fluttered and her heart did this weird skipping thing that made her feel light-headed. Or maybe that was just the concussion.
But she didn’t think that was it. She suspected it was him, and that was unnerving for a number of reasons.
“What did the doctor say today?” Cameron asked as he unloaded enough food onto her coffee table to feed ten people. He always brought extra to get her through the next day, too.
“He said everything is healing the way it should be, which isn’t fast enough for me.”
Cameron refilled her water glass and sat next to her on the sofa, cracking open a beer for himself. “It’s going to take the time it takes, and you can’t try to rush it.”
Dipping a chip into the queso he always brought after learning she loved it, she said, “Sitting around all day is making me crazy.”
“It’s what your body needs to heal, Gigi.”
“I know,” she said, sighing. “But I’ll be fat as a house if you keep feeding me such yummy food.”
He seemed annoyed that she’d say such a thing about herself. “No, you won’t.”
Gigi tipped her head and decided to ask the question that’d been foremost on her mind when it came to him. “What’re you doing here, Cam?”
“Huh? I thought we were eating dinner.”
“We are, but what are you doing?”
He put down his fork and wiped his face with a paper napkin that had the restaurant’s logo on it. “I’m helping out a friend and colleague.”
“That’s all it is?”
“What else would it be?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.”
He picked up his fork and poked at the chicken enchiladas he usually inhaled. “Can’t it just be a friend helping another friend? Can’t it just be that I hate what he did to you, and helping you keeps me from killing him for daring to lay a hand on you?”
The ferocity in his words startled her, as she’d never seen that side of him, except for at work when his intensity was directed at the scumbags they hunted as Homicide detectives.
He was one of the best detectives she’d ever worked with.
The entire squad thought so. But what did it mean that he wanted to kill the man who’d harmed her?
“You’re confusing me, Cameron.”
“I don’t mean to,” he said with a sigh. “You’re dealing with a lot right now. You don’t need any more.”
“What more would you be adding to the pile?”
“I don’t think we should talk about this now. Later, when you’re feeling better, we can talk more.”
“You’re still confusing me. What is there to talk about?”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I broke up with Jaycee.”
“What? When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“I thought you really liked her.”
“I did. I mean… I do, but…”
Gigi put her hand on his arm. “What’s going on, Cameron? I hope you know you can talk to me, and I’ll want to hear anything you have to say.”
He made a sound that was a cross between a groan and a laugh. “I’m not so sure you’d want to hear this.”
“Try me.”
After taking another drink from his beer bottle, he put it down on the table. Another long moment passed before he turned so he was facing her. “I broke up with Jaycee because I have feelings for someone else.”
“Oh, well, then I suppose that was the right thing to do.”
“Yeah, I guess, but the thing is, this person I like, she’s going through a rough time right now, and the last thing she needs is me adding to it by telling her something she may or may not want to hear.”
Gigi blamed the concussion for the thirty seconds it took her to figure out he was talking about her.
Cameron Green was telling her that he liked her, that he’d broken up with his girlfriend because he had feelings for her.
All at once, she couldn’t seem to breathe or think or do anything other than stare at him.
She’d been ashamed of the crush she’d had on him while technically still dating Ezra.
For some time, she’d wanted to end things with her high school boyfriend, but had hesitated due to the instability of his mental health.
Turned out she’d been right to be hesitant, because when she’d broached the subject of taking some time apart, she’d ended up in the hospital.
“I know this isn’t the right time, Gigi,” he said softly. “I don’t expect you to say or do anything now, or ever, if you don’t feel the same way.”
“Cameron.”
“What?”
She crooked her finger at him, asking him to come closer.
At first, he seemed too surprised to move.
“Cam.”
He blinked and moved to close the distance that stood between them on her sofa.
Gigi summoned all the courage she possessed to make a move that would change everything for them both. But after hearing he had feelings for her—and seeing proof of that in the way he’d cared for her over the last couple of weeks—she found it didn’t take courage to lightly touch her lips to his.
An urgent sound came from the back of his throat in the second before he raised his hands to her face and tipped her chin to improve the angle.
Gigi shivered with the thrill of kissing the man she’d admired from the day he’d first joined their squad. Not only was he handsome, sexy and super professional, but he was smart, clever, thoughtful and caring.
He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers, seeming to collect himself.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Why’d you stop?”
He curled a length of her hair around his index finger. “Because you’re still recovering, and the last thing you need is further complications.”
“Is that what this will be? Complicated?”
“I sure as hell hope so.” He caressed her face with the lightest of touches that set her entire body on fire with desire.
“What about work?”
“We’re on different shifts, and neither of us supervises the other. It should be fine. We’d have to disclose it to Sam, though.”
“And this is what you want? I’m what you want?”
“If you had any idea how much I want you, Gigi, you’d tell me to leave.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you would.”
She shook her head.
He nodded.
She smiled. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“You weren’t ready to hear it. You still aren’t.”
“Yes, I am. I’m much better than I was at first.”
“What about in here?” he asked, tapping a finger lightly over the vicinity of her heart.
She took a second to get her thoughts in order.
“I loved Ezra for a long time, but over the last year or so, things had gotten really difficult. It’s been obvious for a while that he was battling something, but he refused to get help or get treatment.
It was hard for me to continue being supportive of someone who wouldn’t do the bare minimum to care for himself.
I decided a while ago that I needed to end our relationship, but because of his problems, I had to choose the time wisely.
I thought I’d caught him on a good night, but…
” She exhaled a deep breath before she looked up at him.
“In truth, I’d left him quite some time before everything happened. ”
“It absolutely kills me that he hurt you.”
“That was the illness, not him. The Ezra I knew and loved would’ve never done this to me or taken my family hostage.
” She cringed, remembering the horror of that night.
“He was the sweetest guy you’d ever meet until the illness took hold when he was in his early twenties.
Since then, it’s been a struggle for him and everyone who loves him. ”
“Hopefully, now he’ll get the treatment he needs.”
“I hope so.”
“Is it over with him for you?”
“Has been for a while. What about you with Jaycee?”
“Has been for a while, although she didn’t take it well when I told her that.”
“What happened?”
“She was really angry. She thought we were going to get married. I’m not sure why she thought that. We never talked about it. At least I never did. She said I’d embarrassed her in front of her family and friends.”
“How did you embarrass her? By telling her you wanted out of the relationship?”
“I guess. Apparently, she’d told people we were getting married. I mean, why would she do that when she and I had never once talked about getting married?”
“She embarrassed herself. I have no doubt you were always honest and forthright with her.”
“I was. I enjoyed spending time with her, but I never thought she was it, you know?”
“I do. As much as I loved Ezra, I couldn’t picture forever with him. After a while, I think we stayed together out of habit more than anything. We’d been together for thirteen years, since we were sixteen.”
“That’s a long time.”
She looked up at him, feeling madly vulnerable. “I’ve never dated anyone else. I’m not sure I’d even know how.”
His green eyes twinkled with amusement. “You want to find out?”
“I think I would.”
He kissed her again, softly, gently, and then pulled back. “I ought to go.”
“You didn’t finish eating.”
“I can take it with me.”
“Don’t go.”
“You’re dealing with a lot, Gigi. Maybe we should wait, you know…”
“I don’t want to wait. I’ve had the biggest crush on you from the second you first stepped foot into our squad.” Hearing how he felt about her made it easy to speak the truth to him.
His expression quickly shifted to total shock, which made her laugh.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” she said.
“I didn’t! I had no clue. If I’d known that, I never would’ve dated Jaycee, or anyone else, because I’ve had the same crush on you for all this time.”
He reached for her, and she sighed as he wrapped his arms around her.
“The timing might be terrible,” she said as she rested her head against his chest, “but I want this. I want you.”
“I want you, too, but more than anything, I want to do this right. You need time to heal and recover from what’s happened.”
“Will you help me do that the way you have been since the beginning?”
“There’s nothing I’d rather do than help you with anything you need.”
“I need more of this,” she said, tightening her arms around him.
“You can have as much of this as you want.”
“I’m going to want a lot of it.”
“Me, too.” He drew back to look down at her with the intensity that made him so good at his job now focused exclusively on her.
“Thank you for the way you’ve been so there for me through all this.”
“I wish I could’ve done more.”
“You did just enough.”
“Anything you want or need, sweet Gigi, you tell me, and I’ll get it for you.”
“For right now, all I need is you.”
“You’ve got me, sweetheart.”