Chapter Forty-Six
CLARKE
I didn't realize how heavy I had been feeling, how much weight I had been wearing on my shoulders, until I was finally able to shrug it all off.
Not just about the academy. Though, that was a massive part of it. It was my dirty secret, my secret shame. Even if, technically, it wasn't exactly my fault.
It still felt like a failure.
It was still a dream snatched away.
It was a huge chunk of my future unfairly taken from me.
I knew there was poison coursing through my veins, but didn't exactly know the extent to which it had been affecting me. All that rage, bitterness, disappointment, and maybe the worst of them all... helplessness.
Was there anything worse than feeling utterly helpless?
If there was, I had yet to encounter it.
But as much as it was uncomfortable to endure the slice, the suck of the poison out, having a system free of it made me realize how sick I had been from it.
I never could have imagined it would be Barrett who would help guide the knife.
I always figured it would be my mom. Eventually.
After she realized that it wasn't just a moody phase I was going through, likely blaming it on stress from work.
She always got things out of me. Mothers had that knack when no one else was able.
They knew exactly what to say, what facial expressions might make the walls crumble down.
Then it would all spill out. Ugly.
This was better.
There was almost something clinical about it. Maybe because Barrett wasn't emotional, didn't get offended or upset or any of those pesky feelings that made confessions hard to get through.
God, I'd even dumped a near lifetime of daddy issues on him without intending to.
That was one thing I struggled to share with my mom. Because the topic of my father had always been a gaping, bleeding wound. Anytime I tried to—calmly—bring up a negative feeling I had toward my father, she went off. Colorfully.
I get how he could let work come before me. But to let his little girl feel like shit? That is unconscionable. You should be a fucking priority in his life.
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
It was hard to get it out because she took off with it. And sometimes I wanted to just voice a hurt or disappointment without her piling on.
After a while, I stopped talking about those things, only telling her when something positive happened when I spent time with him.
I aired it a bit to my friends, but, let's face it, even friends don't want to hear you prattle on endlessly about your issues with your dad.
So, for the most part, I bottled it up.
But I had spewed it all over him for some reason. Maybe because he wouldn't be like my mom. He had no opinion on my father. He had nothing to pile on about. He was just an objective listener. And unlike my friends, he seemed interested, not just politely listening.
It was almost as if—and maybe this was a bit crazy—but that he wanted to see what made me tick.
It didn't seem overly characteristic of him.
I'd once heard him on the phone with, presumably, someone related to his clients who claimed said client was too upset to get out of bed and speak to him, and he said something about how he didn’t care about her silly feelings, that he needed to talk to her if he wanted her case solved.
He wasn't someone who seemed overly concerned about things like emotions and motivators. Yet he sat there with rapt attention while I showed him mine.
I knew I probably shouldn't have been reading into that too far.
I mean... he had royally fucked up by going through my social media without permission.
Even he had to see that was crossing a line.
And then, well, I had mauled him in bed.
Things like that were inclined to make a guy a little crazy, a little off his game, make him act a bit out of the usual.
Yet...
Yet all I could think of was that maybe this was more than that, that this possibly meant something. To him. And to me.
I didn't just roll over and make out with any random guy.
I mean, I wasn't a teenager anymore. The fact that I hadn't made out with anyone in, hell, I didn't even know how long, hadn't even been tempted to, but suddenly had an urge so strong that I couldn't fight it despite knowing it was a terrible idea since I had a contract to fulfill with him once this was all over, well, it said something, didn't it? It said that maybe he was different.
And not just in the obvious ways, the ways that set him apart from other guys that I knew, that made me think, made me consider my comments, made me analyze their impact more than I might normally.
It was just like me, wasn't it, to pick the men I absolutely should not pick. Not because anything was wrong with Barrett. But because the situation was sticky, because if things went south, it could be vastly uncomfortable to continue to clean his office for the foreseeable future.
Not for him.
I mean, I didn't imagine he was the kind to get all bent out of shape if things went wonky.
But for me.
I wasn't someone who kept in touch with exes. Once things were over, they were over. I didn't need to know what they were up to. And I definitely didn't go back for new rounds. I had a scorched earth policy.
So for me, it would be weird.
Not that anything was going to happen. I mean.
.. just because we kissed and had a conversation.
That didn't have to mean anything. Really, I needed it not to mean anything.
That would be better. For the both of us.
In the long run. No matter how much my body wanted to fall backward into the bed with him, finish what we started.
"Well," I started, realizing he'd been staring at me waiting for a response for an uncomfortably long time. "We have established I am stubborn and hate to fail."
"We have."
"Well, I, ah, did some digging on that senior officer."
"What's his name?" he asked, needing the facts. It was the PI in him.
"Murphy. Anyway... I did some digging, trying to figure out what he had worked on in his time, what cases he never solved..."
"You're getting your revenge by solving a case he couldn't?"
"That's the plan."
"How would he even know that, though? That you had been the one to break the case?"
That was the tricky part.
Our lovely state was a bit of a pain in the ass about giving out PI licenses.
My only real obstacle was the one about needing five years of experience working in investigation.
Which seemed asinine to me. If I were licensed, I could have my name in all the papers.
Private Investigator Clarke Collings finally brought down the Turkish mob or something to that extent.
"I figured I would just get it all lined up then call in someone to actually bring them down. Local cops or something. My name would still get in the papers most likely." It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was something. A little 'fuck you' to the bastard who ruined my life.
"You're trying to be a PI," he guessed, but sounded pretty certain in his declaration.
"Yeah," I agreed, nodding, my eyes slipping away, studying my hands. "Do you think that's crazy?"
"For you to be a private investigator?" he clarified.
"Yeah."
"No." There was so much certainty in that one word, enough to give me the confidence to lift my head, turn back to face him.
"I think you have a good personality and set of skills to be an investigator.
I've met a lot of them over the years. They all have tenacity in common.
Even people who—on the surface—don't seem like the serious or workaholic types.
Like Tig and Brock. When they get on an important case, one that means something, you don't want to be the person they are trying to get dirt on or bring down. "
"Have you known a lot of female investigators?"
"Ah, well, no," he admitted, but shrugged it off.
"That doesn't really mean anything. It just says that many women aren't interested in the field, or feel qualified.
It takes guts to get into it, never knowing what you might come up against. That can be terrifying if you don't have the proper training. You have had a lifetime of it."
That was true enough.
Between my martial arts classes and my father's talk about his work, I knew a lot, I could handle myself. At least I imagined so. I hadn't been put in a lot of situations where I needed to test that—grab-assy guys in bars notwithstanding.
"It's more dangerous for a woman than a man," I murmured, voicing something I'm sure I would hear a thousand times once my family and friends got wind of this new business venture of mine.
"So is walking down the street or going to a bar or having a first date. It sucks, but that's how it is. Men are inherently safer than women, so any job where you don't function in a safe group of some kind, yes, comes with extra concerns."
"Which is why I always have to be better."
"Which is why you always have to be better," he agreed, nodding.
"I'm doing a pretty shit job of it, aren't I?" I asked, waving a hand out toward the window, the city in general, the fact that I had spent months on this and I felt like I was getting absolutely nowhere.
"Clarke, it's the mob. Crime has been in their blood for generations.
They have systems to keep anyone from finding out what they are up to.
That's part of their job. It's your job to find chinks in their armor.
It won't be easy. I mean, cops, detectives, agents—they can go their entire careers trying to take down a family and fail.
That's the nature of the game. So if it's just you trying to do the job of an entire police force, yes, it's going to be hard.
You're going to fail for a while before you even get a taste of success. "
"Have you ever dealt with the mob?"
"Not directly. Not trying to take any of them down or anything like that. I had a battery case with a woman and some low-level mob guy."
"How did you handle that?"