Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Deanna
W alking down the street with Luke, in full view of everyone, feels all kinds of right. And all kinds of wrong. I feel like people are staring. And he’s just oblivious. Just walking down the street, his arm around me and a shit-eating grin on his face. Like he’s proud to be seen with me.
It’s not hard to figure out that the voice in my head isn’t mine. It’s Kyle’s. It’s years and years of insults, piled one on top of the other until the girl I used to be was just buried under them. It seems like a million years between getting ready for my own high school dances and now. I guess it has been. I’m thirty-five. To that girl I was back then, thirty-five seemed a whole lifetime away. And the shit I’ve been through since then, it’s enough drama and trauma for three lifetimes.
“You’ve gotten real quiet, Dee. I don’t like it when you get all in your head like that.”
I glance over to see him staring down at me, his face etched with concern. I don’t think in all the years we were married, Kyle ever looked at me with that much feeling unless it was just pure hatred. “I do that sometimes. Can’t help it. The past isn’t just in the past, Luke. It’s in me. It probably always will be. But I can make room for the present, too.”
“And the future? You got room for that, Deanna?”
My heart is beating so hard and so fast. Fear. Oh, yeah. I’m fucking terrified. And hopeful. “I’m working on that. Give me a little time, okay?”
“You take all the time you need. I just want you to know where my head is at. I’m not looking for temporary with you. But I don’t want to push you into something you’re not ready for.”
I shake my head. “You can’t push me, Officer Hartford. I’ve found my backbone again. I don’t take shit from anybody now. Or didn’t you figure that out the other night?”
He grins at me. “Maybe I need a reminder… You did say you’d be on your own tonight.”
“I did. But I thought you were too tired from all your community outreach work?”
“Get some caffeine and some food in me and I just might rally. Hell, woman, I could be half dead and one look at you would have me rallying.”
—-
An hour and two slices of cheesecake later, we’re halfway up the stairs to my apartment. “I’ve never been to your place,” I say.
“It’s not much,” he replies. “Haven’t seen the point of fixing up the place too much when I’m never there.”
“Is it a house, an apartment, a trailer?”
“You wanna go take a look?” he offers.
“Yeah. I do. Let’s go do dirty things in your bed, hotshot.”
“You wanna grab some stuff first?”
I shake my head. “Nope. I’ll just borrow one of your shirts to sleep in.”
“The hell you will. I get you in my bed, you won’t be sleeping in anything.”
That is not a deterrent. “Then take me to your place and convince me why being naked is better.”
He leans in to kiss me, but a sound stops us both. Breaking glass. And it’s coming from my apartment. He steps back, grabs a set of keys, and shoves them in my hand. “Get in my truck. Can you work the radio?”
“I can figure it out.”
“Officer Hartford, investigating a 10-70, requesting backup. Then give them the address.”
Before I can ask anything else, he reaches down, pulls a pistol from a holster that has apparently been strapped to his ankle this entire night, and heads up the stairs. Into God knows what.
Backup. He needs backup. In my head, I’m just picturing Troy James lying on the floor, covered in blood, while my kids and I stood there, helpless and terrified. Not him. It will not happen to him.
I’m at a dead run by the time I reach his truck, slamming into the door with the force of it. I hit the keyfob to unlock it and climb inside. It takes a couple of seconds for my shaking hands to depress the button on the side of the radio mic to give the info. The dispatcher asks questions. Wants to know who I am. Why an off-duty officer is investigating a crime.
“Because he was taking me home and when we got there, we could hear breaking glass coming from inside my supposedly empty apartment! Just send somebody, for fuck’s sake!”
I drop the handset and start rifling. In the glovebox, I find a small pistol. I don’t even know if I can use it. Not because I wouldn’t be willing to shoot someone to save him but because I’ve never fired a gun in my life and I don’t even know how.
I rush back up the stairs, and when I walk in, the first thing I see is Luke. Alive and unhurt, but standing in the middle of complete chaos. Everything is broken and smashed. None of it was worth anything. I’m not stupid. I know my secondhand furniture wasn’t valuable. But it was mine. It was mine and I got it all on my own for me and my kids and now almost every single stick of it is broken.
“He was gone when I got in here. Out the back,” he said, pointing toward Malcolm’s room. There’s a window in there that opens up onto an embankment behind the building. It wouldn’t be hard for someone to make that jump.
“Who?”
Luke looks at me. We both know the answer. I knew it before I even asked the question. I hate the very idea that he has stepped foot in my house. That he’s touched our things.
“What the fuck am I going to tell my kids?”
“Not a damn thing,” he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
—-
Three hours later, I have more new-to-me furniture than I know what to do with. Lizzie and Troy, Emma and Cody, Cassie and Cam have all pitched in and brought stuff they just had lying around their houses.
“I can’t believe this,” I say, shaking my head.
“You’ve done us a favor actually,” Cam says. “I’ve been needing to unload this couch for a while. It doesn’t exactly fit the aesthetic of Cassie’s place.”
From the way he says it, I know that was her wording and not his. But it’s a great couch. Slightly too big for my living room, but comfy. “Thank you. Really. All of you. I don’t even know what to say.”
“You said it already. Thanks. And even that wasn’t necessary. For Kyle to march his ass in here, wreck your shit, and then we all get to fix it before he can even get the fucking grass stains out of his pants from the superhero landing he had to make from your kid’s window? He’ll shit a baby alligator over that, and I’ll enjoy ever damn second of it,” Cam says.
“Will he get arrested for this?”
Cam shakes his head. “No. We don’t have any proof, really. I mean fingerprints aren’t exactly conclusive since he was here just a couple weeks ago. He’s been at the scene recently enough that we can’t rule that out. But just ’cause we’re not arresting him for this doesn’t mean we won’t get him for something else.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Deanna,” Troy says, chiming in from across the room. “We’ll have extra patrols through the neighborhood. And if that doesn’t work, I’m certain that Officer Hartford will be keeping a close eye on things. Won’t you, Luke?”
“I’m moving in. I’ll sleep on the couch if you want,” he says, “But I’m not going anywhere while that asshole is pulling shit like this.”
Emma grabs Cody’s arm. “That’s our cue to go. Enjoy. Deanna, it’s always good to see you, but next time let it be over chips and queso. Okay?”
They’re like Santa’s elves. They came. They delivered. They vanished. And now Luke and I are standing in the middle of a living room that doesn’t even look like mine and I can see the stubborn set of his chin, like he’s ready to fight me for the chance to take care of me.
“You’re not sleeping on the couch. This isn’t exactly how I planned to let my kids know we’re together, but I’m not going to hide and sneak around either. And we will all feel safer with you here.”
His shoulders settle, some of the tension just evaporating for him. “Does this officially make you my girlfriend?”
“I’m five years older than you… girlfriend is a little weird, don’t you think?”
“Significant other, then.”
I nod. “It’ll do.”