12. TWELVE
TWELVE
GARRETT
The days following the police report against Cory’s shop felt like an eternity, and I had received nothing but radio silence in response to my text messages. A pit formed in my stomach at the thought that she somehow knew that I was the one to take Elijah’s statement, but even if she did know, there’s no way she’d hold that against me. I was just doing my job. I would always do my job. Even when it sucked.
But the silence from her was killing me. After our date at the arcade a couple of weeks ago, it felt like we had made some progress. We texted almost every day. Our conversations weren’t usually anything deep or profound—Cory tended to freeze me out if I attempted to dig beneath her walls—but we talked about our days, shows we were watching, our jobs, and her dog. Sometimes I told her about my family if one of my sisters or parents happened to reach out that day with some asinine story that I knew she’d find comical. The point was that I thought we had been making progress, and now I hadn’t heard from her in four days.
I sat on my couch in black running shorts and a gray T-shirt, flipping my phone idly between my hands, as if I would miss a text from her should I set it down for more than a couple of seconds. It was pathetic. What was more pathetic was that I knew it was pathetic, and still hadn’t decided to do anything else with my day off.
Mid flip my phone screen “woke” itself, illuminating the time.
Screw it.
I stood up, snatched my keys off my kitchen counter, and slammed the front door behind me. Spending my days off lounging around on the couch never used to bother me. In fact, that was how I used to prefer to spend them, but then Cory entered the equation. I used to be able to collapse onto the worn, brown leather of my sectional and unplug my brain, but now it whirled constantly with thoughts of what Cory was doing.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I climbed into my truck and backed out of the driveway. If she was ignoring me because she needed some distance, fine. I’d turn around once I ensured she was okay, but I wouldn’t be able to do anything with my day if there was even the slightest possibility she wasn’t fine.
Which is how I found myself, twenty minutes later, standing on the deck of her craftsman-styled home, knocking on the door. Siren’s barks sounded loudly from deep within the house, but grew increasingly louder. There was the muffled clinking of locks sliding and then there she was.
My eyes flew over her, checking for anything physically wrong, but she looked fine. Her hair was piled in a knot on the top of her head, some strands falling loosely around her face, and she wore an oversized Guns and Roses T-shirt that covered her shorts. At least, I assumed there were shorts under it, but I couldn’t actually see them if there were, and I didn’t dare let my gaze linger too long.
It was as I was staring back into her dark eyes that I realized neither of us had said anything yet.
I cleared my throat. “I texted you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She hugged herself around her waist and looked around. She looked almost shy, which was an emotion I’d never once thought to picture on Cory, and seeing it then confirmed to me how wrong that was.
“Can I come in?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
She led the way, attempting to keep Siren at bay, and failing. All fifty pounds of brindle-colored hair and slobbery tongue hurtled at me, and I knelt down to receive it. She nearly knocked me on my ass trying to drown me in kisses.
“All right, Siren. That’s enough! Let the man in the door,” Cory scolded.
The dog calmed marginally, but her tail wagged at a rapid pace, making it feel more like a whip than an animal’s tail. I kept petting her as we followed Cory to the kitchen.
While this wasn’t my first time at Cory’s house, but it was my first time inside it, and it was Cory to a T.
Black quartz countertops sat atop dark gray cabinets adorned with brass fixtures. There was a black stainless steel farmhouse sink with a brass faucet that sat underneath a window with the perfect view of her back yard. The backsplash was a sea of jade herringbone tile.
“Water?” Cory asked over her shoulder.
“Sure.”
She filled two glasses and then passed one over to me.
“You want to tell me why you were giving me the cold shoulder?” I took a sip of water and watched her over the glass.
She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t giving you the cold shoulder, I just . . .” She trailed off, and I waited for her to continue, which she did, but not before groaning.
“I’ve just been really stressed. Apparently someone filed a report saying I tattooed an underage kid, and I still haven’t heard back from the detective.”
“I know.”
Her eyes snapped from where she was staring into her water, up to mine. “You know?”
I nodded and took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t about to scream and throw me out of her house. “I was the officer in booking the night the kid and his mother came into the station.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t tattoo him, Garrett!”
She wasn’t really yelling, but she was upset. With the anxiety radiating off her, her reaction didn’t surprise me. And while, deep down I knew she would never tattoo a minor, her confirmation eased my own anxieties.
“I know you didn’t, or I had seriously hoped you hadn’t, but I still had to write the report, Cory.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face and sighed. “I know. I know you did. I’m not mad at you.” Her fingers played along the rim of her glass. “Honestly, I hadn’t responded to you because I’m just so embarrassed.”
That caught me off guard. “Embarrassed? What the hell for?”
“DelINKquent Tattoos has only been open a little over a month and I’ve already had the cops show up twice!”
“So what? We go to some businesses weekly!” My words did nothing to soothe her. I reached across the island and grabbed her hand. “Seriously, Cory, if you didn’t tattoo the kid, it’s going to be fine. Levine will look at what you gave him and prove the kid never came to your shop, and it’ll be over with. It just takes time to comb through information. Breathe.”
Tension in her shoulders visibly dissipated as she inhaled and exhaled on a series of tiny nods. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Of course. I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you.”
“No, I get it. I—” She was cut off by a barely there knock at the door, followed by the sound of it opening, and a woman’s shrill voice calling out.
“Cordelia? ”
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit! You’ve got to be kidding me right now.”
Alarmed, I stood. “What? Who is it?” I whispered.
“My mother.”