3. Callum #2
There is nothing wrong with any of the girls, apart from the nineteen-year-old Lia, but I’m not interested. In anyone.
“Don’t you worry your handsome self. The masters will take care of it all. For now, we have more pressing matters to attend to. So, back to the quiet hours.”
“No,” I cut off that subject.
“What do you mean, no?”
“No means no. The hours stay.”
Fanny puckers her lip for a second before getting up. “Fine. See you tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
“No, you will not!” I call after her retreating form, and just before she slips out, she hollers, “I’ll bring some cake pops!”
Before I have the chance to take a breath, the door opens and I groan.
“No.”
“No, what? You didn’t even hear what I had to say!” Sam Colson, Luke’s dad strides up to my desk .
“I’m saying that in advance.”
“Oh, you’re being funny!” Mr. Colson laughs but there’s absolutely nothing funny about me or the murderous glare I’m sending in all directions.
“Just look at what I was able to secure for you!” He waves something light blue and sparkling in front of me. “For the new uniform!” he proclaims excitedly, his graying eyebrows dancing up and down as he shakes his body.
“What uniform?” I run a hand over my face.
“Yours! For the police staff! The glitter in this fabric would bring out the color of your eyes! And it’s stretchy!”
“Uncle Sam, my eyes are green not blue.”
“See? You could have blue also!” No, what I could have is an aneurysm.
“No.”
“No to this fabric?”
“No to the whole fucking thing.”
He throws out his arms, exasperated. “I have no idea why you and Luke keep refusing all of my brilliant ideas! What good is it to have connections in both the fire department and the police when you two won’t listen? It’s not like I’m trying to make my life better.” He huffs, folding his arms.
Yeah, because having a new uniform sewed for the police department in a baby blue with glitter is exactly what we need. Oh, and it’s fucking stretchy.
Fucking hell…
The only reason Mr. Colson hasn’t been thrown out of my station yet is because he has those connections.
The man practically raised me seeing as I spent as much time in Luke’s house as I did in mine and Griffin’s growing up.
But I’m drawing the line at the uniforms. “No uniforms! Am I clear?”
“Fine, I can see you’re not in a mood today,” he says, snatching the fabric from my table.
“I’ll be back tomorrow!” Mr. Colson shouts before the doors shut behind him .
I slump back into my seat with a low groan. A killer headache is brewing in my head and it’s only nine thirty AM. I haven’t even had the chance to have my coffee yet because as soon as I pulled up to the station, Fanny was already waiting.
I’ve been in this position for three whole weeks, and I still can’t get through the huge stack of files on my desk leftover from the previous guy.
My eye twitches. I fucking hate messes, clusters, things out of order and place. It makes my stomach churn but apparently my predecessor ran for his life after realizing what town he ended up in before he could deal with it all.
Smart man.
I was smart too, sixteen years ago, but I guess I took one too many hits to the head in the Navy that I decided to come back to my hometown. Luke and Griffin as well, I guess, because all three of us swore to leave after high school and never come back.
Look how that turned out.
But unlike my two best friends, I am not interested in settling down here. I’m not interested in finding a wife and making two-point-oh kids. I don’t even want a fish tank.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy for my friends and that they’ve found the love of their lives. I’m happy they are living out their dreams.
I simply don’t have any. Mine drowned seventeen years ago.
So, as nice as it is of Granny Gang to meddle in my love life, it won’t work. Nothing will work. I made sure of it during all these years in the Navy. I’ve desensitized myself to the world, to all that is soft and precious. To all that can hurt when it gets ripped away from you.
And that’s part of the reason I didn’t want to come back.
I don’t need anybody digging into parts of me I buried long ago.
I don’t want to see the silent questions in their eyes if I’m over what happened that day .
I just don’t want anything but peace and quiet.
Which is the one thing you’ll never find in Loverly Cave .
They are complaining about having quiet hours because they want to party all night long, for crying out loud. What peace and quiet are we talking about.
The only upside to this shocking turn of events is that I get to see Mom, Dad, and Jules every day.
Okay, fine, and I get to see those two fuckers too. I did miss them, but once again, you’ll never get me to admit it. Luke and Griffin already have big heads. Another stroke of their ego and they might trip under the weight of it.
I just make myself some coffee and decide to tackle this stack of paperwork when we get a call.
“Boss,” our dispatcher, Leo, calls out. “There’s a fight inside Fifi’s Goods. Fifi called it in.”
I look up at the yellow ceiling, gritting my teeth. Yes, a bright, cheery, yellow ceiling inside a police station. You are in Loverly Cave now, better get used to this shit.
Nine forty-five. Nine-fucking-forty-five AM and there is a fight.
I’ll be surprised if it’s the last one of the day.
It’s almost four PM when I finally make it back to the station, my cold, morning coffee still sitting untouched at my desk, and Leo is heading out for the day as Marsha starts her shift.
She’s the longest standing employee around here, having started fresh out of school some forty years ago and just never left.
Loverly Cave is a relatively small town, and we don’t have a very large task force. Two rotating dispatchers, six deputies who work two at a time and then there’s me. And not for the first time do I think that we need to triple that number.
“Evening, Marsha.” I tip my head her way.
“Hey there, Sheriff Hot Stuff.” I let out a string of silent curses but otherwise don’t waste my breath on asking her to stop anymore. It won’t work anyway.
Trust me, I tried. I even threatened to fire her. She told me to go ahead and try .
“Did you have a brilliant day today?” she asks with a smile so wide, it’s blinding.
“Marsha, is that a rhetorical question?”
“Nope.”
I drop into my seat. “If you consider breaking apart two ridiculous fights over things like strawberry socks that two grown men apparently can’t live without and the other over the last packet of cannabis seeds—no, Fifi is not out of weed, but that was the last packet with a rainbow on the package.
Serving as a tie breaker in a bloody argument over which The Doors hit was, indeed, the greatest. Then spending two”—I put up two fingers with a twitch in my eye—“hours taking a statement from Phylis Nima about a string of break-ins at her place, only to learn it’s a work of a lost soul unable to find its way home in the afterlife.
Her words, not mine. And then spending another damn hour listening to her demands we bring a medium into our ranks, and a bunch of other small things I won’t even bother bringing up because I’ve already learned that there is nothing I can do to stop Alec and Jacob from testing the limits of their lifespan.
” I say it all in one breath and then slump back in my seat with my eye still twitching.
“Then yes, I had a brilliant, fantastic day.”
“Sounds like you are settling in well, then,” Marsha says with an amused smile, and I glare at her. “Also, let me know if you want that phone number for a good medium. I got one.” When she sees my unimpressed face, she breaks out in laughter. “No medium, got it. A psychiatrist then?”
“Now we’re talking.” One corner of my mouth turns up into a half smile as I stride away into the break room, dumping my morning coffee and brewing a new one, because although my official shift is almost over I know better than to hope I’ll actually get to leave on time.
Not that I want to anyway.
I’ve been back for four months and yet I still can’t find an apartment to rent. There are plenty of posts about available apartments but as soon as I call them, they tell me it’s been taken .
By whom? Fucking pigeons? Or Mrs. Nima’s ghosts. How many can one woman have?
I haven’t seen any new residence since I came back and yet the living spaces are all taken. I love my parents, I do, but living with them in my thirties isn’t exactly the life plan I had in mind. Especially when they seem to have the most active sex life ever.
Jesus, I shudder at the thought alone.
And don’t even get me started on peace and quiet I love so much.
It’s nonexistent in our house. My parents are two social butterflies.
It never used to bother me before—in fact, I loved the constant buzz or people at our house.
Hell, Luke and Griffin practically lived at my place growing up, that’s how much time we spent together.
Until I didn’t.
Even my own sister refuses to let me live above her café! She might still be holding a grudge over our water fight with Griffin when I first found out the asshole got her pregnant.
Never knew my little sunshine Julie could be so petty. That fucker, Griffin, is definitely a bad influence on her. I even did a painting for their new house. Something I hadn’t done in years, and still she won’t let me move in.
So I’m stuck, and not for the first time I question my sanity and ask why I don’t just leave?
I look down at the stack of files again.
That philosophical question will have to wait after I’m done with this mess.
Which, of course, gets interrupted a million times with ridiculous call-ins before I’m halfway through it.
Most can be dealt with over the phone, or I send my deputies, that is until I hear Marsha pick up her phone, answering a dispatch call.
“Callum…”
“Don’t.” I pick up my finger, refusing to look at her. “Don’t say what you’re about to say, Marsha.”
I hear her chuckle, “It ain’t going away, Sheriff Hot Stuff.”
“No,” I deadpan. “No, I refuse to go out there. What is it this time? Another fight at LP’s?
Or did Sam Colson and Rick Levine start another contest about who can undress and drink more shots at the same time?
” God, I’ve seen it all here. No wonder the county can’t keep any out-of-town sheriffs here for too long. “And where are Collins and Lendry?”
“They are still dealing with Loveter. Who would’ve thought the man was so kinky?” she says with a whole lot of enthusiasm and appreciation.
See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Mr. Loveter is a sixty-something-year-old owner of the local theater who apparently decided to spice up his showings.
I shudder, thanking the heavens I wasn’t available to go deal with that.
“Unless you want Fifi to call Fanny for backup—she offered, by the way—you gotta get that booty over there.”
Oh, hell no! The last thing I want to do is arrest the whole Fantastic Four before it’s even midnight here.
And yes, if Fifi calls Fanny, all four show up.
They are like a package deal. Order one crazy, get three for free.
Hell, my mom and Fanny’s boyfriend might show up as a combo deal and my cell is just not that big.
“Fine.” I sigh. “So what do we have here?”
“Fifi called about loud noises coming from next door. Said she heard some death threats.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, rushing out of the chair so fast it knocks over. It’s not often we get a genuine call around here and this sounds like it could be one of them.
I might complain about dealing with elderly children twenty-four seven, but I’d rather put out nonsense than actual violence. I’ve seen—lived—enough of it to last a few lifetimes.
Swiftly, I make it out of the station and into my car, dialing the deputies to be on standby as I drive over to the address Marsha gave me. Even in the fading daylight, the bright green of the building color pops as loud as a siren.
It’s a four-story building, right on the main—or in our case, Love—street.
The first two floors are occupied by Fifi’s Goods store and the upper two floors are residential apartments.
Fifi, the owner of the whole building and store included, said the screaming was happening on the fourth floor, apartment 4A. I put my vest on and rush inside .
Just as I climb the last few steps, I hear a dull smack, followed by a shout. “Take that, you filthy bloodsucker!”
Without hesitation, I draw my weapon and burst through the front door. It might not be the right way to handle the situation, but I’ve learned long ago that the right way doesn’t get shit done.
“Hands up, LCPD!” I shout loud and clear, my eyes assessing for victims and perpetrators right away but that’s not what—or rather who—greets me.
“Argh! Ti skata ?”