CHAPTER TWELVE
I AM BATMAN
AGE TWENTY-ONE
Two nights in the River Canyon Police Department's holding cell and hours of talking to Meghan Kinney had, in fact, been enough to turn my dumbass around.
A year later, I found myself graduating from the academy.
The police academy, I mean.
The River Canyon Police Department was too small to have their own academy, so for a year, I’d attended a regional facility in central Connecticut.
And although the training and living accommodations weren't unlike an Army boot camp, spending the entirety of my weekdays and nights in such regimented conditions also did me a lot of good.
There wasn't any time to fuck around, and because I wasn't there to stir shit up, Jay also seemed to relax a bit too. In fact, six months into my training, he’d decided he wanted to follow in his old man's footsteps too.
Except my inspiration hadn’t been Officer Graham Williams.
Mine had been Officer Patrick Kinney.
And the desperation to stop the bad guys … and to keep the good ones protected from them.
“Police Officer Noah Mason.”
My new official title was announced, and I swept my gaze out toward the cheering crowd to find Mom and Miles. Beside them, I saw Harry, Grandma, and Grandpa.
Behind them was Sergeant Kinney and his daughter Meghan, the oldest of three, and at the sight of her soft pink smile, I held my chin just a little higher as my heart set off at a canter.
Then, only because I had to, I tore my gaze away from her to look up at Dad as he pinned my shiny badge to my shirt.
“You look good, buddy,” he said, pressing the palm of his hand to my cheek before giving me an affectionate pat. “The uniform suits you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I replied, not knowing why I was getting so fucking choked up.
Maybe because he and I both knew that, at the end of it all, this was for him.
It was because of him.
He pulled me into a tight hug. “I love you, Noah,” he muttered, clapping his hand against my back. “And I am so fucking proud of you.”
Against his shoulder, I nodded and replied, “I love you too.”
He cleared his throat and turned. “Come on. Let's find Mom.”
As one would expect, Mom's hug and congratulations were tearful while Grandpa and Grandma embraced me with adoration and pride.
At nearly eight years old, Miles was starting to think he was too cool to give his big brother a hug, but he shook my hand and told me, in his words, “It's about time you're doing something with your life.”
“Get over here, you little shit,” I said, wrapping my arm around his neck and holding him in a playful headlock as I pretended to punch him in the gut.
“Dad, he's beating me up again!” Miles whined, shoving at my side.
“Noah, stop kicking your little brother's ass.”
“Then he shouldn't make it so kickable,” I complained, releasing him from my hold just as I locked eyes with a certain father and daughter duo with matching blue eyes, and instantly, my playfulness was wiped away.
“Congratulations, Officer Mason,” Patrick said, extending his hand.
I accepted the gesture gratefully, and we shook. “Thank you, sir.”
“When are you coming to work?”
“Whenever you'll have me.”
He grinned. “How does Monday sound?”
“Consider me there.”
With an approving nod, he clapped a hand against my shoulder. “You turned out all right, ya know. I never doubted ya for a second.”
“Yeah, right,” I teased with a smirk. “You dragged my ass out of that pool and thought I'd be taking up permanent residence in your holding cell.”
He shook his head as he stuffed his hands deep in his pants pockets. “Oh, no. That was a one-off. Next stop would've been Wayward.”
I tipped my head, feigning consideration.
“Actually, maybe I would've been better off.
I could've gotten in close with Uncle Levi and his buddies, could've gotten myself a sick-ass nickname …” I glanced over my shoulder at Dad, who wasn't looking all that amused. “Right, Dad? What did they call you?”
“Depends on who you ask,” he grumbled, glowering. “But, hey, let's just be glad that's not where you ended up, all right?”
All joking brushed aside, I gave him a nod and allowed the conversation to rest, just as it occurred to me that Meg had been awfully quiet, standing beside her father and observing the interactions between me, Sergeant Kinney, and my family.
My eyes drifted over her face, and I tried to get a read on what she might be thinking, but although she and I had become something close to good friends since those days in the holding cell, I still couldn't read her mind.
“Thanks for coming,” I said with a smile.
She reached out to brush her fingertips against my elbow. “Of course. I wasn't going to miss it.”
Mom appeared beside Dad, peeking around my arm. “Meg, will you be coming over for dinner? I know your dad said he'd be there, but I wasn't sure if you were.”
I stifled an eye roll. Dinner.
Mom and Grandma had insisted on getting some people together for a celebratory meal at home.
They had spent all night and morning cooking a buffet of my favorite foods and then some, and from the sounds of it, they'd cooked enough for the entire town to join the festivities.
But I had requested they keep the guest list small, not wanting to make a huge deal out of my graduation, and so far, they had listened.
As far as I knew, Patrick and his wife, Kinsey, were the only two people from his family attending, and with how big the Kinney family was collectively, I was glad for it.
But now, I felt a tremendous amount of hope building in my chest at the thought of Meg accompanying her dad and stepmom. Suddenly, she seemed to be the only guest that even mattered.
But she gave my mom an apologetic smile and said, “I actually have plans with Jack tonight.”
That hope was extinguished in an instant to give way to a stomach-churning bitterness at the mention of her boyfriend's name.
Jack. Fucking Jack.
I had met him once, and, dammit, I didn't hate him.
Yet, somehow, that made me despise him all the more because I couldn't think of a single reason for her to break up with him.
He was an okay guy with a good, steady job and a jawline even I was jealous of.
He had an apartment a couple of towns over, a brand-new car, and a fucking dog.
How the fuck could I compete with all that?
The answer was, I couldn't, and I constantly had to remind myself of that and shove my goofy ass back into the friend zone anytime I caught my mind wandering. Which was more often than I'd care to admit.
“Oh, bring him!” Mom exclaimed cheerfully, and I glanced over my shoulder to level her with a look I hoped shot daggers right through her friendly hostess exterior. “The more, the merrier!”
For fuck's sake, Mom.
I bit down on my tongue and turned to face Meg with a smile so forced that my cheeks screamed for mercy.
Meg blanched and started to shake her head. “Oh, no, no. It's okay. We—”
“Meghan, please, we have more than enough food and not enough space for all the leftovers,” Mom begged. “We'd be happy to have you both.”
Still faking a smile, I coached my head into nodding encouragingly.
“Well, I can ask him,” Meg finally said, relenting with an uncertain quirk of her lips. “I'm sure he'll say yes though. We were just going to hang out at his place anyway.”
Hang out was code for fuck, and my plastered-on grin faltered a bit as I let go of a hot, angry sigh.
“Oh, great!” Mom exclaimed, beaming. “Dinner will be out around five.”
Yes, I thought as Meg thanked my mom graciously for the invitation. Great.
***
“Meg and Jack are here,” Dad said, sidling up to me in the living room's open doorway, a cup of soda in his hand.
“Fantastic,” I muttered sardonically, watching the room full of people chat and eat plates of food, balanced on their laps.
The crowd had grown significantly larger than what I had originally hoped for.
Mayor Fischer and her husband, Howard, had been invited at the last minute, along with Kylie O'Leary and Tess O'Dell, whose husbands were both currently on tour with their band, Devin O'Leary and the Blue Existence. Then Dad had bumped into Connor Jacobs and Kev Scott and asked if their families would want to stop by, as he put it, “to get some of this food out of my freakin’ house.”
And despite having way more people surrounding me than I cared to socialize with, along with enough kids to fill a Boy Scout troop, I didn’t mind.
Actually, it was nice to feel appreciated and to have all these people show up with congratulations for me.
It was something I wouldn't have expected years ago, when I was spending every day fucking up and goofing off, and to have it now was almost enough to move me to tears.
But I'd been hoping all night that Meg wouldn't come.
I had hoped she'd be too busy, that Jack would insist on staying home to screw around instead.
And as much as I wanted to barf at the thought of his hands on her, seeing it with my own eyes was all the more terrible, and knowing now that they were here made me want to teleport straight to my room or another fucking planet entirely, just to avoid them both on the way up the stairs.
“She's a little older than you,” Dad muttered inconspicuously from behind the brim of his cup.
“She's twenty-six,” I replied, unsure of what he was getting at … and why.
“And you're twenty-one.”
“Okay?” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye.
“Just sayin', she might not be into younger guys. Especially ones she's known since they were kids.”
I furrowed my brow and turned to him. “Who says I want her to be into me?”
Dad plastered a you've gotta be kidding me look on his face as he lowered his cup. His eyes met mine. “Next time you're looking at her, I'm gonna take a picture. Then I'll show you, and you'll see what everyone else sees.”
My defenses dropped as my face fell. “What?”