Chapter Eleven
Eliot
The drive to the Urgent Care on Lakeline is quiet. Parker keeps her gaze pinned out the passenger side window, hands in her lap, the AC ruffling the hair that escaped her braid.
I don’t push for conversation. I’m too caught up in my own head. Replaying the last thirty minutes over and over.
Hardison showed up as I was radioing Parker for the third time. I wasn’t worried—yet. I rarely have to lend out my spare and told myself the batteries must have failed.
But when she didn’t answer her partner’s call, we rushed into the building so fast Nate hadn’t even finished zipping up his Tyvek suit.
I want to ask how long she was trapped. Whether she has any other injuries.
How she got herself out. But I’m not sure I’m owed any answers.
We’ve spent all of three hours together.
We’re not friends. Barely coworkers. If I push, she might insist I drive her back to the Ranger Station and leave her the fuck alone.
Easing the truck into a parking space close to the door of the Urgent Care on Lakeline, I barely get it into park before she’s reaching for the door handle.
“Parker, wait—”
“I’ve got it from here,” she says. The Texas heat barrels through the cab as she throws the door open wide.
“Your car’s at the Ranger Station.”
“I’ll call a Lyft when I’m done. You’re off the hook, Flint. I’ll make sure Nate doesn’t give you shit if we have to work another scene together.”
If.
“You need stitches. Probably pain meds. If you think I’m gonna leave, you don’t know me very well.” I slide out of the car, do my best to hide the stiffness in my own leg, and round the hood.
She watches me, lips parted like she wants to argue. Until I offer her my hand. “Take it slow.”
“And here I thought I’d try for gold in the fifty-yard dash,” she deadpans.
I chuckle for the first time since we went our separate ways at the warehouse. “You let me help you and we might have a decent chance at comin’ in dead last.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” Easing herself down by inches, she gets both feet on the ground before she reaches for my arm.
“Nope.” I let her set the pace. She’s not shaking, but each step might as well be a negotiation with gravity—or her own body.
“Most people would try to reassure a woman with a hole in her damn thigh,” she mutters.
“Parker, I’d think you’d know by now… I ain’t most people.”
Inside, the waiting room is half-full. The fluorescent lights make everything too bright. A daytime talk show drones on from a TV mounted high on the wall in the corner, and a toddler complains loudly about being bored.
Parker releases the hold she has on my forearm before we reach the desk. The receptionist—a woman with graying hair and a bored expression—looks up.
“What can I help you with today?” she asks.
After filling out forms and assuring the receptionist three times that no, she didn’t hit her head, we’re directed to a row of plastic chairs along the wall.
“Forty-five minutes for a handful of stitches is bullshit,” Parker mutters. “This place ain’t even busy.”
I sweep my gaze around the room. Four—no, five people. “Could be worse. I’ve been here on a Friday night. Packed to the gills. Not for the faint of heart.”
“You don’t have to stay.” She slumps back in the chair, stretching her left leg carefully and trying—unsuccessfully—to hide the way pain tightens her eyes.
I turn my gaze to the TV in the corner where a local chef is droning on about a recipe that has no business being made in the heat of the summer. “Maybe I want to learn all about this idjit’s pot roast secrets.”
Her delicate snort is the closest thing to a laugh I’ve heard in hours. “You have an award-winning chili recipe. I think you’d do fine with a pot roast.”
“Totally different cuts of meat.” I cross my legs at the ankles and continue to stare intently at the television.
“You know, most people would take the hint.”
“I’ll repeat my earlier statement. ‘I ain’t most people.’”
She huffs and looks away. For a moment, I think that’s the end of it.
Her voice drops to a whisper. “You’ve already done enough, Eliot.”
I turn and study her profile. The messy braid draped over her shoulder. The smudge of soot near her temple. The exhaustion she’s trying not to show.
“No.” I shake my head. “Getting you here was the bare minimum. Making sure you’re okay is the rest of the job.”
She spends thirty-five minutes in the treatment room.
I scroll a couple of news sites on my phone, check my email, and critique the chef’s pot roast technique under my breath. “He’s gonna turn that into shoe leather. Nowhere near enough salt. Trimmin’ off the fat? No chef in their right mind would do that.”
Parker finally emerges with less of a limp, a fresh bandage peeking out from the large hole in her jeans, and the look of someone who’s been given pain meds and is pretending she wasn’t.
“Five stitches,” she says. “And a lecture about tetanus.”
Laughing isn’t even close to appropriate, but I can’t help myself. “I thought it cowered in fear whenever you were around?”
“It does.” She rubs her left arm with a grimace. “But in case it gets any ideas, they gave me a booster.”
“Ready to make a break for it?”
“I can take a Lyft to the station.” Her shoulders heave with a heavy sigh. “Might as well get a head start on all the paperwork.”
“Parker, it’s after five. The mountain of forms will still be there tomorrow. I’ll drive you home.”
“I need my car.”
Oh, hell no.
“Your eyes are dilated. You ain’t drivin’ on pain meds.” I pull the key fob from my pocket and offer her my arm.
“Shit.” Her shoulders slump a little more. “You’re right.”
“Say again?” I cup a hand behind my ear, grinning. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“Probably. Come on. There’s a Whataburger on the next block. I’m buyin’.”
When we get to her apartment complex, Parker’s still hopping mad I wouldn’t let her pay for a couple loaded burgers and fries. So mad, she hops out of the truck like nothing happened inside that foreman’s office. Then has to grab the door frame to stop from face planting in the parking lot.
“Fuck.” I limp around the truck and take her arm. She doesn’t protest. The pain meds must not be doing shit for her. “Which one’s yours?”
“Three-oh-nine.”
The building’s older, with a single exterior staircase at each end. “Let me guess. No elevator.”
Parker huffs out a weak laugh. “That was five hundred more a month. I’m lucky I can even afford this place.”
I let that comment go for now, and let her lean on me up all three flights. It’s a testament to the amount of pain she’s in that she doesn’t stop me from helping her all the way inside.
Her apartment is tidy. Well-worn carpet, appliances one step short of antique, but there isn’t a spec of dust anywhere. I scan the space briefly, noting the smoke alarms—one in the kitchen, a second in the hall.
Parker drops her keys on the counter. “You’re officially off the clock, Flint. Go home.”
I turn, but before I reach the door, my gaze lands on the bookcase against the wall.
“Holy shit. You have all of Marianne Watson’s cookbooks?
I’ve been lookin’ for a copy of Low and Slow Cooking for two years.
” I trail my fingers over the spines until I reach Sunday Table. “I use this one all the time.”
Her gasp has weight to it. More than I expect. I whip back around, half expecting to see her buckled over in pain.
Instead, she’s upright. Frozen in place. A single tear balances on her lower lashes. “Those… Marianne Watson was my mother.” The shape of the words, the quiet reverence in her tone, show me more of Parker Elmore than anything else she’s ever said to me.
I pull my hand away. “Comfort Food. That’s why you have one of their mugs.”
“She owned it for six years.” Parker stands perfectly still, her shoulders hiked halfway up to her ears, her chest tight enough I can clock every breath.
“Did my HazMat training in El Paso. I ate there for two weeks straight. Gained ten pounds. But her green chile casserole was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. To this day.”
The tear rolls down Parker’s soot-smudged cheek. “She’d have loved to hear you say that.”
Goddammit. Deep down, I figured something had happened to the famous chef. Parker’s reaction confirms it.
I don’t push for details. She’s too raw, and God knows I’ve got my own pain I don’t share with anyone. I’m about to tell her to call me if she needs anything, when she clears her throat.
“Dementia.” Her voice is flat. Like she’s practiced this over and over again until she can say it without breaking down.
“I took care of her at home for a few years, but…” With a quick swipe at her cheek, she catches the tear.
“Putting her in a facility was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Until I had to watch her fade away right in front of me. ”
“Parker…” Shit. No words can ever erase the grief she carries with her every minute of every day. She’s damn good at hiding it, but it’s in her eyes. Etched in those blue-gray irises shining in the light from the setting sun.
“You…should go,” she says.
Yup. This is me. Going. So why are my boots glued to the floor?
She takes a single step closer, a muscle in her jaw tensing. I recognize the look. The effort it takes to hold in something so painful, it’s eating you from the inside out.
Crossing to her is the most natural thing in the world. And the worst idea I’ve ever had.
Parker’s entire body stills as my hand cups her cheek. Her eyes—Christ, there’s so much there. This woman is so much more than sarcasm and a gun. And those scars she carries, they cut deep.
Her eyes fill with tears, but she doesn’t turn away.
Leaning down, I press my lips to her forehead. It’s brief. Gentle. The kind of kiss meant to say only one thing.
I see you.
“You need anything, you call.” The words scrape over the lump in my throat.
“I won’t,” she whispers, and finally pulls away.
With a nod, I go, and it’s damn near impossible to stop myself from looking back at her one last time. But somehow, I manage. The lock thunks seconds after I shut the door.
Only then do I turn around and press my palm to the wood.
She won’t call. I know it as sure as I know my own name. Because I know her. And I know what it’s like to carry the world on your shoulders all alone.