Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
TRICK
I’d barely been awake an hour, and already my day had turned to shit.
I managed to go all of three hours after leaving her place last night before the need to reach out to her outweighed everything else.
But the two texts I’d sent the night before and the one I shot her this morning right after waking up had all gone unanswered.
And the lack of response was beginning to drive me out of my fucking head.
“Morning, Daddy,” Hannah greeted when I entered the kitchen.
“Mornin’, Banana.”
“Hey, Dad,” Shawn added.
“Bud.” I gave his shoulder a jostle as I passed him on the barstool, then bent to kiss the top of Hannah’s head before moving around to the coffee machine. “Y’all sleep good?”
“Yeah,” Shawn answered. “This place is freaking cool!”
Turning back to the island, I slugged back a gulp of coffee and placed the mug on the counter as I studied my baby girl. “What about you, Banana? You like your room?”
“Yeah, Daddy.” She smiled a megawatt grin that worked wonders in loosening that ball of dread that had taken residence in my gut the past several months. “It’s great. But do you think Ms. Eden would mind if I painted it?”
“Don’t see why not, depending on the color. You got something in mind?” She shook her head and spooned some cereal into her mouth. “How about I check with Eden sometime this week? Then the next weekend I have you, we can hit up the hardware store and find you something you like.”
“Can I paint mine too?” Shawn garbled through a mouthful of cereal.
“Yeah, bud. We’ll go after your soccer game.” I sucked down more coffee, in desperate need since I hadn’t slept for shit. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the sadness in Nona’s. “You guys finish that up. It’s almost time to go.”
“On it!” With an overabundance of energy for so early in the morning, Shawn hopped off the barstool, dumped his bowl in the sink, and took off to grab his stuff from his room.
Hannah moved much slower, taking the time to rinse her bowl in the sink.
But instead of going to grab her backpack, she stopped beside me and pressed close against my side.
It was something she’d done since she was a little girl but was becoming more rare as of late.
Taking advantage of the moment she was offering, I looped my arm around her back and pulled her tight.
“I like the house, Daddy,” she said as I kissed her head again.
“I’m glad, Hannah Banana.”
“Like the neighborhood too. It’s really pretty around here.”
That ball in my gut loosened even more. “Makes me happy to hear that, baby girl.”
She stood against me in silence for a few seconds before adding, “And I like that Ms. Nona is just right across the street. She’s awesome.”
My arm spasmed at the mention of Nona. “Yeah, darlin’. She is.”
“And pretty.”
“Yeah,” I grunted in reply.
“Like really pretty,” Hannah continued, tilting her head back and giving me a funny look. “I’ve heard boys at school talk, and they all think she’s one of the prettiest moms in the whole town.”
“You makin’ your way around a point, sweetie, or just stating the obvious?”
Her face split into a huge shit-eating grin. “So you think she’s real pretty too.” It was a statement, not a question. My girl was way more perceptive than I’d given her credit for. Either that or I’d done a piss-poor job at hiding my feelings at dinner the night before.
I gave her a playful shake and chuckled. “What are you getting at, Banana?”
“Not getting at anything,” she chirped, pulling from my embrace. “Just saying I think she’s super pretty is all.”
And with that, she went skipping out of the kitchen.
I made my way through the bullpen with a coffee from Muffin Top in my hands and a shitty disposition. Nona had gone back to avoiding me the same as she’d been for the past month and a half, and although I had no one to blame but myself, it still pissed me the fuck off.
My partner lifted his head and grinned when I hit my desk. “Mornin’, sunshine.”
“Fuck off,” I grunted, kicking my chair out and lowering myself into it so I could power up my computer.
Hayes chuckled, smiling a full, bright white smile.
He’d been doing a whole hell of a lot of that lately.
Ever since he got the love of his life back.
They’d been through hell and back more times than anyone could count.
Once, years ago when they were ripped apart, and again just months ago when a psychotic asshole went on a killing spree in the twisted belief that he was doing it for Temperance.
It finally ended with the madman being killed by Hayes, me, and at least half the men on the force when we emptied our clips into him, but not before he took Tempie and put her through a goddamn nightmare.
It was a miracle, and a testament to their strength that they came through that healthy and happy and together.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Hayes ribbed, getting off on screwing with me in my current mood. Just like I’d have done with him.
“Like I said, fuck off,” I muttered, one corner of my mouth hooking up in a smirk behind the plastic lid of my cup. Downing the last of it, I chucked the empty paper cup in the trash bin and kicked back in my chair. “So, what’re we lookin’ at this morning?”
The good humor fled from Hayes’s expression. “Two more OD’d last night. One’s in critical condition at Mercy.”
I had a gut feeling I knew the answer, but I still had to ask. “And the other?”
Hayes looked down at his desk before returning his hard stare to me. “Sixteen-year-old girl. She didn’t make it.”
I let out a grunt, balling my hands into tight fists as I leaned forward in my seat. “Meth?”
“Still waiting on toxicology, but it’s lookin’ that way.”
“Fuckin’ Christ.” That made four meth-related overdoses in the past two months, and the first death. All of them being fucking kids no older than their early twenties.
Needless to say, shit was getting bad. For the past couple of years, the counties around Hope Valley had been dealing with a pretty heavy drug problem.
Our town had been lucky for a while, remaining untouched while other areas had been hit hard.
We’d been silently holding out hope that we’d stay clear of that garbage, but that hope was gone now.
An asshole by the name of Malachi Black had been cooking somewhere up in the mountains for years, but none of the departments had been able to locate his operation.
The longer he stayed in business, the bigger that operation got.
And the shit thing was, we didn’t have dick on the fucker. Absolutely nothing.
“Something has to fuckin’ give,” Hayes said, scrubbing at his face. “Black’s a goddamn stain on humanity. Waiting for that prick to screw up so we have something that’ll hold him is doin’ my head in.”
“Sixteen years old,” I seethed. “She was just a fuckin’ kid. A little girl.” Not even a year older than my own baby girl, I thought. And in the blink of an eye, the life she hadn’t even had a chance to start living was snuffed out.
Hayes rested his elbows on the desk and leaned in, studying my face closely. “You good, brother?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
It was obvious from his expression that he didn’t believe me, but fortunately, he let it drop. I got to work, finishing a report on a case we’d just closed earlier in the week while checking my cell more than regularly in the hopes of getting a response from Nona.
“So how’s the new place?” Hayes asked about half an hour later. “The kids settle in for their first night?”
“The kids loved it,” I answered, turning my attention from looking at my phone for the millionth time. I gave him a little smirk. “They’re already askin’ if they can paint their rooms.”
“That’s good, brother. Means they’re wanting to settle in, make the space theirs, right?”
“That’s what I’m hopin’.”
“I’m glad, man. It’s good you’re finally settling in somewhere. And believe me, if I could give you more time to appreciate that, I would, but I’ve got no control.”
My forehead pulled in a tight frown. “No control over what?”
“Tempie’s got it in her head, man. Saw you and Nona at our wedding and was convinced you guys had a moment. Word spread that you two are neighbors, and now she’s just itchin’ to play matchmaker. She’s brought the rest of her posse into the fold too.”
Well fuck.
“Don’t suppose there’s any way for you to call her off, is there?”
“You’ve met my wife, right?” he returned, the look on his face speaking volumes. “You think I have any chance of talkin’ her out of anything once she sets her mind to it, you’re delusional, my man.”
“Ah, hell,” I grumbled, flopping back in my chair and reaching around to rub at the back of my neck. “Just do your best, yeah? I’m not exactly Nona’s favorite person right now.”
“What happened?”
The knots that had taken residence in my shoulders and neck since yesterday evening bunched up even tighter as I admitted, “I fucked up. That’s what happened.”
One of Hayes’s eyebrows arched toward his hairline. “Thinking you might need to expand on that just a bit, Trick.”
“We went home together that night. After the wedding,” I admitted, speaking about that night for the first time in more than a month and a half.
The energy around Hayes changed, and not a good way. “Please tell me you didn’t,” he said in a low, ominous voice. “Please, Christ, tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t mean for it to go down like it did.”
“Jesus, man!” he exclaimed. “The fuck were you thinking?”
“You think I’m not beating myself up enough as it is?” I snapped back. “I don’t need your shit piled on top of it.”
“Obviously you do if you’re playin’ games with a woman like Nona,” Hayes returned.
My top lip curled up in a sneer as I quietly seethed, “I wasn’t playing any games, asshole.”
“Really?” He let out a bitter, sarcastic laugh. “So you’re tellin’ me you didn’t fuck over a good woman—a good woman who’s already been fucked over once by that piece of shit she was married to—by screwin’ her while your head was still jacked up over that bitch of an ex-wife?”
“Watch it,” I warned, my fingers clenching into painfully tight fists on the top of my desk.
“See? That’s my point exactly. Emma dragged your ass through the ringer for the better part of a goddamn year, playin’ games with your head, twisting your shit into knots, and the moment I call her a bitch, you jump down my throat.
Tell me, partner, when are you gonna stop defending a woman who’s proven time and time again she doesn’t deserve it, huh? ”
“It’s not about that. She’s the mother of my kids.”
“She’s manipulative and selfish. She played you until she got bored. That’s not a woman who deserves your respect or loyalty, Trick. You’ve spent all this time holdin’ on to a memory of something that just isn’t there anymore. So I gotta ask, you still want her?”
“No,” I answered resolutely. “It just took me longer than it should’ve to realize that.”
“Then it’s time you let the past go so you can move the fuck on,” he stated bluntly.
“Shit.” Resting my elbows on my desk, I dropped my head into my hands and gave my face a vicious scrub. “I fucked up.”
“Yeah,” he grumbled in return. “You already said that, and you know I got your back in all things, but I’m not gonna disagree with you on this one. Nona’s one of the good ones, one of the best. Now you gotta figure out how the hell you’re gonna make it right, brother.”
That was exactly what I was trying to do.