30. Brooks
Brooks
“Status check:
Chief Lawson unavailable for non-emergency contact.”
— Internal Station Record
The paperwork on my desk has been blurring into a white haze for the last three hours. My temples are throbbing, but the physical pain is nothing compared to the dead, heavy ache sitting dead center in my chest.
I’m an idiot. I know I’m an idiot.
I lean my head back against the vinyl headrest of my office chair, closing my eyes, but that only makes it worse.
The second my eyelids close, I am back there. I see the exact moment the light went out in Ember’s eyes. I see her bright, beautiful, stubborn smile fracture and collapse, leaving her looking completely bare.
Completely hurt.
By me.
The memory makes me want to put my fist through the drywall.
I want her. Fuck, I want her so much it feels like a physical restriction in my throat.
I’ve spent so long pretending she was just an annoying, chaotic neighbor with terrible taste in porch paint, but the truth is, she’s the first thing that’s made me feel alive since… well, ever.
I don’t just like her. If I’m being entirely honest with myself in the quiet of this empty office, I’m probably already half in love with her.
But love isn’t a solitary calculation when you have a five-year-old girl counting on you to come home every night.
Sophie is my entire universe.
What happens to my little girl if I don’t pull myself out from under the burning timber? What happens to her if I let myself get so distracted, so wrapped up in the intoxicating, brilliant whirlwind that is Ember, that I miss a warning sign?
And it isn’t just about me. It’s about Ember, too.
She’s young, she’s brilliant, and she radiates a type of pure, unburdened freedom that I haven’t possessed in a decade.
She doesn’t deserve the suffocating weight of my life.
She deserves someone whose biggest emergency is forgetting an anniversary. Not someone who kisses her goodbye wondering if it’ll be the last time. Not someone whose truck pulls out of the driveway with lights and sirens while she pretends not to count the minutes until it comes back.
Loving me would come with instructions nobody should have to learn.
She shouldn’t have to carry the stress of wondering if the man she’s with is going to make it back for dinner.
And God, the fear.
I wasn’t even in love with Lauren, but when she walked out, it changed me. I didn’t blame her then, and I don’t blame her now—but the idea of risking that kind of instability again, especially with Sophie watching, is enough to make me want to lock the door and never open it.
I’m not just scared for Sophie; I’m terrified for myself. I’m terrified of letting someone in deep enough to actually break me.
I’m trying to be a good man. I’m trying to protect her from the disaster of my reality, and I’m trying to keep my daughter’s world perfectly safe and stable.
But as I stare at the blinking cursor on my computer screen, the silence of the station feels less like a fortress and more like a tomb.
? ? ?
By Monday morning, the tension in my own skin has tightened to a snapping point.
Sophie is sitting at the kitchen island, her little legs swinging back and forth, aggressively drowning a frozen waffle in maple syrup. Her pink kindergarten backpack is already zipped and waiting by the front door.
“Daddy?” she asks, her voice muffled around a mouthful of waffle.
“Yeah, Soph?”
“Can we go see Emmy before school? Just for five minutes?” She looks up at me. “I want to show her my drawing. She said she likes drawings with lots of glitter.”
My chest constricts so tightly I can barely take a breath.
“Not today, sweetie,” I say. I walk over and wipe a smudge of syrup off her chin with a napkin. “Ember is… she’s really busy this week. We need to leave her be.”
Sophie’s little brow furrows, her bottom lip clear-cut into a pout. “But she’s always home before school. She gives me the funny crackers shaped like bunnies.”
“Not today, Soph,” I repeat, a little more firmly than I intended.
She picks at the edge of her plate, her energy instantly dropping. “Is Ember mad at us?”
The question feels like a knife sliding right between my ribs.
No, baby. She’s not mad at us. She’s hurt by me.
“No,” I choke out, kneeling down so I’m eye-level with her. “She’s not mad at you. Never at you. Daddy just… we just have a lot of things to take care of right now, okay? Let’s get your backpack.”
The drive to the primary school is unusually quiet. Sophie stares out the window, tracing patterns in the condensation, and I drive with one hand gripped so hard against the steering wheel my knuckles are white.
I drop her off at the kindergarten gate, watching her line up with her class, her little pink backpack bouncing against her shoulders.
She looks small. Safe. But the relief I usually feel when she’s tucked away into her routine doesn’t come.
There is just an empty, hollow ringing in my ears.
? ? ?
I pull the command truck into the gravel lot of the town bakery, needing to grab a dozen rolls for the shift crew’s dinner tonight before I pick up Sophie from her after-school program.
I kill the engine, rubbing the palms of my hands violently against my face.
Just get the bread, Lawson. Go to the station. Go home. Sleep.
I step out of the truck, the gravel crunching beneath my heavy station boots. The afternoon sun is bright, blindingly so, making my headache spike behind my eyes.
I push open the glass door of the bakery, the little bell chiming overhead, and step inside.
The air is thick with the scent of sugar, yeast, and fresh coffee. But the second I look toward the counter, my entire body freezes.
Ember is there.
She’s standing behind the cash register, wearing a massive, oversized apron that looks like it belongs to Marge. Her hair is pinned up in a messy, chaotic bun with a flour-dusted pencil sticking out of it.
She’s ringing up a customer, her face arranged into a bright, animated expression as she gestures wildly with her hands, making the elderly man in front of her let out a wheezing laugh.
She looks vibrant. She looks like herself.
But then the customer takes his bag and walks out, the bell chiming behind him, and the shift is instantaneous.
The second the door closes, the bright, sparkling energy completely drains out of her.
Her shoulders drop, a heavy, devastating exhaustion settling into her frame. Her eyes look wide, hollow, and so profoundly sad it makes my breath catch in my throat.
She looks like she’s carrying the weight of the entire town on her shoulders.
Marge comes out from the back kitchen with a tray of fresh croissants. She takes one look at Ember, sets the tray down, and does something I have never seen her do in the fifteen years I’ve lived in this town.
She pulls Ember into a tight hug.
Ember stiffens for a fraction of a second, then leans into the older woman’s shoulder, her eyes closing tight as she swallows hard, her shoulders shaking just enough for me to know she’s fighting back tears.
Even in the middle of whatever this quiet heartbreak is, she pulls back after a second, slaps a smile back onto her flour-dusted face, and says something that makes Marge shake her head with a sad, fond look.
She’s hurting. Everyone in this damn town knows she’s hurting, and she’s still trying to make people laugh. She’s still trying to keep the chaos light.
I step back, my boot catching the edge of the doormat, the bell chiming loudly above me.
Ember’s eyes snap up at the sound. Our gazes lock across the bakery cases.
The fake, bright smile on her face completely drops, replaced by a cold, distant stillness that makes my stomach drop into my boots.
She just looks right through me, her eyes dead and flat, before she turns her back to me and walks straight into the kitchen, the swinging doors closing behind her.
I stand there, paralyzed, my hand still resting on the door handle.
“Can I help you, Chief?”
I look up. Marge is standing behind the register now, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression cold enough to freeze water. She doesn’t even look at me; she’s staring pointedly at the empty space beside the register.
“I… I just needed the dinner rolls for the station,” I mutter, my voice sounding thin, completely stripped of its usual authority.
Marge doesn’t move. She just stares at the wall behind me. “We’re out of rolls, Brooks. For you, we’re completely out of everything. Send Davis to get them, or someone else. I don’t want you in my shop. Get out.”
I don’t argue. I turn around and walk out into the bright afternoon air, my chest heaving, the image of Ember’s empty, dead gaze burned into the back of my eyelids.
I’m walking toward my truck, my mind a spinning, chaotic mess, when a shadow blocks my path near the sidewalk benches.
I stop.
Standing in a tight, formidable semi-circle right in front of my driver’s side door are Bernice, Hazel, and Dotty.
The three women who effectively run the gossip pipeline of this county, currently dressed in matching pastel cardigans and looking at me like I’m a piece of toxic waste they’ve been tasked with disposing of.
“Chief Lawson,” Bernice says, her voice dripping with an icy correctness that makes my spine straighten. She’s holding a knitting bag like a weapon.
“Bernice,” I say, clearing my throat, trying to step around them. “Ladies. I’m in a bit of a rush, I have to go to the station, I have to pick up Sophie from—”
“Sophie is currently at the library with my granddaughter, Brooks; she’s perfectly fine for another fifteen minutes,” Dotty interrupts, stepping forward. “We are having a conversation right now.”
I let out a ragged sigh, dropping my hands to my sides. “Look, if this is about the fire hydrant testing schedule for the north side—”
“Do we look like we give a flip about a hydrant, Brooks?” Hazel snaps. “We want to know what the hell is wrong with your head.”
I blink, completely caught off guard. “I’m sorry?”