Pauline nodded. “He’s a lot different. He doesn’t play anymore. He’s the force’s top ticket writer. He picks up overtime that nobody else wants. Literally, he’s that cop. The one that nobody wants to mess with. The one that everybody knows and cringes when they pass.”
“Aww, be easy on the kid. He’s had a rough year,” my uncle said from behind us.
I inhaled half of my sandwich, very nearly choking to death, but my uncle was there. Always able and willing to save the day.
He slammed his palm roughly down on my back, knocking the bread loose from my windpipe, as well as a few teeth for good measure.
“Okay,” I groaned, pulling away from him.
Was it just me, or was he hitting harder than he needed to?
“Oh, Chief Rhodes!” Pauline said, standing.
In the process, she knocked half of her lunch on the floor, and I barely contained the urge to roll my eyes.
They treated my uncle as if he were a celebrity, being the chief of police. However, if they only knew that he was a horrible cheater at the game Go Fish, and the funniest drunk in the world, they’d never look at him straight in the eyes again.
“Uncle Darren, what are you doing at work today?” I asked suspiciously.
My uncle narrowed his eyes at me. “Oh, just seeing how your day was going so far. Just making sure everyone is treating you alright.”
I wanted to smack him.
He damn well knew that I didn’t want to be associated with him.
I didn’t want people to look at me differently.
I wanted to be me, not Chief Rhodes’ niece.
Now they’d all treat me differently.
In fact, Pauline was already staring at me like I was a bug she didn’t want to be anywhere near.
Great.
“Thanks for stopping by. You can go now,” I said through clenched teeth.
He grinned at me. Seriously and truly grinned at me.
Then he left, leaving only damage in the wake.
By the end of the day, everybody knew I was the Chief of Police’s niece.
Cops. Receptionists. 911 dispatchers. Felons.
It was fucking perfect.Chapter 4I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good.
-Blake before she eats a package of Oreos.
Blake
“Excuse me,” I said, keeping my head lowered to block the rain from getting under my hooded raincoat and saturating my hair.
I was on my way home, descending the steps of the station, when I heard it.
“Sorry, darlin,” an extremely familiar voice said to me.
Shivers, and not the good kind, stole down my spine, filling up my lungs, and squeezing them to where I could hardly breathe.
“David,” I said, nodding at him.
I might have been able to leave, but there was another man there with David, and that was the man that I’d made a fool of myself in front of just a short week ago.
Had it already been a week?
This, luckily, had been the first time I’d run into both men, and I was grateful.
I loved my job, but there was no way in hell I was going to keep working there if I had to see David often.
I didn’t have enough bail money to accomplish that feat.
I still, every night, thought about him.
Thought about all that I’d thought we’d had.
All that time I’d wasted being loyal to a man that didn’t extend the same courtesy to me.
Then there was Foster.
The tall drink of water in the middle of a hot Texas summer.
He was freakin’ beautiful.
His hair was wet from the rain, making it look more sandy blonde rather than snow white blonde. All those beautiful blonde curls were plastered to his head as he took me in.
Were they friends?
If they were, I’d never know Foster better. Even if I did have an incredibly high-school-like crush on him.
I couldn’t be friends with someone that was friends with my ex. I didn’t want anything to do with David at all, even second hand.
“Bye Officer Spurlock, good job today,” I said as I pushed past them and started down the steps.
Foster had interrupted a hotel robbery in progress, answering the silent alarm that the receptionist had tripped the moment the crack head had asked her for the money.
“Thanks,” Foster said, sounding surprised that I’d even offered the compliment.
I tossed him a smile over my shoulder, rain wetting my face, and said, “That wasn’t anything more than a compliment, Officer Spurlock. Don’t let it go to your head.”
The last thing I saw before the rain really started to pour down was David glaring at Foster, and Foster staring at me with a smirk on his lips. One that promised more things to come.
I drove home in the near monsoon weather, past my old home that now had a different woman’s car in the driveway, and pulled into my driveway that was on the next street over.
I’d looked and looked for a house that was anywhere but where I finally found one. But I literally couldn’t find anything anywhere else.
What I received in the divorce settlement was enough to buy an affordable house just two streets over from my old home. Which is what I had to do. It was either that, or move completely out of Kilgore, and I wasn’t giving that royal dickhead the advantage of seeing me squirm.
The very next week, the asshole had moved his ‘beat wife’ into my home, and proceeded to play house.
At least they hadn’t gotten married…yet.
It was a joy to get to see the other woman every day, though.
My phone rang before I could get out of my car, and I decided to wait and answer it before I got out.
“Hello?” I greeted my mother.
“Uncle Darren wants you to meet him at dinner tonight. Bodacious,” my mother said excitedly.
“Why?” I asked, confused as to why my uncle wouldn’t have called me himself.
“He sent your dad a message on his cell phone. He’s talking to the Mayor of Kilgore right now, and can’t break away.”
“Is it just him, or what?” I asked, studying my windshield as it started to rain a little bit harder.
I hated when it rained.
Seriously hated it.
When I was sixteen, I’d had a wreck during a thunderstorm.