The cop swallowed.
He was young. About twenty-two or so, but he looked like he was much younger than that when he looked at me as I spoke about Reggie.
As if he’d never had a strong-willed girl that challenged him before.
I grinned like a fuckin’ loon then, making him take a step back.
“If you want, you can tell her you hung her photo up in the locker room,” I said. “Maybe you’ll get an idea of what it’ll be like to find your own girl.”
Not like I had a girl, per se. But when I admitted it to myself in the dark of night that I was married to her, I had this stupid little fluttery feeling in my chest start to take off.
“I’ll just…” He took the photo down and handed it to me.
“I don’t want a photo of you with my girl,” I said, refusing to take it.
The cop looked around at the locker room that had not-so-suspiciously emptied in the time that I’d been in there.
“I’ll take it to the shredder.” He nodded his head in confirmation, as if that would make me believe him.
“You do that,” I said as I turned around to leave.
I wasn’t surprised to find half the fuckin’ SWAT team standing at the door.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re married?”
I ignored every fuckin’ one of them as I headed to my patrol car.
The first stop was the hardware store. The next was the apartments after I looked Reggie up.
Chapter 5
If you’re happy and you know it, fuck off.
-Text from Reggie to Nathan
Nathan
“You can’t put those locks on the door.”
I didn’t bother to look up from the deadbolt installation I was doing.
Instead, I finished installing the bolt and started screwing it in, forgoing the pitiful screws they’d given me for two that were three inches long and would really dig in deep to the door.
“Duly noted,” I said as I leaned into the screw gun.
“It’s against the apartment’s policy. You can’t install anything that wasn’t already there or installed by maintenance,” the dealer snarked.
I looked up then to spot the asshole that’d been staring at me. He’d been by the dumpster for the last half an hour as I’d used my credit card to get into Reggie’s place.
He didn’t call the cops, though.
The sad thing was, nobody called the cops.
A strange man breaking into someone’s apartment, even one in uniform, should’ve surely caused a stir.
But not here.
“Interesting,” I said as I looked back down. “I’ll be sure to note that in my phone under ‘I don’t give a fuck.’”
The dealer shuffled, kicking the grass at his feet.
I had a feeling that my being there was cramping his style, and he couldn’t sell shit while I was there and obviously paying attention.
I’d seen over thirteen cars drive into the parking lot, make some weird sort of eye contact with the guy, only to leave just as fast as they came in.
I wasn’t fucking stupid.
I knew the guy was dealing.
And I didn’t fucking like that he was doing it so close to my girl’s place.
My girl.
My inner brain was fucking nuts.
But still, it’d been something that I’d been saying since the dawn of time.
It was hard to get myself out of the habit, especially now that we’d been married for years.
She was mine and nobody else’s. That wasn’t going to change. Ever if I had my choice.
We may not ever be together, but we sure the fuck wouldn’t be with anyone else.
The sound of a car pulling in and not driving away had me looking up to spot a familiar truck pulling into the driveway.
Travis, Reggie’s stepfather.
He spotted me right away as he put his big ass tow truck into park.
Going back to the screw that I was putting into the door, I waited for Travis to climb the rickety ass steps.
Only, he stopped when he saw the drug dealer.
“Go the fuck away,” Travis ordered.
The drug dealer grinned. “Public property, man.”
“I’m about to call in a couple of favors, man,” Travis snarked right back. “And get your stupid ass evicted.”
The drug dealer puffed up his chest in response. “I don’t even live here.”
Travis’s eyes came up to meet mine.
I reached for my mic and called in a loiterer.
“10-4,” dispatch acknowledged.
Another unit would be here soon to move him along.
If he didn’t live here, there was no reason in hell that he should be here. Especially for that amount of time.
“Where do you live?” Travis asked, crossing his beefy arms over his chest.
Being a tow truck driver for years, Travis made his muscles the old-fashioned way.
I’d always fuckin’ envied his bulk.
Though, now that I was older, my bulk stayed now, too. I didn’t just resemble some lanky teenager looking to play pro-ball.
I was an adult with an adult body.
“I don’t have to answer to you, motherfucker.” The drug dealer shifted from foot to foot, looking nervous.
I finished screwing in the last couple of screws and set the screw gun down in the open doorway of Reggie’s apartment.
“No,” I agreed as I came down the stairs, a little less calm now. “But you do have to answer me.”
The dealer’s eyes flicked to me then back to Travis.
I knew he was about to run.
“You run, make sure you don’t come back here or it’ll give us reasonable cause.” I stopped midway down the steps. “And I don’t particularly like the fact that you’re dealing out here next to my wife’s place.”
The guy looked as if he wanted to argue, but then the cruiser pulled in, and the dealer’s eyes went wide.
Taking one last look at his spot where he’d been the majority of the morning, he took off through the cars and disappeared behind the apartments.
Dax Tremaine got out of his car and looked at me curiously. “Want me to follow him?”
I shook my head. “No. Unfortunately, he didn’t do anything bad enough that he can be arrested for… yet.”
He gave a salute and got back into his patrol vehicle.
I turned my attention back to Travis, surprised when he didn’t look openly
