WINSLOW
“Did he give you any trouble?” Mitch asked.
“Not unless you count him crying the whole ride here.” I glanced through the jail cell’s steel bars to the man I’d hauled in for drunk driving.
He sat on the cot, his head in his hands, still crying. Dumbass. Maybe this would teach him a lesson.
Oh, how I hated the Fourth of July. “Hopefully he’ll be the last,” I said.
Mitch sighed. “It’s still early. I bet we bring in one or two more.”
“But we’re out of space.” All five cells were occupied by other dumbasses.
“We’ll double up if we have to. Last year on the Fourth we had to triple a few cells.”
“Let’s just hope no one gets hurt.”
“Agreed.” He nodded. “But hey, on the bright side, no bar fights this year. Two years ago we busted up a brawl at Old Mill. That was a cluster. And last year we had six girls who got into it at Big Sam’s. That was even worse. Girls fight mean.”
I laughed, following him out of the holding area. “Yes, we do.”
The bars in town were closed. The rodeo was over. Now, hopefully, we just had to deal with the idiots who hadn’t gone home. The ones who’d decided to take the party elsewhere and cause trouble.
Mitch would be here to lock them up when the other officers brought them in.
The keys attached to his belt jingled as we walked. Of the officer team, Mitch was my favorite. His tall and stout frame made him an intimidating man, but I’d learned in my time here that he was gentle and kind.
Smiles aimed my way were rare in the station. They normally only came from Janice. And Mitch. He always had one waiting when I walked into the station in the early-morning hours before the shift change.
As we passed the last cell, the man who’d been hauled in first was on his cot, snoring louder than a bear.
Mitch simply shook his head and hit the button on the wall to signal we were ready to come out.
Allen was waiting on the other side to buzz us through the secure door.
He’d swapped out of day shift to help tonight on patrols.
Every member of my staff had been on duty today, even the office crew. The county sheriff and his team had come into town to help manage the crowds and patrol the streets. The Quincy Independence Day celebration had been a whirlwind of activity. We’d been prepping for it all week, and in just a few more hours, it would be over.
Thank God.
I yawned and dug a set of keys out of my pocket. They belonged to the cruiser I’d taken out for a two-hour patrol shift.
“It’s all yours.” I handed them to Mitch. He and Allen would be taking the next patrol shift together.
“Thanks, Chief.”
“Winslow,” I corrected.
He nodded but I suspected he’d keep calling me Chief. “Heading home?”
“Yeah.” I yawned again and glanced at the clock on the wall. Three in the morning. I’d come in at four, yesterday morning. “Call me if you need anything.”
He nodded. “Will do.” “Night, Allen.”
“Night, Chief,” he said. “See you Monday.” “That’s technically tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“Guess so.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not cut out for the night shift.”
“Me neither.” I waved, ducking into my office to collect my purse before heading outside, where my Durango had been parked for nearly twenty-four hours.
Sliding behind the wheel, I let my shoulders slump. “What a day.”
The festivities had started with a parade on Main. My team had barricaded the road and put out detour signs for the traffic needing to pass through Quincy. Officers had been stationed at both ends of the street to guide pedestrians and wave through cars. I’d missed most of the parade— floats and horses and classic cars—too busy walking the sidewalks and surveying the crowd.
Cleanup had followed, and I’d found thirty minutes to scarf down an early lunch at my desk. Afterward, while half of the officers had set out in cruisers on patrol, the rest of us had made our way to the fairgrounds to prepare for the evening rodeo.
During the barrel racing, I’d visited with the county sheriff, learning more about him and his team. During the steer wrestling, I’d escorted a drunken cowboy who’d been vomiting behind the porta-potties off the grounds to sleep it off in the back of his horse trailer. And during the team
roping, I’d helped a little girl who’d gotten separated from her family find her parents.
But toward the end of the night, as the sun had set and with it the temperature, I’d found a quiet moment to stand against the fence and breathe. The overhead lights had cloaked the arena in their blinding glow and obscured the stars above. Bull riding had been the final event, and as young men had climbed on the back of massive beasts, hoping to make it eight seconds, I’d focused on the stands, searching for Griffin.
He’d sat toward the bottom rail, and even from the opposite end of the fairgrounds, his smile had made my heart skip. Every row had been crammed, the space around Griffin no different. I’d recognized his family sitting close by.
The Edens had drawn nearly as much attention as the bull riders. People had passed, waving and stopping for a quick hello. Like he’d known I was watching, Griff had searched the fence line and found me.
In a sea of people, above the noise and below the lights, one look from him and the world had melted away.
The Fourth of July meant trouble.
In that moment, with that single look, I’d known I was in trouble.
Casual was becoming a craving. We’d sailed past uncomplicated weeks ago. Whatever boundaries we’d erected had been destroyed. I’d peeled my life away from Skyler’s after eight years together. Eight years. Yet the idea of letting go of Griffin seemed impossible and it had only been a month.
As he’d stared at me and taken a sip from his beer, that sexy grin had widened. Griff had shifted to dig his phone from a pocket, and mine had dinged moments later with a text.
Come over when you’re done tonight.
That text had been hours ago. After the rodeo, my team had migrated to the park by the river, where the county firemen had set up a fireworks show.
We’d had the area prepped earlier in the week, making sure there were ways for our cruisers and an ambulance to get in and out.
Like the parade and rodeo, I hadn’t gotten to watch much of the show. I’d caught the tail end of the finale, but that was only after chasing a group of teenagers away from the water, where they’d been vaping.
I hadn’t seen Griffin at the park, not that I’d had time to search him out. Soon after the park had emptied, I’d returned to the station and taken my scheduled patrol shift.
Apparently this was not something the former chief had done. When I’d rattled off the schedule at our prep meeting, including my name in the rotation, every officer but Mitch had given me a strange look.
So . . . no different than most days.
By rights, I should go home and crash. I hadn’t slept in my own bed for a week, opting for Griffin’s instead. But as I pulled out of the station’s parking lot, I aimed my wheels toward the Eden ranch.
The porch light was on when I parked outside Griff’s house. My eyelids were heavy and my footsteps leaden. I trudged up the stairs, expecting to find him in bed and asleep, but before I could touch the door handle, it opened.
“Hey.” His arms opened.
I fell into them, sagging against his strength. “Hi.” “Everything go okay?”
“For the most part.” “Any accidents?”
“No.” And I prayed when I woke up in the morning that would still be the case. Work had been my savior today. It had kept me from thinking of a summer night not unlike this one.
“Come to bed.” He kissed my hair.
“Okay, but you have to do all the work tonight.”
He chuckled, then bent and swept me into his arms.
Too tired to overthink it, I curled into his chest and let him carry me to the bedroom.
He stripped me out of my clothes but left my panties on. Then he yanked the T-shirt from his body and pulled it over my head. “Sleep.”
“Okay.”
I wanted sex. Tomorrow.
Tonight, I burrowed into the pillows, drawing in his scent, and only stayed awake long enough to feel his warm chest curl into my back. Then I crashed, grateful that tonight of all nights, I wasn’t alone.
 |
I GASPED AWAKE. A silent cry tore at my throat. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see Griffin’s dark bedroom. The blood was too thick.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Please. Stop. The blood oozed.
Griffin shifted behind me but didn’t wake as I slid out from beneath his heavy arm and padded across the hardwood floor, closing the door to escape his bedroom.
I should have expected it. Tonight, I should have known there’d be a nightmare. But foolishly, I’d thought sheer exhaustion would win. That I’d sleep those last few hours of the day away.
The microwave clock showed 4:32. I’d slept an hour, at most. The faint rays of dawn lit up the horizon but stars still clung high in the sky.
Grabbing a throw from the couch, I made my way to the front door, easing it open to slip outside. The porch’s boards were cold against my bare feet, the rocking chair damp from the night’s dew. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, then sank into the seat, letting the fresh morning air chase away the scent of death.
Griffin’s house sat in the center of a clearing. Trees surrounded it on every side, but they were far enough away that from the porch, I could see
the mountain range in the distance. It jutted into the horizon, the peaks glowing with sunlight and snow. At their tips, the sky was a yellow so clear it was almost white.
Sunrise. A new day. The fifth of July. The mark of another year alone. I missed them. I hoped I’d never stop.
“Hey.” Griff’s rugged voice cut through the quiet.
“Hey.” I turned, finding him at the door I hadn’t heard open. “You should go back to bed.”
He shook his head, his hair a mess, and stepped outside wearing only a pair of boxer briefs. He waved me out of the chair.
I couldn’t go back to sleep, not now. But he hadn’t slept any longer than I had, so I’d go back to bed and lie there until he drifted off, then sneak out to the porch again.
But when I stood, he didn’t lead me inside. Instead, he took the blanket from my shoulders, tossed it around his own, then stole my chair.
“Sit down.” He patted his lap. The fabric of his boxer briefs strained at the bulk of his bare thighs. The circles under his eyes said he’d had a long day yesterday too.
“You don’t have to stay out here.” “Sit. Keep me warm.”
I sighed but settled into his lap, letting him circle me in his arms and snuggle us beneath the blanket. Then he started to rock the chair with slow, measured nudges of his foot. “Sorry to wake you.”
“You need to get some rest. You were on your feet all day yesterday.
What’s going on?” “Just a bad dream.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Yes. No. The nightmares had been my secret. My pain. Even when Skyler and I had lived together, I hadn’t told him why I’d woken up late at
night. Though he had to have suspected what was going on, he hadn’t asked.
Because the dreams were real. They were massive. And he hadn’t been one for heavy lifting.
“I don’t want to burden you,” I said. “It seems like you carry a lot already.”
He tensed. The rocking stopped.
When I looked up, a crease marred the skin between his forehead. “What did I say?”
The tension on his face melted away. His arms held me tighter. “You might be the most intuitive person I’ve ever met.”
“I don’t know about that.” I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. “Just an observation.”
He started rocking us again, and for a few minutes, the only sounds were his heartbeat and the birds in the trees, chirping their morning song. “I’m the oldest of my siblings. That’s always put me in a different position with my sisters. My youngest brother too. As little kids, they’d take their problems to Mom and Dad. The older they get, the more those problems come to me. Especially after I took over the ranch. I’m the role model. The mediator.”
“Does it bother you?” “No.”
Because Griffin was the type of man who stood at the ready, always willing to heft the load.
“But it is a weight. I need to be here for them. I don’t want to let them down. And I don’t want to fail the ranch.”
“Is everything okay with the ranch?” “Yeah, it’s good. Just a lot of work.” “Do you enjoy it?”
“I do.” He nodded. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
“I feel the same way about being a cop.”
He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “How’d you get into it?”
“My senior year in high school I worked as an office aide. The officer stationed at our school was this beautiful woman. She was personable and gracious. Gorgeous, but you also knew not to fuck with her.”
“Sort of like you.”
I smiled. “I asked her once how she became a police officer. I’d been struggling to decide if I should go to college or a trade school. All of the other kids at school seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do and I came up blank every time. One day, I was in the office and she was there too, so I asked her why she decided to be a cop.”
That conversation had changed my life. She’d given me ten minutes of her time, just ten minutes, but it was ten minutes that had set me on this path.
“She told me that when she was a teenager, she didn’t know what she wanted to do either. And while she was debating her options, her dad gave her a piece of great advice. In the absence of a clear ambition, serving others is a mighty purpose. She didn’t want to be a nurse or a teacher. So she went to the police academy. I went home that evening and told my parents I wanted to find out what it would take to be a cop.”
“And here you are.” “Here I am.”
“How did your parents react?”
“As you’d expect. They worried. Rightly so. It was hard, really hard. Men don’t always take me seriously. It’s a dangerous job. But I believe in my heart that I’m in the right place. That because I’m a woman, I’m able to handle some awful situations differently than a man.” Like rape. Domestic abuse. I’d worked with plenty of incredible male cops, but there were times when a woman would only talk to a woman. Those cases, as horrific as they’d been, had only solidified my decision.
“Is that what wakes you up at night? The awful cases?”
“No.” I blew out a long breath. “But like I said, I don’t want to burden you.”
“It’s no burden to listen, Winn.”
Talking about it hurt. The few times Pops had wanted to discuss the accident, every word had scraped and sliced across my tongue. That had been years ago, and since, I’d always change the subject. Ignoring the pain was easier. Wasn’t it?
Something had to give. Something had to let go. These nightmares couldn’t go on forever, and maybe because I’d kept it inside for so long, the bad dreams were my heart’s way of screaming for relief.
“My parents died five years ago.” One sentence and my chest burned. “My mom mentioned something about that the other day.”
“It was on the Fourth of July. They were driving home from a party at a friend’s house in the mountains. They were hit by an oncoming car. The driver was texting.”
“Damn.” Griffin dropped his forehead to my temple. “I’m sorry.”
I swallowed hard, pushing past the ache. “I was the first officer on the scene.”
His body stilled. The rocking stopped again.
“It was my last year as a patrol officer. I’d already put in my application to be promoted and my parents were so excited that I wouldn’t be on the streets as much. When the call came through my scanner, I just . . . I can’t describe it. This pit formed in my stomach and I knew that when I got there, it would be bad.”
Bad was an understatement.
“When you got there, were they . . .”
Dead. “Yes. I found the other driver first. He’d been thrown from his car. His body was on the center line.”
The blood had pooled around his slackened face. He’d only been eighteen. A child. It was hard to hate a child, but I’d managed it for five years.
“It was a head-on collision at forty miles per hour. My parents . . .” My chin quivered and I slammed my eyes shut.
What people said about time healing wounds was bullshit. No amount of time had made it easier to relive that night. Not an hour. Not a day. Not five years. Because each day that passed was a day we had missed together. Mom and Dad would have been so proud to see me in Quincy. Dad would have warned me about the gossip mill and done his best to shield me from it, like Griff. Mom would have insisted on visiting each and every
weekend until my house was set up and perfect.
“That’s what you see in your dreams,” Griffin whispered. I nodded.
Both of them had been wearing seat belts. They’d been trapped in their seats, their bodies destroyed after their car had rolled six times, landing on its roof.
“Dad’s eyes were open. Mom, she, her body . . .” My eyes flooded. The words burned too much. “I can’t.”
“You don’t have to.”
I studied the trees, taking a few minutes to breathe as Griff began to rock us again.
“They didn’t suffer,” I whispered. “It was instant.”
“I’m so sorry, Winn.” Griffin’s arms banded tighter, and when the first tear dripped down my cheek, he just held on. He held on as I buried my face in his neck and cried for the people I’d loved more than anything in this world.
By the time I pulled myself together, the sun had risen above the mountain peaks.
“Thank you for listening.” I wiped my cheeks dry.
“Anytime.”
“You’re good at it.”
“Practice. I’ve got five siblings.”
“No.” I put my hand over his heart. “It’s just who you are.”
He kissed my hair, his arms never letting go as we stayed stuck together in the chair. “What are you doing today?”
“I don’t have anything planned.” Sleep. At some point, I’d have to attempt sleep.
He picked us both up, setting me on my feet. Then he traced a fingertip across the freckles on my nose. “Spend the day here.”
We’d never spent the day together. That had always been a boundary.
And like the others, crossing it was as natural as breathing. “Okay.”
