I kiss him, tasting myself on his lips, but more than that, I can taste him. Every inch of my body flushes at that realization.
“I think you’re trying to kill me,” I whisper.
He laughs into my mouth, nipping at my bottom lip. “If I was really trying to kill you, Scarlet, you’d be dead.”
The sun’s starting to rise outside, but you can’t tell it looking at the horizon. Thick gray clouds cover every inch of sky, blocking the warm orange glow from appearing. Everything just seems to gradually get lighter, like a veil is being lifted, exposing what was already hidden beneath.
Sunrise, it always makes me feel hope, another day dawning, another chance at things turning around for me, but today?
It all just felt so horribly bleak.
“Ten months,” I say. “Before we know it, it’ll be a year.”
An entire year. I can’t even fathom it.
Detective Jones lets out an exasperated sigh as he scrubs his hands over his bleary face, rubbing the overgrown scruff along his jaw. He looks like shit. His suit is rumpled. There’s a stain on his white shirt. He’s in need of a trim, his hair sticking up in a few places, and his socks, well… they don’t even match.
He’s a mess.
But I have no sympathy for him.
Maybe that makes me a bitch.
I used to come here, begging, pleading, feeling like a burden for needing his help, but those feelings faded as I became more jaded. The first few months were the worst, though. Back then, I didn’t think the tears would ever stop. But at some point along the way, my anger surfaced when I realized I was on my own, that nobody could help me. I had to help myself.
And here we are, ten months in, and I’m still treading water, closer to sinking than I am to swimming. I’m slowly drowning.
Gabe picks up his coffee mug, gently blowing into it, steam rising out, surrounding his face like a cloud. I got here before him this morning, was waiting in the lobby when he eventually wandered in, fifteen minutes late for his usual shift, which is fifteen minutes he could’ve spent working on my case.
Yeah, right... like that would ever happen.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he mutters, sipping his coffee.
“Yeah, well, where else am I supposed to go?”
“Wherever you’ve been these past few weeks,” he says. “Where have you been, anyway?”
“Around.”
He casts an annoyed look my way, not liking my evasive answer, but I’m not telling him where I’ve been staying. That information is classified.
“After the attack at the club, I figured you’d be laying low, maybe finally getting the hell out of the city,” he says. “Especially with George Amello being dead.”
I gape at him. “He’s dead?”
He nods, swirling his chair back and forth, still sipping his coffee… still not doing any work. “Someone shot him.”
I sigh, looking away from him to glance out the window.
It’s silent for a few minutes.
George is dead, and it’s probably my fault.
“I went to the house the other day,” I say quietly. “I haven’t gone there since everything happened.”
He mutters something under his breath. I don’t catch it all, just a few words here and there, notably ‘stupid’ and ‘death wish’.
“It looks the same,” I tell him. “It was strange. Seeing it, being there... it felt like just yesterday, like no time at all has passed. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect it to still feel so raw.”
He doesn’t say anything, but the look he gives me says enough: ‘get over it’. He’s never uttered those words directly, but I know he means them, I know he thinks them, every single time he looks at me this way. Pity. He pities me. Not enough, obviously, or else he’d actually do something about my situation, but just enough for him to humor me, for him to pretend to want to help.
“Maybe you should talk to someone,” he suggests.
“I am. I’m talking to you.”
“I mean somebody who might be able to help you.”
“Again, I thought I was.”
He sighs, setting his coffee down. “I mean a therapist, Morgan. Maybe a grief counselor.”
“I don’t need a shrink. I just need someone to give a fuck about me.”
“Come on, don’t be that way,” he says, shoving out of his chair to step closer, pausing in front of me. “You know I care. I’m doing everything I can. I’m monitoring the situation.”
“Monitoring the situation.” I shake my head. “That sounds a hell of a lot like you’re just sitting back, watching it happen.”
He grasps my chin, his thumb stroking along my jawline as he tilts my head his way. “It’s going to be okay. I swear it. You just need to be patient for a little while longer. You want the case to stick, don’t you? When we take him down, you want him to stay down, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then it’s going to take time. We can’t rush this. We’re not stopping, we’re not giving up... we’re just taking the time to get it right so what happened before doesn’t happen again. Okay?”
I used to buy his bullshit. Used to hang on to every syllable, believing he meant every word. And maybe some part of him is genuine, but that doesn’t mean he’s being honest.
I sometimes say I’m fine when I’m not. I say nothing’s bothering me when I’m distraught.
Little white lies to keep harmony. And I can tell, by that ‘get over it’ look Gabe gives me, that he doesn’t think they’ll ever nail him.
I say nothing, which the detective assumes means I’ve been placated, judging by the way he visibly relaxes, his thumb swiping across my bottom lip.
This son of a bitch…
He smiles, a smug little smile, as he tugs the zipper of his pants down. His free hand snakes inside his boxers, stroking himself beneath the material as he says, “It’s been too long, babe. I’ve missed seeing you.”
Before he can whip it out, I smack his hand away from my face. “You bring that thing anywhere near me, Detective Jones, and you’ll never use it again.”
His eyes widen. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I know what’s never getting into me again, and that’s you. I’m not your little fucktoy. Your job isn’t to use me as you see fit. Your job is to serve and protect. So do your goddamn job, detective, and keep your dick in your pants, because I’ve been waiting for ten fucking months, and I’m running out of patience.”
I got no sleep last night, none at all, every inch of me exhausted and sore. I haven’t even showered yet, leaving when it was still dark, while Lorenzo soundly slept. I didn’t want to wake him. He looked so peaceful. So I just threw on the first clothes I saw, pulled my hair back in a sloppy bun and headed out, remnants of the man all over me. I can smell him on my skin.
Gabe just stares at me with disbelief, hand still in his pants, clutching his dick, but he makes no move to whip it out, lucky for him.
After a moment, a series of beeps ring out, sucking away some of the awkwardness infiltrating the office. He unclips the department-issued cell phone from his belt, glancing at it before fixing his pants.
“Got something I need to deal with,” he grumbles, waving the phone in my face before heading for the door. “Show yourself out, Miss Myers.”
I sit here, even after he’s gone, staring across the office out the window. Nobody says a word about me being here, nobody bothering me.
It’s like I’m invisible.
Eventually, my eyes wander to the messy desk, to the stacks of files covering the top of it. It blows my mind how outdated things are here, case files kept as actual files, folders full of papers instead of being stored digitally.
Not really secure, is it?
I glance behind me, out of the office, double-checking nobody is paying me any attention, before shoving out of the chair and slipping around the side of the desk. The files have names scribbled on them in pen. I shift through them quickly, glancing at the handwriting. Blah. Blah. Blah. Bingo.