Somethin' About That Boy

“Why do you walk?” Ashe asked, twirling a noodle on her fork, looking as if she wanted to finish it but couldn’t.

“My mom works at the school, and my dad works at Eastman. They both are gone pretty early, and unless I want to ride to school with them then…” I let the words trail off, causing Ford to grin.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to get up any earlier than I had to, either,” he said. “It’s bad enough now when I get a SWAT call in the middle of the night.”

“Just wait until that baby gets here,” Banner said as he groaned and leaned back in his chair, his hands on his belly. “You’ll never be able to sleep again.”

Ford grimaced.

“Maybe he’ll be a perfect little angel and he’ll sleep through the night from the moment he gets home,” I offered.

Ashe grinned swiftly at me. “I really like you. Have I told you that yet?”

I felt myself blush at her words. “Um, no. No, you haven’t.”

Ford wrapped his beefy arm around Ashe’s shoulder, and I wondered how long they’d known each other. It couldn’t have been long. They acted like they were still so in love. Didn’t that type of thing stop after they’d known each other a long time?

I mean, Jesus. Every time I saw Banner I got butterflies in my belly, and my tongue started to twist and tie.

How would I be able to function if I didn’t eventually get used to him being around me?

I mean, right now, he wasn’t exactly far away, but he wasn’t close.

Hell, he wasn’t even touching me. Yet, it was the anticipation of the touch—he did every time he reached for a new breadstick—that was getting me now.

Jesus, what was my deal?

I swallowed hard and picked up my glass of sweet tea, taking a healthy swallow of the sweet elixir before looking over to Ford.

“So you’re on the SWAT team?” I asked.

He nodded once. “Yeah, for about a year now.”

“Do you like it?” I asked. “My dad said that the old SWAT team retired.”

Ford turned his eyes toward me fully. “They retired about a year ago when we started. There are twelve members in total now, with more trying to get on it every day. But the program to get into it is pretty rigorous, and not everyone can pass the tests.”

“What makes them so hard?” I asked curiously.

“The agility test, mostly. Just things that they have to be able to do but can’t,” he answered.

“They have to do a 5K run in under twenty-three minutes. They have to be able to carry a two-hundred-pound dummy, either by dragging or hefting it over their shoulders, for fifty yards. They have to be able to climb a rope—I think fifteen times. Then they have to be able to shoot center mass, within about I think five inches of a target’s heart—or where it would be if there was one—for two full magazines out of a police-issued weapon.” Ashe paused. “And that’s just the first of the tests. If they make it past that round, they have more stuff to do. But I never made it past that round to know for sure. Ford has yet to tell me because he doesn’t want me trying out again.”

My brows rose. “You tried out?”

She shrugged her shoulders, patting her belly. “Well, right before I became pregnant I was going to, but when I practiced the dummy drag, I knew it wasn’t happening. And I knew it would give GMC heart palpitations if I actually became a SWAT member.”

I snickered. “What made y’all come up with a time of twenty-three minutes for a 5K?”

“The local college, I think,” Ford murmured as he took a bite of his bread. “They went up to the boys football team and tested some of the running backs. For the SWAT team, you want someone that’s really in shape and can do the manual labor that may or may not be needed of them during a call. I think the twenty-three-minute time cap was just basically the mid-level time that some of them could run it in.”

I grinned. “I’m not sure if I can do a rope climb. I’ll have to give it a try. But I think I might be able to do the rest.”

Banner’s hand touched my thigh underneath the table, making a small gasp leave my throat.

“I think you have to be twenty-one to even consider being on the SWAT team,” he teased.

I felt heat hit my cheeks at his closeness.

And when I expected him to pull away from me after that little comment, he didn’t.

He stayed exactly where he was, making things clench inside of me in anticipation.

Oh, and also, those butterflies? They were now a swarm, migrating south at a lightning speed.

“You could probably do it.” I bumped him with my shoulder. “What do you want to do when you’re older?”