Center Mass (Code 11-KPD SWAT 1)

“We’ll be staying in separate rooms. And I’ll be sleeping in the garage apartment,” I compromised.

His eyes narrowed. “We’ll see.”

I sighed and looked around the living room.

It was horrible.

Everything that I’d worked so hard to acquire over the past ten years was now gone.

My recliner that I rocked Rowen in when she was a baby through many colic filled nights, was ripped to shreds.

The TV I’d bought brand new just last year smashed to smithereens on the floor.

My pictures. My clothes. My food.

Everything, ruined.

Anything that wasn’t nailed down, was literally in pieces if it could be in pieces.

The only thing that I’d found so far that was still in working order was the shower curtain in the bathroom.

Which was sad because it was literally the only thing in the entire place that I could afford to replace.

“I just spent my entire savings paying off my school loans, and buying new furniture. Now it’s gone. Every single bit of it, and I have nothing to replace it with,” I whimpered.

I didn’t realize I could become so attached to inanimate objects. However, now that they were gone, I realized what they’d meant to me.

What hurt the most, though, were the baby clothes I’d been saving. The ones of Rowen’s that had meant so much to me, just…gone.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

Covering my eyes with my hands, I started to cry.

Big, fat, ugly tears.

Luke’s muscular arms wrapped me up tight, surrounding me so completely, that some of the coldness at seeing the horror of what was done to my place leeched away.

“It’ll be okay, beautiful. Now, you can stay with me until your place is back up to par, and cook me breakfast in bed. Iron my socks. And fish bullets out of the washing machine,” he teased.

A watery laugh escaped my lips, and I tipped my head up to stare into his impossibly blue eyes. “I’ll fish bullets out of the washing machine, and possibly cook you breakfast, but only if you’re a good boy.”

He smiled devilishly. “I can be a good boy.”

His good boy act didn’t faze me in the least. I was immune to bullshit, which was what had come out of his mouth. “Yeah, right.”

He grinned. “Now, let’s lock this place up and go meet my parents.”

“Your parents?” I screeched.

He nodded. “Yeah, they’re very interested in the girl I fucked over to bring my ex to Thanksgiving, whom, I might add, invited herself after it was all said and done. And you don’t have to tell me how stupid I was not to bring you, because I already know. In fact, I started kicking my own ass about an hour before my parents showed. Which, if you’d had your phone on, you would’ve known.”

I shrugged. Honestly, it was probably better that I hadn’t been there. I didn’t want to be anybody’s pity dinner date.

I wanted to be first choice and there was nothing wrong with that.

“So where are we meeting your parents?”***“I cannot believe your mom’s shopping in this shit,” I said, looking in horror at the mall parking lot.

“Mom and Baylee do it every year. I’ve been picking them up and chauffeuring them around for years now,” he said, scanning the parking lot.

“In your cruiser?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah. Or my dad’s.”

I blinked.

“Isn’t that illegal?” I wondered.

My eyes widened as I saw a fight break out in the middle of the parking lot.

His muttered, “No,” was drowned out by the yelling and screaming of the six women or so that were about to throw down right in front of our car.

“Aren’t you going to break that up?” I asked.

His eyes flicked to the fight, then back to the doors. “No.”

“But you’re a cop. Aren’t you supposed to, you know, serve and protect?” I asked dryly.

His grin played at the corners of his mouth, and he shook his head. “This mall has security. I’ll let the rent-a-cops do their job. That’s what they’re paid to do, after all.”

Spying something, he started the truck and flashed his lights four times at, who I assumed was, his mother.

However, I couldn’t tell, because all it did was illuminate the fight in front of me.

“That girl just tore out a chunk of the other girl’s hair,” I observed.

He didn’t look away, instead focusing on something beyond the fight that I couldn’t see.

“If they pull a gun, I’ll intervene,” he muttered.

I shook my head. The man was unshakable.

“I can’t believe they’re doing this in front of a police car,” I shook my head in surprise.

He gave me a sideways glance. “Some people don’t give a shit about a black and white. All it means to them is help when they need it. Nothing else.”

With that lovely parting comment, he got out and slammed the door, walking around to my side before opening the SUV’s back door and ushering Baylee, and an older version of Baylee into the back seat.

“I hope you cleaned this seat before you made us get into it,” Baylee muttered, sounding disgusted.

“It looks pretty clean,” Paige, Luke’s mother, said.

“Yeah, that’s what you’d think if you saw it at first glance. I’ve been there when they start putting the naked bodies into the car. Then they vomit everywhere. Or shit. Or piss. Or…” Baylee was interrupted by her mother’s outraged cry.

“This better not have any of what I think she was about to say on it!” Paige declared.

Luke grinned and closed the door.

I stayed facing forward, awkwardly.

Then their eyes turned to watch me as he made his way around the car.

“So,” Baylee said. “On a scale of one to ten, one being minutely and ten being I’m gonna shove a boot up his ass, how angry are you with my brother?”

I grinned and turned sideways into my seat, talking to her through the grate. “Probably about a seven. But he knows how to sweet talk his way out of anything.”

Paige grinned. “The boy’s just like his father, that way. His daddy had a silver tongue when I met him, and not a thing has changed in the last thirty two years.”