Center Mass (Code 11-KPD SWAT 1)

Okay, so maybe that sounded harsh, but it was time to go. Ten minutes ago.

Rowen was a five year old terror that had a princess complex.

How she got that princess complex, I didn’t know, but she had it. And I didn’t like it one bit.

“Is daddy coming to get me this weekend?” Rowen asked as she walked slower than molasses to her room.

I clenched my eyes tightly shut in a vain attempt to hold onto my patience.

I’d been doing fairly well holding on, too.

Then she had to go and mention the sperm donor, and all nice, peaceful thoughts I’d been trying to keep in my head left in a fuckin’ rush.

Rowen’s father was an asshole. He didn’t give a shit about his kid unless I was trying to collect child support. Then he’d show up in her life, buy her things, and act like he liked her.

Just enough to show the judge that he ‘helped’ where he could, then he’d leave again until the next time I tried to get more money. And by more money, I meant no money at all. The man didn’t pay child support. The bad thing was that he worked in the oil field and he made good money.

This was a process that we did every six months to a year, since I’d had Rowen, and one I’m sure we’d continue for the next thirteen years until she turned eighteen.

Weston Bryant was a charmer.

He had a smooth tongue, and could talk the pants off of any woman in the country. Which was what he’d done to me.

He’d been my first.

I’d been a twenty four year old, inexperienced, sheltered girl who didn’t see the bad in anyone.

I didn’t realize what I was getting into when I accepted that date with Weston.

I knew what I left that date with, though.

My daughter.

Although the best thing that had ever happened to me, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that having her had been anything but easy.

I’d been in the middle of nursing school at the time, and thank God my due date fell on the summer break, or I wouldn’t have graduated.

The last five years had been challenging, but I had a very good thing that came out of it all, and she kept me getting up every morning. Kept a smile on my face. Kept me going when all I wanted to do was lay down for a single freakin’ nap!

“No, baby. Daddy’s not coming over this weekend. But if you’re good and you go get your shoes on, I’ll take you to see the new movie you’ve been wanting to see,” I bribed her.

She came out of her room looking skeptically at me. “Promise?”

I nodded. “Absolutely.”

She gave me that look. The one where you feel like a shitty parent.

The one where she knows that you’re probably lying, but she’ll have hope anyway.

I was going to hell.***The next day I found myself at the movie theater with a room full of screaming children excited to see the newest Disney movie.

I wasn’t a fan of animated movies.

I also wasn’t a fan of theaters.

But I’d do just about anything for my daughter, even sit in a theater with kids who wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

Didn’t these parents know how to tell their kids to be quiet?

Surely they wouldn’t let them do that throughout the entire movie…right?

But when thirty minutes went by and the couple in front of us continued to let their kids fight and run around the entire fucking theater, I was about out of tolerance.

I hadn’t realized that anybody could be so rude.

I’d just about made my mind up to say something when a big man, two rows in front of us, stood and walked down the aisle.

He walked calmly up the main row; I thought that he was just going to the restroom, but he stopped on the row that the parents were busy playing on their phones.

Sounds and all.

“’Scuse me,” a familiar voice rumbled.

The cop.

What was his name? Luke?

Yeah, that was it. Luke Roberts.

He had to be seeing the movie with his daughter, because why the hell else would a man like him be watching a Disney movie?

“Sir, ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to make your children behave, or I’ll have to ask you to leave,” Luke said softly.

I wanted to stand up and applaud. Would that be rude?

Rowen didn’t even notice, being on the other side of me. She was enraptured with the fat blobby robot on the screen, not bothered in the least by the kids, nor the man.

Turning my face away from my child, I watched as the asshole father stood up, bowing up his chest.

The man was big, I’ll give him that. But he wasn’t the same caliber as Luke.

The two were like night and day.

Where Luke was fit, the man was large. Where Luke was intimidating and authoritative, the man came off as a jerk who used his size to get his way.

A particularly bright part in the movie lit the theater, showing me Luke’s amusement at the man’s show of attempted intimidation.

When the man got up and got face to face with Luke, I turned in my seat more fully to get the full effect, tossing a piece of popcorn into my mouth in excitement.

Now this was what I was talking about. I was an action kind of girl. I didn’t like movies where there was nothing exploding and no shirtless guys.

Now the scene in front of me I knew wasn’t going to escalate much past raised voices, but it was better than nothing.

“Listen here, boy. I’ll have you know that I paid for my tickets just like the rest of these folks. I want to sit here and enjoy the movie,” the man yelled.

“You want to enjoy the movie? How about you tell those,” he pointed to the kids. “To sit down.”

The man’s two fighting kids slipped in between the seat and Luke’s legs.

Then Luke lost his patience. “Sit.”

They followed direction instantly, sitting down and staring at the movie with quivering chins.