Officially Over It (SWAT Generation 2.0 10)

“It’ll be fine,” he said as he gestured to everyone around him. “Everyone will be on their best behavior.”

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s not that I’m worried about everyone and their behavior at an event like this.” I rolled my eyes. “My uncle is a cop. I know that everything will be fine. I’m more…” I licked my lips. “Listen, me and crowds don’t do well together.”

Just the idea of having to deal with a crowd of this magnitude was giving me hives already.

This was honestly why I worked with little people in the NICU. There weren’t a ton of people traipsing through the doors of the NICU. There were only limited people allowed. Parents of the babies, siblings of the babies, and sometimes a grandparent or two.

And there were only so many allowed in at a single time.

And if they asked me something, it wouldn’t be about something random. It would be about their sick child.

Dracon sighed. “You’ll be fine. I want you to be there. You’ll be there, right?”

It sounded more like ‘you will be there or else.’

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

In all honestly, I would’ve loved to go to it had he not been going.

He being Nathan Cox. Nathan Cox, the star outfielder for the Shreveport Sparks for three years before retiring and becoming a stupid police officer.

A police officer in my town.

I’d moved away from my hometown because of him and wasn’t it just my luck that he followed me to Kilgore. Not that I believed he actively chose to follow me.

When he’d agreed to work for the Kilgore Police Department, I knew that me being here had nothing to do with his decision. After the incident last year, the mayor had offered him a job on the spot.

Nathan had turned it down, of course, but not for long. He’d come back a few months later and asked if that job was still available, and now look where that left me.

I’d been doing a bang-up job at avoiding Nathan, and I wished to continue to do it, too.

Why did I wish to do it?

Because every time I saw him, it got harder and harder to keep my feelings hidden from the man.

He wasn’t the clueless little boy, or the perceptive—perceptive when it came to anybody but me—young teenager anymore.

Nathan Cox was all man. He had a head on his shoulders that was filled with smarts, and he knew me better than anyone. At least, that was until it came to my feelings about him.

And sooner or later, he was going to find out that I fucking loved him.

That I would do absolutely anything for him, even take out my heart and hand it to him if he asked.

Nathan didn’t understand the depth of my feelings, and I seriously wanted to keep it that way.

“The area police departments will be here in about three hours or so,” I found myself saying. “If you want me to attend, I have to go home and change.”

I had nothing to wear.

I’d honestly thought when Dracon brought up attending it’d been a joke.

Now I see that I should’ve been more observant.

“Go. I’ll hold down the fort. And you hired enough people that should be able to handle it in your absence for an hour,” he said.

And I had.

Thanks to a rather large fund from the ten majoring counties for this event specifically, the entire thing was paid for and very well staffed.

When I’d given them half their budget back yesterday, Dracon had grinned his fool head off.

Apparently in the past that hadn’t happened, and the event had sucked.

I hoped that this event was great for them considering I talked up a good game.

Oh, God.

I was going to have to see Nathan tonight.

I could feel it.

Sadly, I was correct.

***

“Are you sure that I look okay?” I asked Sierra.

“You look great,” my hair stylist/good friend/emergency dress shopper said.

I looked at my hair that was freshly dyed a beautiful shade of auburn. She’d styled my hair in loose waves that came up to around my ears with a wand, and she’d only burned me once.

My hair looked so beautiful against the blush-colored dress and the porcelain white of my skin.

I looked over at Sierra with her much more deeply tanned skin and frowned. “Why does this color look good on me? I would’ve thought it’d look terrible. I’m so ghostly white.”

Sierra snorted. “You’re not that white. Your skin is milky and smooth. I wish that mine looked this good when I didn’t have a tan.”

I snorted and looked at myself one more time in the mirror before walking to my jewelry box on my hutch next to the door.

“Thank you for doing my hair and finding this dress for me on such short notice,” I said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you today.”