Arrest (A Disarm Novel) (11 page)

“It was awhile ago. I’m not drunk anymore.” When he appeared unconvinced, I mimicked his pose and said, “You don’t believe me? Go get your Breathalyzer thingo.”

“Say the alphabet backward then.”

“Come on, nobody can do that even when sober!” I cried. “How about I walk a straight line instead?” But even as I took straight steps with my boots, I giggled at the absurdity of the situation.

He held out a hand. “Give me your keys.” When I refused, he reached into the car window and pulled them out of the ignition. “Get in my car.”

“A ‘please’ would go a long way.”

He put his hands on his waist. “Now.”

“No.”

His jaw muscles worked and his nostrils flared as he stared at me. Then without warning, he bent down and scooped me over his shoulder, carrying me to the police cruiser. Without much effort, he opened the passenger door and dumped me inside, then closed the door before I could open my mouth and protest.

I sat back, my arms crossed over my chest, and seethed as he closed the window to my car and retrieved my purse and duffel bag.

He was silent as he drove me home, but I wasn’t about to back down from a fight. Not when I had a valid reason to be mad.

“You should have just put me in the back since you’re treating me like a criminal,” I said. “Cuff me while you’re at it. Then just lock me up at home where I can wait for you forever.”

“You’re acting like a child,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

“I’m acting like a woman who’s tired of being second best.”

He sighed. “This is my job, Elsie.”

“When you deployed, I waited for you. And when you broke up with me, I still held on to the hope that you’d come back. Now you’re asking me again to wait for you while you put something else ahead of me,” I said, the tears sliding down my cheeks. “When’s it my turn, Henry? When are you going to make me your first priority?”

“I left the military for you, didn’t I?” he asked, his jaw muscles working.

“That was for your own benefit, because you wanted to be with me. It wasn’t because you finally wanted to end my suffering. It was because
you
wanted to make yourself feel better.”

“You’re not even making sense anymore.” He stopped at the curb in front of our house and set the car in park. He turned in his seat to face me. “I left the military for you.”

“Then would you leave the force for me?”

His eyes flew over my face, but his lips did not move. He didn’t say anything reassuring. Instead he got out of the car, opened my door, and walked me to the porch. He unlocked the front door, set my things down inside, did a quick check of the dark house, then came back downstairs.

Finally, he faced me, allowing me to see the emotions behind his eyes. “I like being a cop. I like helping people and I’m good at it,” he said, reaching out to touch my cheek. I stepped aside and let his hand fall away. “So I hope you never ask that of me.”

An overwhelming urge to do just that washed over me, but seeing the look on his face, the worry that I would destroy what he’d been working for the past year, kept my lips glued together. It would be so cruel. “You know I’m not going to ask you that,” I told him quietly. “I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”

He reached out, grabbed the back of my neck, and brought me close, touching his forehead to mine. “Thank you,” he said in a voice husky with emotion. “Because if you really wanted me to, I would. I’d give up everything for you. Even my own life.”

My heart hurt with his pained confession because I knew it to be true. “Just do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t let the past repeat itself.”

His blue eyes burned bright when he pulled away and stared at me. “I would turn myself inside out before I let that happen again.”

Relationships are like a pendulum on a clock, swinging from one extreme to another. One hour you’re madly in love, unable to imagine life being sweeter, but eventually you reach a point when the relationship starts a downward sway to the center, where apathy often lies. If you’re very lucky, your relationship will stop there, but for the unfortunate, the relationship will swing all the way to the point where the bond is tested beyond its limits, when you have to decide to either find a way to swing back together or bail.

As I sat on the couch that night, staring at the clock on the wall, I wondered where we were in the arc, and what we could do to prevent from reaching that dangerous point.

I tried to take my mind off things by watching a bachelor reality show, but after the guy made out with three girls in less than fifteen minutes, I turned the television off and started to read a book instead. Still, I kept glancing up at the clock, wondering what time Henry would come home.

The sound of the key in the door took me by surprise at quarter after six. I shot up off the couch, the blanket tangling around my legs, flabbergasted. “You’re home,” I cried as soon as he came in.

He stood at the door, half in, half out, and gave me a sheepish grin. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

I didn’t even have time to guess. A second later, a chocolate Labrador came bounding into the house and immediately began sniffing the floorboards.

“A dog?” I asked, my eyes wide.

Henry grinned and tugged on the leash, pulling the dog toward him. “His name is Lawrence.”

I approached them with my hands out, allowing the dog to sniff me. When he’d determined I was no threat, I crouched by him and scratched behind his ears. “A dog, Henry?” I asked, still unable to believe it.

Henry sank to his knees and petted the dog’s back, keeping his eyes on me. “He was the dog from the abandoned apartment, do you remember? I’d been checking up on him at the pound to see if his owners had claimed him. Today was his last day,” he said and added in a softer voice, “I had to save him before they put him down.”

“You can’t save every dog and cat you come across,” I said, even as my heart sighed with his compassion.

“I know. It’s just . . . this dog reminded me so much of Sissy. And he’s so friendly. And I figured you could use a watchdog around here when I’m gone at night.”

“‘Friendly’ and ‘watchdog’ don’t really go together,” I said, warming up to the idea. The dog
was
really cute, and he even smelled freshly bathed. “Has he had his shots?”

“He’s had shots, and he’s been microchipped, fixed, bathed. He just needs a good home.” Henry stared at me for a long time, trying to read my reaction. When I didn’t say anything, he put his face by the dog’s. “Pwease?” he asked with a goofy little pout. The dog turned his head and licked Henry right up the side of his face.

A laugh bubbled up from my throat. “Oh God, how can I say no to that?” I asked. “You are like twin stooges.”

I put my face up to the dog’s and let him lick me. I held him by the jowls and looked into his brown eyes. “So . . . your name is Lawrence.”

“I figured we could change it. A new name for a new life.”

“How about we just shorten it to Law?”

“Law,” Henry murmured. “I like it.”

We spent the rest of the night playing with Law and figuring out his tricks, and for once, the pressure was gone. But what we weren’t acknowledging was that this dog was a temporary bandage, a way for Henry to compensate for his absence and a way for me to make up for my inability to bear a child.

Whatever feeling of joy Law brought was temporary, because sooner or later, the pendulum would swing toward the other side again.

—

That week, I started running again after work, with Law by my side. He was a good running companion, fast and focused. And even though it wasn’t in a Lab’s nature, he was fiercely protective of me. He was on high alert each time a male passed us on the sidewalk, and a few times he growled in warning as if to say, “Step off, she’s with me.”

At night, he slept on Henry’s side of the room on a huge cushioned bed, his face always pointed toward the door. His ears would perk up at any noise, and each time Henry walked in through the front door, Law bounded downstairs like a kid on Christmas morning. When Henry was home, Law followed him around without fail. I almost wanted to change his name to Shadow.

I first agreed to take in Law because I saw in him a version of Henry, a lonely soul abandoned by his family, but I only needed to spend one night with the dog to realize that he was actually more like me. We were just two pitiful creatures madly in love with a man who was hardly ever there.

—

One night, I awoke to the sound of large dog paws thumping down the stairs. A few minutes later, I heard Henry’s footsteps coming up the stairs and continuing down the hall. “Stay,” he whispered and entered the bedroom, closing the door on Law.

I rolled over and even though my eyes were heavy with sleep, I was unable to keep them off Henry as he undressed. As if sensing me, he stilled and turned his head, finding my gaze in the darkness. The bright moon slipped through the blinds and cut across his face, illuminating the deep ruts between his eyebrows.

He climbed onto the bed and crawled over to me, his gaze never once leaving my face. He paused for a moment before he stooped over me, sliding his arms under my back and bending his head to my chest.

Something about the tender way he held me put a vice around my lungs, making it hard to breathe. I lifted my hand to touch the back of his head and said, “You okay?”

He shook his head, his face still pressed to the thin fabric of my T-shirt.

“What’s wrong?”

His eyes were closed and his eyebrows furrowed when he pulled away. He sat back on his haunches, straddling me between his legs, and opened his eyes. “Nothing. Everything.” With his palms flat against my stomach, he slid his hands underneath my shirt and worked upward, skimming the sides of my breasts, then pulled the fabric over my head. He did the same to my panties, pulling them off me in equal measures of gentleness and need.

My body came alive with his touch, my every nerve standing at attention for him. I didn’t know what was going through his mind, but his light, almost reverent touch was starting to undo me.

“Henry . . .”

With a haunted look on his face, he dragged his fingertips up my thighs, along the ticklish parts of my hips, and onto the planes of my stomach. “I just want to look at you and touch you. To make sure that you’re really here,” he whispered, crouching over me. I felt him sigh into my skin as he pressed his lips to the valley between my breasts, then he tenderly kissed a path down to my stomach where he stopped and laid his stubbled cheek.

“I love you, Elsie,” he said against my trembling skin. “I’m not going to let a day go by without telling you that.”

Tears stung my eyes as desire transformed into something else: a frightened, helpless feeling I couldn’t name. I didn’t know what was making him hurt, but I could sense it in the air around him, feel it in the way he moved. So I held him to me, rubbing my palm against the wavy hair on his head, and hoped that it was enough.

“Do you . . . do you want to talk about it?” I asked after some time.

“No. I just need to be with you,” he rasped. He moved once again, rolling off to the side and slipping a hand between my knees, sliding it upward until it reached the point where I was already throbbing with want. He lifted my legs apart and suddenly his mouth was breathing on my folds.

I arched my back, the worry momentarily forgotten when his tongue slid inside my cleft, finding the sensitive spot and massaging it. His hands cupped my ass and lifted me up as he deepened the kiss, enveloping my mound with his mouth, increasing the pressure.

The orgasm was quick and acute, racing through my entire body like an electric current. Henry groaned as my muscles throbbed around his tongue, which continued to lap at my clit to sustain the pleasure.

Then he was gone, leaving me cold. He sat up to lean against the headboard and pulled me up. He grabbed the sides of my face and kissed me, his mouth still saturated with my juices as he devoured me. He grabbed my hair and pulled me away, his eyes blazing across my face. “I can’t live without you, Elsie.”

Every word he said was like a hot knife through my chest, scalding the places it sliced. I wanted to know what had made him so desperately needy but knew that if I asked again, I would only get silence. So to ease his anguish—and mine—I straddled him and positioned his cock at my entrance.

He was breathing hard when I wrapped my hand around his shaft and lowered myself onto its tip. “Fuck yes,” he groaned, his eyebrows drawing together as he closed his eyes. “I need to be inside you.”

I slowly sank onto his hard length, moaning as a part of him connected to the deepest part of me. With my hand splayed on his stomach, I began to rock my hips, watching his expression darken, the agony and the pleasure etching deep lines into his forehead and bracketing his mouth.

He bent his neck and crushed his forehead to my chest, his hands on my back as he held me close. “I can’t lose you ever again,” he said in a near whisper. “You’re everything to me.”

I leaned back, my hips still swaying, and grasped his head. “Look at me, Henry,” I said, tilting his face up to mine. I bent down and touched my forehead to his, willing him to open his eyes and just
see
. “I’m here right now.”

He opened his eyes the same moment he began to move beneath me, thrusting his hips up into mine. He held me close as we made love, Henry afraid to lose me and I afraid that he actually could.

—

Henry awoke with me the next morning, nuzzling into my neck at around eleven in the morning. The sunlight seemed to have brightened his mood as he took a shower and dressed in running shoes, shorts, and a light blue shirt that set off his eyes.

“Where are you going?” I asked, pulling the covers tighter around me.

“Taking the dog to the park.” He crouched down at the foot of the bed; a second later, his hands encircled my ankles and the next thing I knew I was being tugged through the covers until I emerged on the other side. “You didn’t think I was going to leave you, did you?” he asked with a grin.

I sat up, pushing the sheets off my head, and laughed. “There are other ways to get a girl out of bed.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

“Coffee. Morning sex. Chocolate,” I said, counting them off on my fingers. “Any number of those would have sufficed.”

“Ah, but where is the fun in chocolate and coffee?” he asked, then suddenly bent down and rested his hands on either side of my lap, his face inches from mine. “As for the sex . . .”

—

So we left for the park an hour later, completely sexed out. Whatever had happened last night not only made Henry deathly afraid of losing me, it apparently made him horny as hell. Not that I was complaining about the latter.

“So are we going to talk about last night?” I asked him as we walked in the sunshine. We were nearing the park as Law was starting to get antsy and tugging on the leash a little more.

His mood changed, just a tiny shift in his body that I was able to pick up. “It was nothing.”

I’d thought perhaps the sunshine would seep into his skin and light up some of his dark crevasses, allowing him to talk about what was hidden there. I guess I was wrong. “So you coming home freaking out about losing me, that was nothing?” I asked, unable to keep from pushing. If I stopped now, if I just gave up, we would be lost.

He tugged on Law’s leash, keeping him at his side. “I just had a rough day.”

“You saw someone die, didn’t you?”

Henry stopped and turned to me, his face completely still. Finally, after the longest moment, as even the dog strained for motion, he nodded.

“Ah.”

“The first one I’ve seen.” We arrived at the park then, and whatever communication I’d opened up sealed shut again as Henry took the opportunity to change the subject. He bent down and unclipped Law from the leash then pulled a tennis ball from his pocket. “Okay, boy, let’s see how socialized you are.”

To say that Law was excited to see the ball was an understatement. He jumped with glee, literally bowling Henry over with his excitement. The two tumbled to the ground, Henry lying on the grass laughing as the dog licked his face.

My irritation melted away as I watched them play, feeling a warm tickle in my chest. Henry would be an incredible dad.

If he were ever at home
, a voice in the back of my head niggled, cooling my insides with the reality of it all.

“Go get her!” Henry yelled and I turned in time to see a ball flying at me, followed closely by sixty pounds of brown fur. I caught the ball and dodged out of the way in time. “Fetch,” I said and threw the ball to the middle of the park. Law was immediately on it.

Henry was laughing when he got back to his feet and dusted himself off.

“Nice try,” I told him as Law came bounding back with the ball in his mouth. “Good boy,” I said, scratching the back of his head.

Suddenly, a little girl came running up to us, stopping a foot shy of Law. She couldn’t have been more than three, but she wrapped her little arms around his neck without hesitation and gave him a hug. Law, incredibly, sat still and allowed the child to fawn over him. I’d even go so far as to say he was enjoying it.

It’s incredibly cliché, but at that moment, my heart flipped over on itself. I looked at Henry and saw in his face the same awareness, as if we were both watching our future playing before our eyes.

The child’s parents came walking up a few seconds later and almost had to pry her off Law, who sat patiently while his fur was being manhandled by chubby little fingers. I was so proud of him in that moment, and I knew that he would be just as patient with our own baby.

—

Henry and I held hands as we walked back home feeling as if the world was in its rightful place, Law trotting ahead of us. Out here, bathed in sunshine and fresh air, it was almost as if we were back to being the newlyweds who were once full of hope and promise.