Authors: Taylor Lewis
Tags: #Gay & Lesbian, #Literature & Fiction, #Fiction, #Gay, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Gay Romance, #Genre Fiction, #Romantic Comedy
A Memory Away (11 page)
Kyle
laughed at his confused mutter and said, “I copied all the photos and videos of Shea we have for you. I thought you might like to see them. I put the videos of all my sonograms on there as well. Every image of Shea ever captured on film.” He looked regretfully at Jonah. “I know it’s not the same as being there from the start but I thought you might like them now. Just to see. He’s such a beautiful baby.” He paused before saying in a rush, “I never told anyone but when I found out I was pregnant I went back to the club looking for you. Only three or four times, but I did at least make an attempt to find you. I’m sorrier than I can say that I didn’t find you back then.” He hitched his bag up higher on his shoulder and said with resignation, “Still, there’s nothing to be done about that now. I’m just glad that it looks like we can at least be friends. I’ll see you Saturday.”
Jonah
watched him walk out with another smile and then stared down at the envelope still clutched in his hand as he slowly closed the door. He lifted his eyes back up to the door to stare at the wooden panel and, with a horrible sinking feeling in his belly, muttered, “Wait, we’re just going to be friends?”
laughed at his confused mutter and said, “I copied all the photos and videos of Shea we have for you. I thought you might like to see them. I put the videos of all my sonograms on there as well. Every image of Shea ever captured on film.” He looked regretfully at Jonah. “I know it’s not the same as being there from the start but I thought you might like them now. Just to see. He’s such a beautiful baby.” He paused before saying in a rush, “I never told anyone but when I found out I was pregnant I went back to the club looking for you. Only three or four times, but I did at least make an attempt to find you. I’m sorrier than I can say that I didn’t find you back then.” He hitched his bag up higher on his shoulder and said with resignation, “Still, there’s nothing to be done about that now. I’m just glad that it looks like we can at least be friends. I’ll see you Saturday.”
Jonah
watched him walk out with another smile and then stared down at the envelope still clutched in his hand as he slowly closed the door. He lifted his eyes back up to the door to stare at the wooden panel and, with a horrible sinking feeling in his belly, muttered, “Wait, we’re just going to be friends?”
Chapter 9
.
When
Jonah knocked on Kyle’s door the following Saturday the feeling in his gut was not unlike the first time he had taken part in a raid on a crack den. Actually, the more he thought about it, he’d actually prefer to be taking part in a raid on a crack den. He cast a longing look back at his car and wondered if it was too late to
fake
an urgent raid on a crack den. Kyle pulling the door open and smiling at him in welcome put paid to that – dammit.
“Hi!”
Kyle, dressed casually in a clinging white long sleeved t-shirt and blue jeans, stepped back and waved him inside. “Come in.” His eyes dropped to the two large bags hanging from one of Jonah’s hands and the large purple teddy bear clutched in the other. “You look like you’ve been busy.”
Entering like he was expecting to be shot at any minute,
Jonah grinned tightly and shrugged. “Yeah, I, uh, watched the videos and stuff you left. I missed his birthday and Christmas and...” He looked down at the teddy and then back up at Kyle a little helplessly. “I’m Jewish.”
Kyle
blinked, confused by the apparently random information. “Okay?”
Jonah
waved the bear at him. “We’ve got holidays too. He should....I should have given him gifts. Stuff.”
“Oh.”
Kyle’s eyes went a little soft and dreamy for a moment before he said softly, “You couldn’t have known, Jonah. Not being there wasn’t your fault.” He frowned. “I’m not Jewish though, so he hasn’t been, um, altered. Is that a problem?”
It was
Jonah’s turn to blink in confusion and then, to his horror, he felt a hot flush cover his cheeks. “Oh, hey, no, I wasn’t expecting...I didn’t say that....” He took a deep breath and scowled. “This is why I don’t like talking to people that much. I suck at it.”
Kyle
stared at him and then burst out laughing, his eyes shining up at Jonah in a way that made the taller man have to focus really, really hard on the whole new friends thing they had going on between them. Apparently.
Goddammit
.
Kyle
, oblivious to the whole new reason behind Jonah’s scowl, moved closer and patted his arm. “I think you do just fine talking. This is hard for all of us. Just try to relax and stop being so nervous, he won’t bite.” He paused, thought and then added honestly, “Well, not usually, but he’s been going through kind of a phase and if he does bite then you have to tell him no really firmly and make sure he understands that that kind of behaviour is
not
acceptable.”
Oh yeah
, thought Jonah,
that crack den is looking mighty good about now
. He looked away from Kyle’s very distracting eyes and around the large living room he had stepped into. “So, where is...oh.” He stopped and looked at the little dark haired boy standing by a play table with some trucks on it and staring at him with big eyes. “Oh.” He swallowed hard. “That him?”
Kyle
shot him a slightly incredulous look and then crossed to the little boy, picking him up in a practised motion and then walking back to Jonah. “Yes, this is Shea.” He laughed when Shea promptly buried his face in the crook of his neck and made a muffled squealing noise. “Shea, this is...” He broke off looking faintly worried and said to Jonah, “We never talked about what he was to call you. He knows that I’m daddy and I don’t want to confuse him, but....”
“Abi,” said
Jonah thickly, eyes fixed on the curly head of his son. “It’s Hebrew for ‘my father’. Would that be okay?”
Kyle
smiled at him with bright eyes. “That’s perfect.” He bounced Shea in his arms and said softly, “Shea, do you want to say hello? This is Abi. Say hi to Abi.”
Shea
remained stubbornly plastered to Kyle’s neck and made another muffled squeal into his skin.
Kyle
looked up when his son refused to acknowledge Jonah in any way and said apologetically, “Jonah, I’m sorry, he’s just shy. He gets like this sometimes. Would you like to sit down and just talk for a while to let him comfortable with you being here? He’ll settle down soon, I promise.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jonah ached to touch the little boy that was huddling so obstinately into Kyle, but made himself exercise some patience and nodded. “Yeah, that’d be good.” He followed Kyle when he went to a large comfortable couch and sat on the opposite end of it, hesitating for a moment before placing the teddy on the seat between them before putting down his bags. He watched Kyle stroke Shea’s back, pale fingers stroking over a motif of a smiling sun, unsure what to say.
Kyle
looked up from where he was softly encouraging Shea to turn around. “I’m sorry. He’ll be better in a moment.”
“It’s okay.” Jonah waved uncomfortably at Shea. “I get it.” He cleared his throat. “So, I was thinking that I should maybe talk to my mom and sister soon and fill them in on what’s going on. Tell them about Shea and maybe you’d think about letting him see them?” He frowned at Kyle’s startled expression. “What? I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s just...”
Kyle bowed his head, shielding his expression from Jonah’s eyes, but the other man could see the pink flooding his skin nonetheless. “I didn’t think about everything else he’d be getting along with you. He doesn’t have a grandmother, my mother died when I was little and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.” He looked up and a pleased smile stretched his mouth. “You really want to introduce him to your mother?”
Jonah
laughed wryly. “You know when you said back there that he hadn’t been altered?” Kyle nodded confused. “Yeah, well they only take your jacket at a
bris
– I don’t tell my mom about him and I can guarantee she’ll take everything else when she does find out. She’s gonna go crazy when I tell her she’ll be so happy.”
Kyle
’s whole face shone. “And she won’t mind about me? That I’m a man?”
Giving the question some serious thought,
Jonah frowned and then shook his head. “No, don’t think so.” He hesitated and then asked, “You religious at all? Belong to a church or something?” Kyle shook his head and Jonah gave him a look of gloomy resignation. “You might want to say that you do when she asks – she’s not gonna care about you being a guy, but the whole not kosher thing is gonna be a huge pain in the ass. Less hassle all round if she’s not trying to get you to convert every time you meet up.”
Kyle
looked like he was rapidly reconsidering thinking his son gaining a whole new set of relatives was a good idea.
Jonah
laughed again at his doubtful expression and his eyes landed on the back of Shea’s head, softening and shining with delight. “Relax, they’re going to love you – both of you.”
This, unfortunately, was more than could be said for
Shea regarding Jonah. Despite all of Kyle’s best efforts and trying to engage his interest with the contents of the bags that Jonah had brought, the little boy could only be persuaded to sit on Kyle’s lap and sit staring at Jonah with his thumb in his mouth and a frown on his face. After an hour of Kyle’s increasingly desperate attempts to get Shea to smile at Jonah, Jonah trying to look patient and non-threatening and Shea screaming bloody murder every time Kyle tried to put him down everybody’s nerves were starting to fray.
“Look,” said
Jonah, irritated and antsy after being the focus of Shea’s unblinking suspicious stare for what had felt like hours, “Maybe I should just go, come back another time. He’s not looking happy there and I don’t want to cause any trouble. We can try this again sometime.”
“No!”
Kyle looked bewildered and frazzled from having Shea generally behaving like the anti-Christ at the worst possible time and reached out a pleading hand to Jonah. “Please don’t go. You said you watched the videos, right? You know he’s not normally like this.”
“So maybe it’s just me.” Trying desperately to look like he didn’t care,
Jonah got to his feet and nearly tripped over Lady Ga-Ga who had developed an unhealthy attachment to the purple teddy he had brought and had sat staring at it fixedly since Jonah had set it down on the couch. “It’s cool. I’ll come back, I promise. He looks like he’s had enough for one day.”
Kyle
looked at his devil baby – who returned his look with one of surpassing sweetness and a brilliant smile around his thumb – and said hurriedly, “Wait, please, I’ve got an idea. Just let me try this one last thing and then if it doesn’t work then you can go and we’ll try again later. Please, Jonah, just five more minutes.”
It was only
Kyle’s pleading tone that stopped Jonah slinking out the door like a beaten dog. He nodded shortly and watched as Kyle hastened into the kitchen, Shea giving him a cool look over his shoulder, and then looked down at the dog at his feet. He scowled and snatched up the teddy, dropping it at the dog’s paws. “Go nuts.”
Ga-Ga looked at the teddy and then took it delicately in her jaws and dragged it under the piano, eyes not leaving his face like she expected the treat to be snatched away. Seconds later the sounds of the soft toy meeting a painful end drifted out.
Jonah looked up when Kyle came back into the room, a look of relief swiftly hidden like he’d expected Jonah to run the minute his back was turned, and a shiny bag clutched in the hand that wasn’t holding Shea to him. “Here.” Kyle thrust the bag at him and then sat back down on the couch, resettling Shea on his lap.
Lifting the bag,
Jonah stared. “Cheese Puffs?” He looked back at Kyle, baffled. “Thanks, but I’m not really that hungry.”
“Trust me.”
Kyle gave Shea a narrow look and then looked back at Jonah. “Just ignore him and open the bag. Oh,” He looked slightly guilty. “And don’t ever tell Louise about this – she’ll never let me live it down.”
Still looking completely baffled,
Jonah ripped open the bag and pulled out a cheese puff, putting it in his mouth and chewing more in reflex than in genuine appetite. From under the piano all sounds of teddy homicide ceased and a black snout appeared, a small piece of white fluff perched jauntily on the end. Shea turned his head just far enough from where he had it buried in Kyle’s chest and one eye fixed on the bag in Jonah’s hand.
Kyle
looked unbearably smug. “Keep going.”
Eyeing him like he’d lost his mind,
Jonah obligingly ate another cheese puff.
Shea
’s head turned and both eyes stared with deep longing at the bag of normally forbidden treats. He shifted his butt on Kyle’s lap and one leg slipped to dangle a foot to the floor. Under the piano two paws and a pair of beady black eyes appeared along with the snout.
Jonah
took another cheese puff and slowly brought it to his mouth, watching his son’s eyes track the movement and his thumb slip from his mouth. He popped the cheese puff in his mouth and Shea slid off Kyle’s lap and stood between his thighs, a look of conflicted longing on his face. Ga-Ga shimmied out from under the piano and started to commando crawl across the floor, casting anxious glances at Shea in case he made his move before she got into prime begging position. Shea finally noticed the dog slinking towards the cheese puffs and gave an outraged “Da!” of alarm. He took two tottering steps towards Jonah and then stopped, apparently torn between finally acknowledging his existence or letting the dog get to the treats. He gave Kyle an agonized look and Kyle smiled at him and then pointedly turned his head away and stared at a plant on the other side of the room.
Jonah
ate another cheese puff and Shea broke – he toddled the last few steps between them and stood so close Jonah could feel the heat of his little body against his thigh. Shea looked up at him and then looked at the bag of cheesy goodness. “Hey,” Jonah fought to keep his voice steady and smiled shakily down at his son. “You want one?”
Shea
continued to stare at the bag and then turned a pitiful expression on Jonah. His lower lip trembled and he put one pudgy little hand on his father’s leg.
Carefully
Jonah pulled a cheese puff out of the bag and held it out to Shea and looked startled when the baby snatched it and crammed it in his mouth. Ga-Ga gave an agonised whine from the floor and rolled over on her back, legs waving wildly in the air. Jonah grinned and dropped a cheese puff down into her waiting mouth and Shea squawked, “No! Da!” in annoyance. Jonah solemnly handed him another cheese puff and then looked up at Kyle in wonder when Shea plastered himself against Jonah’s thigh and tried to snatch the whole bag away. “It worked!”
“Well of course,”
Kyle blinked rapidly at the wondering smile on Jonah’s face and told himself he was not going to cry. “He’s your son, isn’t he?”
~*~*~*~
“You’re different,” panted Lopez as she bent to cuff the perp she had chased down for three blocks and then body slammed against the wire fence he had been trying to climb to get away from her. “Not sure I like it.”
Jonah
, his own somewhat winded and bruised prisoner dangling from his grip, looked annoyed and said, “What?” He shook the perp he had just brought down and who was loudly protesting the rather violent way he had been caught and snapped, “Shut the fuck up before I shove you in a dumpster to wait on patrol picking you up.” The perp shut up and Jonah turned his attention to Lopez who was yanking her own man to his feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”
.
When
Jonah knocked on Kyle’s door the following Saturday the feeling in his gut was not unlike the first time he had taken part in a raid on a crack den. Actually, the more he thought about it, he’d actually prefer to be taking part in a raid on a crack den. He cast a longing look back at his car and wondered if it was too late to
fake
an urgent raid on a crack den. Kyle pulling the door open and smiling at him in welcome put paid to that – dammit.
“Hi!”
Kyle, dressed casually in a clinging white long sleeved t-shirt and blue jeans, stepped back and waved him inside. “Come in.” His eyes dropped to the two large bags hanging from one of Jonah’s hands and the large purple teddy bear clutched in the other. “You look like you’ve been busy.”
Entering like he was expecting to be shot at any minute,
Jonah grinned tightly and shrugged. “Yeah, I, uh, watched the videos and stuff you left. I missed his birthday and Christmas and...” He looked down at the teddy and then back up at Kyle a little helplessly. “I’m Jewish.”
Kyle
blinked, confused by the apparently random information. “Okay?”
Jonah
waved the bear at him. “We’ve got holidays too. He should....I should have given him gifts. Stuff.”
“Oh.”
Kyle’s eyes went a little soft and dreamy for a moment before he said softly, “You couldn’t have known, Jonah. Not being there wasn’t your fault.” He frowned. “I’m not Jewish though, so he hasn’t been, um, altered. Is that a problem?”
It was
Jonah’s turn to blink in confusion and then, to his horror, he felt a hot flush cover his cheeks. “Oh, hey, no, I wasn’t expecting...I didn’t say that....” He took a deep breath and scowled. “This is why I don’t like talking to people that much. I suck at it.”
Kyle
stared at him and then burst out laughing, his eyes shining up at Jonah in a way that made the taller man have to focus really, really hard on the whole new friends thing they had going on between them. Apparently.
Goddammit
.
Kyle
, oblivious to the whole new reason behind Jonah’s scowl, moved closer and patted his arm. “I think you do just fine talking. This is hard for all of us. Just try to relax and stop being so nervous, he won’t bite.” He paused, thought and then added honestly, “Well, not usually, but he’s been going through kind of a phase and if he does bite then you have to tell him no really firmly and make sure he understands that that kind of behaviour is
not
acceptable.”
Oh yeah
, thought Jonah,
that crack den is looking mighty good about now
. He looked away from Kyle’s very distracting eyes and around the large living room he had stepped into. “So, where is...oh.” He stopped and looked at the little dark haired boy standing by a play table with some trucks on it and staring at him with big eyes. “Oh.” He swallowed hard. “That him?”
Kyle
shot him a slightly incredulous look and then crossed to the little boy, picking him up in a practised motion and then walking back to Jonah. “Yes, this is Shea.” He laughed when Shea promptly buried his face in the crook of his neck and made a muffled squealing noise. “Shea, this is...” He broke off looking faintly worried and said to Jonah, “We never talked about what he was to call you. He knows that I’m daddy and I don’t want to confuse him, but....”
“Abi,” said
Jonah thickly, eyes fixed on the curly head of his son. “It’s Hebrew for ‘my father’. Would that be okay?”
Kyle
smiled at him with bright eyes. “That’s perfect.” He bounced Shea in his arms and said softly, “Shea, do you want to say hello? This is Abi. Say hi to Abi.”
Shea
remained stubbornly plastered to Kyle’s neck and made another muffled squeal into his skin.
Kyle
looked up when his son refused to acknowledge Jonah in any way and said apologetically, “Jonah, I’m sorry, he’s just shy. He gets like this sometimes. Would you like to sit down and just talk for a while to let him comfortable with you being here? He’ll settle down soon, I promise.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jonah ached to touch the little boy that was huddling so obstinately into Kyle, but made himself exercise some patience and nodded. “Yeah, that’d be good.” He followed Kyle when he went to a large comfortable couch and sat on the opposite end of it, hesitating for a moment before placing the teddy on the seat between them before putting down his bags. He watched Kyle stroke Shea’s back, pale fingers stroking over a motif of a smiling sun, unsure what to say.
Kyle
looked up from where he was softly encouraging Shea to turn around. “I’m sorry. He’ll be better in a moment.”
“It’s okay.” Jonah waved uncomfortably at Shea. “I get it.” He cleared his throat. “So, I was thinking that I should maybe talk to my mom and sister soon and fill them in on what’s going on. Tell them about Shea and maybe you’d think about letting him see them?” He frowned at Kyle’s startled expression. “What? I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s just...”
Kyle bowed his head, shielding his expression from Jonah’s eyes, but the other man could see the pink flooding his skin nonetheless. “I didn’t think about everything else he’d be getting along with you. He doesn’t have a grandmother, my mother died when I was little and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.” He looked up and a pleased smile stretched his mouth. “You really want to introduce him to your mother?”
Jonah
laughed wryly. “You know when you said back there that he hadn’t been altered?” Kyle nodded confused. “Yeah, well they only take your jacket at a
bris
– I don’t tell my mom about him and I can guarantee she’ll take everything else when she does find out. She’s gonna go crazy when I tell her she’ll be so happy.”
Kyle
’s whole face shone. “And she won’t mind about me? That I’m a man?”
Giving the question some serious thought,
Jonah frowned and then shook his head. “No, don’t think so.” He hesitated and then asked, “You religious at all? Belong to a church or something?” Kyle shook his head and Jonah gave him a look of gloomy resignation. “You might want to say that you do when she asks – she’s not gonna care about you being a guy, but the whole not kosher thing is gonna be a huge pain in the ass. Less hassle all round if she’s not trying to get you to convert every time you meet up.”
Kyle
looked like he was rapidly reconsidering thinking his son gaining a whole new set of relatives was a good idea.
Jonah
laughed again at his doubtful expression and his eyes landed on the back of Shea’s head, softening and shining with delight. “Relax, they’re going to love you – both of you.”
This, unfortunately, was more than could be said for
Shea regarding Jonah. Despite all of Kyle’s best efforts and trying to engage his interest with the contents of the bags that Jonah had brought, the little boy could only be persuaded to sit on Kyle’s lap and sit staring at Jonah with his thumb in his mouth and a frown on his face. After an hour of Kyle’s increasingly desperate attempts to get Shea to smile at Jonah, Jonah trying to look patient and non-threatening and Shea screaming bloody murder every time Kyle tried to put him down everybody’s nerves were starting to fray.
“Look,” said
Jonah, irritated and antsy after being the focus of Shea’s unblinking suspicious stare for what had felt like hours, “Maybe I should just go, come back another time. He’s not looking happy there and I don’t want to cause any trouble. We can try this again sometime.”
“No!”
Kyle looked bewildered and frazzled from having Shea generally behaving like the anti-Christ at the worst possible time and reached out a pleading hand to Jonah. “Please don’t go. You said you watched the videos, right? You know he’s not normally like this.”
“So maybe it’s just me.” Trying desperately to look like he didn’t care,
Jonah got to his feet and nearly tripped over Lady Ga-Ga who had developed an unhealthy attachment to the purple teddy he had brought and had sat staring at it fixedly since Jonah had set it down on the couch. “It’s cool. I’ll come back, I promise. He looks like he’s had enough for one day.”
Kyle
looked at his devil baby – who returned his look with one of surpassing sweetness and a brilliant smile around his thumb – and said hurriedly, “Wait, please, I’ve got an idea. Just let me try this one last thing and then if it doesn’t work then you can go and we’ll try again later. Please, Jonah, just five more minutes.”
It was only
Kyle’s pleading tone that stopped Jonah slinking out the door like a beaten dog. He nodded shortly and watched as Kyle hastened into the kitchen, Shea giving him a cool look over his shoulder, and then looked down at the dog at his feet. He scowled and snatched up the teddy, dropping it at the dog’s paws. “Go nuts.”
Ga-Ga looked at the teddy and then took it delicately in her jaws and dragged it under the piano, eyes not leaving his face like she expected the treat to be snatched away. Seconds later the sounds of the soft toy meeting a painful end drifted out.
Jonah looked up when Kyle came back into the room, a look of relief swiftly hidden like he’d expected Jonah to run the minute his back was turned, and a shiny bag clutched in the hand that wasn’t holding Shea to him. “Here.” Kyle thrust the bag at him and then sat back down on the couch, resettling Shea on his lap.
Lifting the bag,
Jonah stared. “Cheese Puffs?” He looked back at Kyle, baffled. “Thanks, but I’m not really that hungry.”
“Trust me.”
Kyle gave Shea a narrow look and then looked back at Jonah. “Just ignore him and open the bag. Oh,” He looked slightly guilty. “And don’t ever tell Louise about this – she’ll never let me live it down.”
Still looking completely baffled,
Jonah ripped open the bag and pulled out a cheese puff, putting it in his mouth and chewing more in reflex than in genuine appetite. From under the piano all sounds of teddy homicide ceased and a black snout appeared, a small piece of white fluff perched jauntily on the end. Shea turned his head just far enough from where he had it buried in Kyle’s chest and one eye fixed on the bag in Jonah’s hand.
Kyle
looked unbearably smug. “Keep going.”
Eyeing him like he’d lost his mind,
Jonah obligingly ate another cheese puff.
Shea
’s head turned and both eyes stared with deep longing at the bag of normally forbidden treats. He shifted his butt on Kyle’s lap and one leg slipped to dangle a foot to the floor. Under the piano two paws and a pair of beady black eyes appeared along with the snout.
Jonah
took another cheese puff and slowly brought it to his mouth, watching his son’s eyes track the movement and his thumb slip from his mouth. He popped the cheese puff in his mouth and Shea slid off Kyle’s lap and stood between his thighs, a look of conflicted longing on his face. Ga-Ga shimmied out from under the piano and started to commando crawl across the floor, casting anxious glances at Shea in case he made his move before she got into prime begging position. Shea finally noticed the dog slinking towards the cheese puffs and gave an outraged “Da!” of alarm. He took two tottering steps towards Jonah and then stopped, apparently torn between finally acknowledging his existence or letting the dog get to the treats. He gave Kyle an agonized look and Kyle smiled at him and then pointedly turned his head away and stared at a plant on the other side of the room.
Jonah
ate another cheese puff and Shea broke – he toddled the last few steps between them and stood so close Jonah could feel the heat of his little body against his thigh. Shea looked up at him and then looked at the bag of cheesy goodness. “Hey,” Jonah fought to keep his voice steady and smiled shakily down at his son. “You want one?”
Shea
continued to stare at the bag and then turned a pitiful expression on Jonah. His lower lip trembled and he put one pudgy little hand on his father’s leg.
Carefully
Jonah pulled a cheese puff out of the bag and held it out to Shea and looked startled when the baby snatched it and crammed it in his mouth. Ga-Ga gave an agonised whine from the floor and rolled over on her back, legs waving wildly in the air. Jonah grinned and dropped a cheese puff down into her waiting mouth and Shea squawked, “No! Da!” in annoyance. Jonah solemnly handed him another cheese puff and then looked up at Kyle in wonder when Shea plastered himself against Jonah’s thigh and tried to snatch the whole bag away. “It worked!”
“Well of course,”
Kyle blinked rapidly at the wondering smile on Jonah’s face and told himself he was not going to cry. “He’s your son, isn’t he?”
~*~*~*~
“You’re different,” panted Lopez as she bent to cuff the perp she had chased down for three blocks and then body slammed against the wire fence he had been trying to climb to get away from her. “Not sure I like it.”
Jonah
, his own somewhat winded and bruised prisoner dangling from his grip, looked annoyed and said, “What?” He shook the perp he had just brought down and who was loudly protesting the rather violent way he had been caught and snapped, “Shut the fuck up before I shove you in a dumpster to wait on patrol picking you up.” The perp shut up and Jonah turned his attention to Lopez who was yanking her own man to his feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Other books
Brothers and Sisters by Wood, Charlotte
Master of None by N. Lee Wood
Murder at the Breakers by Alyssa Maxwell
Heart of Texas Vol. 3 by Debbie Macomber
Betrayal at Blackcrest by Wilde, Jennifer;
1981 - Hand Me a Fig Leaf by James Hadley Chase
A Spoonful of Luger by Ormerod, Roger
Unrest by Marteeka Karland
Born in Chains (Men in Chains) by Roane, Caris
Midnight Call (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Keyonna Davis