The UN Series Complete Box Set (177 page)

Running a hand down my face once again, I cringe from how sore my nose is. “Am I still bleeding?” I ask as I tilt my head back for Jimmy to get a look at it.

He smirks. “Yeah.”

“Fucking bitch,” I curse, and the guy still kneeling on the grass nods his head in agreement.

“What are you doing here anyway?” Jimmy asks. “Are you on day shift now?”

I shake my head. “No. I just finished working the fatality wreck on I-55,” I tell him as I gently rub my nose with the back of my hand.

“Oh. I heard that one was bad.”

I nod. “It was.” It makes you sick how careless people can be. Take these two idiots, for example. They are fighting over a truck when the mother of that little girl is getting the news that her baby is dead and her husband was the reason for it. Sometimes I hate this job.

“Well, don’t worry about me. They’re both in handcuffs now, and there is another car on its way to help me take them in.”

“Paperwork…”

“I’ll take care of it. No worries.” He nods to my car. “Go home and get some rest. You’re gonna need it,” he says looking down at my bloody nose. “Go ahead and go home.” He gestures to my cop car once again.

“Thank you,” I say letting out a long breath. I’m so tired I could lay down and fall asleep on the grass right now.

I nod my head and thank him one more time before I head back to my car and head home. I’m tired and now I have a fucking headache from hell.

CHAPTER THREE

PARKER

I pull up into my driveway and yank the sunglasses off my face before tossing them onto my dash. The sun is officially up—not helping my headache at all. I take one last look at my face. My nose is red, and my eyes are looking puffy. I think the bitch may have broken my nose. I have a pounding headache, and I can feel my nose throbbing.
What a way to end the shift. A shift that I wasn’t even scheduled to work in the first place.

I get out of my car and spin around when I hear a car door slam shut. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you for hours!” Sandy all but yells as she comes walking up the driveway. With how crazy my night went, I completely forgot about telling her to come over.

“I…”

“Oh, my God,” she screeches throwing her hands over her mouth as she looks at my uniform. “Were you shot?” she asks as she examines the blood.

I roll my eyes. I didn’t bleed that damn much. “No. A woman hit me in the face. Made my nose bleed.”

“Are you okay?” She places her hands on either side of my face, but I pull away from her, not wanting the contact.

“Fine,” I say, “But you need to go home.”

“Excuse me?” she demands. “I’ve been waiting for you forever.” Her voice rises.

“Well, I have a fucking job to do,” I shout. “I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient for you.” Fuck, just yelling hurts my nose.

“Parker.” Her voice softens as if she can talk her way into the house.

“It’s not gonna happen. Go home, Sandy,” I say before turning around and giving her my back. 

I walk into the house and lock the door behind me. I can only imagine what Sandy is calling me. Dick. Asshole. Fucker. Doesn’t matter. I’ve heard them all before. She’s not the first bitch I’ve pissed off.

I make my way through the house and into the kitchen where I find my roommate’s fiancée, Missy, sitting at the kitchen table. Her blond hair is up in a messy bun and her face is free of make-up. By the way she yawns, I can tell she must have just woke up.

“What are you doing?” she asks quickly, and I give her an irritated look.

“Just getting off work,” I say, lifting my hand to catch the trail of blood that I can feel run down my chin.

“What happened to you?” she asks clearing her throat.

“A crazy bitch happened to me,” I growl, grabbing an ice pack out of the freezer before I plop down across from her. “What’s wrong with you?” Her blue eyes are puffy, and her cheeks are damp. It’s easy to see that she’s been crying yet she’s smiling like an idiot. Women can be so confusing.

“What do you mean?” Her smile gets bigger to the point where it looks scary.

“You look too…giddy.”

“So, no one has died?” she asks smiling.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat, refusing to mention the little girl who is still so fresh in my mind. “Okay.” I place my ice pack on the table. “I don’t know what is going on with you. But I had a fucking horrible night at work. And I’m really not in the mood to decipher what you’re trying to say.”

She takes a deep breath as her smile drops off her face. “I had a bad dream last night.”

My eyebrows rise. Why would a bad dream put her in a good mood? Makes no sense to me but women rarely do. “About?”

“I had a dream that Tate didn’t survive the gunshot wound.” 

My eyes widen, and she sighs. “I’m confused,” I say shaking my head at her. “I dreamed that we were back at the bakery. The day that Jonathan shot him.”

I remember that day very well. I shot and killed Tate’s stepdad.

I see Tate’s stepfather, Jonathan, lift his gun and aim at Missy. I lift and fire. Shot him right in the chest. Dead instantly, but then I look at the floor. Tate lies on top of Missy and my heart stops the moment I see the blood leak out from under their bodies. I had been too late.

I bend down quickly as another officer helps me pull him off her. My ears ring from the sound of the shots fired in such a small space. But I ignore the ringing sound and bark off some orders. We lie Tate on his back on the bakery floor and Missy’s voice cries out as she starts to crawl toward him.

My best friend, Slade, grabs her and holds her back to allow us room to work. I reach down and rip the blood soaked shirt off him. I then wrap it around my hand and press it to the gun wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

“There’s so much blood,” the officer who sits opposite of me says. His voice shakes and I reach over for my radio. I demand an ambulance and give our location. My roommate—my best friend—is bleeding out in front of me, and I can only do so much. “Come on, Tate,” I say as the officer performs CPR. “Don’t do this to us,” I demand.

“Please,” Missy cries out. “Please save him, Parker,” she pleads, and it makes me nauseous. What if I can’t?

“Why?” she continues to cry. “Tate,” she screams, hoping her voice will pull him back. “I love him. Please.” Her voice shakes and my throat tightens.

The officer giving CPR checks for his pulse and then looks up at me. I know the look and I feel numb. His warm blood covers more than half of my uniform and the smell alone makes me want to puke. Smells have never affected me before but when your friends are involved, it does something to you. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
Love you, brother
, I silently say before I open and look up at the woman who loves him.

I can’t hold back the tear that runs down my cheek. “I’m sorry, Missy.” My voice breaks and her entire face pales.

“No,” she cries shaking her head. “He wouldn’t leave me,” she sobs as she struggles against Slade.

I look up at him and nod my head to let her go. As soon as he releases her, she crawls to him, pushing me out of the way. “Please. Tate,” she begs. “Please don’t leave me.” She looks around the room as we all stare at her. Each and every one of us having our own personal mental breakdown of his loss. “Why aren’t you doing anything?” she yells, and I swallow the knot in my throat

“I love you,” she sobs placing her head on his bloody chest. She starts to perform CPR on him herself as she tells him to stay. To be with her. To fight, to live, for her. It’s all too much.

I place my hands on top of hers, stopping her. “No,” she shouts, frantically trying to push me away.

“Missy,” I snap, grabbing her hands. I stand and yank her up with me. She fights me with all she has, but I drag her to the other side of the bakery and press her up against the wall, trying to use my body to block her view of his bloody body lying on the floor.

“Stop. I can save him,” she sobs into my uniform.

I wrap my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Missy.” I cry as well.

“He died. In my dream. It felt so…real,” she says bringing me out of my memory. She was right. She could save him and she did. “What if he had…?” By some miracle, he came back to life for her. I had shot and killed his bastard of a stepfather. He wasn’t the first person I killed, and he sure as hell won’t be the last. I can only imagine what kind of nightmares she still has over that night. Even if it was months ago. 

“You can’t live by what if. Or why not?” I interrupt her. “The future is unforeseen, Missy. You can’t change what’s already meant to happen.” Tate didn’t die that day. He did jump in front of that bullet to save her life, but he didn’t die. He saved her, and she saved him. The love they have for each other is so adorable it’s sickening at times. And lucky me, I get to see it every day. Not! But I would trade anything I have to see my best friend happy, even if it does make me sick at times.

“But it didn’t really happen. That’s the thing. I literally woke up sweating with my heart pounding. And he was right there beside me.” She shakes her head as if to clear the thought that he died. “I don’t know why I would dream that,” she whispers. “That was so long ago.” 

“We sometimes fear what we don’t want to lose.” I’ve never known loss. That kind of loss where you lose someone you love. But I feel loss every day. I feel other people’s loss and it kills a little piece of me every time.

I reach over the table and take her water, suddenly needing to wet the dryness in my mouth. The sight of the little girl lying dead and bloody in the street keeps slipping into my mind. Mix that with the memory of my friend dying as I had my hands on him, and it’s earth shattering.

She smiles as I take a drink. “When will you fall in love?” she asks.

“Excuse me?” I ask as I choke on the water.

“When are you gonna fall in love, Parker?” she asks sweetly with a smile.

“I’m immune.”
Thank God for that.

She laughs. “It’s not a disease,” she argues. “In my dream, Slade said that any of you guys would have done that for the girl you loved. Any of you would have jumped in front of that bullet.” 

My face softens, and I give her a cocky smile. “Missy, I put my life on the line every day for people who I don’t even know. One doesn’t need
love
to put others’ lives first.” I may be a prick, but I made an oath to protect the ones who need it. Even if that means putting my own life in danger. It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made in my life.

She thinks about that for a few seconds before she speaks. “Okay, then. Answer me this.” I nod. “For some reason, you deny yourself the opportunity to love a woman, yet you love Tate.”

“Now that’s diff…”

She interrupts me. “In my dream, you cried. A lot! You took off time from

work to stay here with me. But I could see you grieving as well. You missed him because you loved him as a brother. Now, I know a brotherly love is different than what you would feel for a woman, but why would you deny yourself one more than the other?”

“Easy. I don’t want to know that feeling.” I speak the truth with no hesitation.

“What feeling?” 

“The one you had in your dream. The one that ripped your heart out and left you feeling less than yourself. By loving Tate, you give him power over you. A power to destroy you in the end.” It’s true. I don’t want to feel that type of loss. I’d rather be the one to turn and walk away than to be the one crying that someone had the power to leave me vulnerable and alone.

“But what about the other feeling?” she asks.

“What other feeling?” I ask as my eyes start to get heavy. So tired.

“The one I felt when I woke up and realized that I never lost him. He was right there the entire time, and my world was right again. He may have the power to destroy me, but he also has the power to heal me. Isn’t that feeling worth it?”

My eyebrows pull together at her words. It doesn’t matter what kind of hope that feeling gives you. Everyone dies. Everyone falls out of love at some point. That feeling is not made to last forever. 

I stand and smile down at her, ready for this conversation to be over. “You look like shit,” I say, and she laughs because she knows it’s true. “And for the record,” I say before I start to walk away, “it’s not worth it. You can’t miss what you never had, Missy.” With those words, I walk back to my bedroom holding the ice pack to my bloody nose. 

I throw the ice pack onto my bed as I start to undo my shirt when the visual of that little girl lying face down in the road returns. It won’t leave my mind. Then I remember the blanket I stepped on.

My head snaps up. “The blanket...” I take off out of my room and run back outside. I grab the blanket out of my cop car and head straight to the laundry room. I gently wash it off in the sink. I have an unbelievable urge to vomit as the blood runs over my hands and down the drain, but I hold it down. The bad thing is that I’ve seen worse than a dead child lying in the road. Hell, I’ve been the one doing the killing. Never a child but aren’t we taught that a life is a life? No matter whether they are two or fifty, it never gets easier.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath as the copper smell fills my nose. After a few deep breaths, which do nothing to calm my nerves, I look back down at the blanket as I turn off the water. I wring it out.

I then turn and place it in the washing machine. I set it to delicate and press start. I stand there with my hands on the washer and my head hung as I take a deep breath. My fucking nose still throbs and my head still pounds. I’m exhausted. But there’s one last thing I need to do before I can even think about going to sleep. I shove off the washer and head toward the front door.