Page 38 of No Sweet Goodbyes

“Dom.” She turns while sitting on my lap, which definitely doesn’t help the problem she’s been talking about. “What are you doing? You made damn sure to tell me last night that it was a mistake. That we are a mistake.”

I shake my head. “Not anymore.” My fingers play with the hem of her shirt, sliding underneath it to caress the skin not covered by her leggings on her waist. “I told you. It’s torture. Not being able to touch you. Kiss you. Fu?—”

“I get it,” she snaps. Then she shoots a look at Kennedy and Bria Keller, who are both sitting too close as far as I’m concerned.

Bria, I can’t do anything about since she’s somehow fallen asleep in her chair. But I whistle at Linc, who turns to see me nod in Kennedy’s direction with a small tilt of my head.

He’s there in a flash and picks Kennedy up. “Hey,” she protests uselessly. “I had a front row seat. You can’t make me leave.”

“Come on, Kennedy. I’ll give you a front row seat when we get home.”

He carries her to the other end of the yard, back toward where he parked his truck earlier, and I smile at Emma. “Better?”

She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to. I feel her. Feel the way she relaxes by not having one of her best friends as our audience.

“Let the party end,” I tell her quietly as she leans into my body. “As much as I want to kick everyone out and tell them to go home, it’s hard when half of them are family.”

She doesn’t complain, doesn’t even move. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she finally says. “I can leave, and it’s not like everyone saw.”

My heart kicks up a beat, panicking at the thought that she’ll leave when I finally make the smart decision. “Everyone saw,” I tell her. “Didn’t you hear them whistling?” She shakes her head, and I tighten my grip on her body minutely. “They saw. And I wanted them to see, Emma. You aren’t a mistake. You never were.”

I watch the way she pulls back again so that she can look at me, gauging my sincerity. My heart is still racing, my mind filled with the same reasons I pushed her away. I’m deploying. She’s a rookie. She shouldn’t have to wait.

And then the nightmare image that I’ve seen every night since our first kiss flashes in my mind again. Emma, holding a little girl who looks just like us, telling her that I’m not coming home, and the excitement of having Emma in my arms vanishes. Side by side with the image of Emma, dead, never knowing how much she means to me.

My throat dries, and my tongue feels like I’ve swallowed sand and it clumps there, making it impossible to say anything. But instead of running away, I push the nightmare aside. At least for the time being.

I can’t lose her.

“Do you want to spend the night?” I ask her, hoping that she’ll say yes. What I really want is to ask her to stay forever, but I know that will scare her away. Either that or I’ll ask her, and then I’ll fuck it up again. So for now, I just ask for the night.

Forever can wait.

Before she can answer, Stryker plops down into the chair next to us. “Is this why you never answered my text the other day?”

Emma freezes, and I open my mouth to tell him to leave when she handles it like a boss. “Eddie,” her quiet voice rings out clearly, not hampered by the crackling fire in the slightest. “I don’t have anything to talk to you about. That’s why we broke up three years ago. And that’s why I didn’t answer your text. It has nothing to do with Dom.”

If he’d been looking at me, he would have seen my smile, but he doesn’t look away from her.

“I know,” he says solemnly. “I just wanted to check on you. But I get it, if you’re turning into a badge bunny.”

I stand up at that, and Emma slides onto the ground.

“Leave.” Her order comes as my hand wraps around the other man’s collar. “Before I hurt you, Eddie.”

Stryker, who has a problem with opening his mouth before thinking, shakes his head. “No. I think it’s a justified question, especially if we’re supposed to trust you with our lives.”

“You weren’t a cop when my sister decided to waste a few years of her life on you.” Linc steps into the conversation with his arms crossed. “And yeah, you were my friend. But not with the way you’re disrespecting her.”

Remy stands on my other side. “I mean, you haven’t been my friend since you took a stance against Parker. No help here.”

Stryker ignores all of us, though, in favor of Emma. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “It isn’t. You were there the day I told Danny what I wanted to do with my life. You knew what my plan was, and what my backup would be. You knew all of it. That’s why you decided to be a cop, too. So that you could potentially work with me.” She steps forward as her words affect all of us.

Linc looks at me with a question in his eyes and I shake my head and check with Remy. None of us knew about Emma wanting to be a cop when she was a kid. It would have been something we helped her with, of course, but we didn’t know.

“I’m not a badge bunny,” Emma goes on with steel in her voice. “But I will wear the badge. Maybe that makes Dom a badge bunny, you know? But you? You should go now, before I have to hurt you. Like I said.”

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