Page 50 of No Sweet Goodbyes

Dom is there when I open my eyes, a few inches away but not touching me. “Can I help?”

“No,” I tell him curtly. “I’m gonna go take a shower.” Thankfully, my shift is done, which is why Linc thought it would be a great idea to knock out the sparring practice.

I look down at Eddie’s still-prone body and barely manage to keep from kicking him while he’s down.

The muscle exhaustion is real, and if I do it, there is no guarantee that I’ll be able to walk out with my head held high.

No one else says a word as I leave the room, but the door stays open when I make it into the hall and collapse against the wall.

“Where did she learn to fight like that?” Dom’s voice echoes quietly. “I’ve never seen anyone move like that, with that much rage.”

“We created a monster,” Linc answers. His words have me refusing to give up my position in the hall, blatantly eavesdropping on their conversation. “We had to. We turned her into the perfect opponent. One that doesn’t pay attention to anything or anyone when she’s in a fight. Danny and I wanted to make sure that no matter what happened, Emma would be able to protect herself. So we teamed up on her. Made sure that she had eyes in the back of her head and knew how to take someone down hard and fast.”

“That wasn’t even any sort of martial arts.” Carter sounds amazed, but I can barely catch my breath. “Just raw and vicious rage.”

“I like her,” Avery calls out. “She’s my sort of people. I wonder if she can train me to be a badass, too. Ian, I’m gonna talk to Chloe and see if we can have some sort of badass bootcamp.”

“Think about it,” Linc explains, the same way he and my parents had explained it to me when they all insisted that I learn how to fight over a decade ago. “She’s not going to get any bigger. She’s all of a hundred pounds soaking wet, and she’s got maybe five feet of clearance. But when she walks into a room, she doesn’t have to worry. When she runs at night, she might be attacked. She might have to cross the street to avoid a creep. She might be hurt by the person she trusts the most in the world. There are a hundred thousand different scenarios that a woman can find themselves in. We needed to make sure that Emma was scarier than the monsters that go bump in the night.”

“I wanna be her when I grow up,” comes from Avery.

I don’t want to eavesdrop anymore, and I’m starting to get feeling back in my fingers and toes, so I push off the wall with a silent grunt.

“She’s gonna be an amazing police officer.” Dom’s voice is the last thing I hear before I walk into the women’s locker room. “I can’t fuckin’ wait.”

17

DOM

Watching Emma wipe what remains of the blood off the back of her neck sends a spike of rage into my heart. But I don’t say anything to her about it.

“I know it was bad,” she says when we are finally sitting in my truck on the way to my parents’ house that night. “It’s really bad. But you have to know that he didn’t do it to hurt me.”

Just because I know the truth of the situation doesn’t mean that I’m not pissed about what I saw and learned that afternoon. “I know.” I clench the steering wheel tightly.

“Eddie used to practice with me, Dom. He knew I wouldn’t take it easy on him, and I used his hesitancy to hurt me to my advantage. It was my mistake for letting my hair fall over my shoulder. I should have had the foresight to keep it back or pin it up before the fight.”

“That’s not why…” I trail off, catching myself before I say something that makes me sound like an idiot.

“What?” She turns in her seat, pulling at the seat belt so she can look at me straight-on. “Why were you upset about it?”

Luckily, I’m pulling up to my parents’ house, so I park and turn off the engine so that I can tell her everything.

“You know I have three little sisters. You’ve met Alice and Violet. Delia’s away at college on the other side of the country, and I can’t be there to protect her. I was used to that. She’s a big girl. I know she can make her own decisions. But your brother said something today. Something that makes me sick. I’ve never had to be careful when I walk outside at night. Or when I go for a run. If I see someone acting weird or suspicious, it doesn’t affect how safe I feel in any given situation. You do. You have to worry about how you’re going to get home or if you’re going to be safe when you go for a run. And your brothers made sure that you’d be able to defend yourself.” I sigh and slap my hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “I should have done that for my sisters.”

Emma snorts. “Shut up, Dom.” I watch her roll her eyes. “Yeah, Danny and Linc made sure that I could defend myself, but that didn’t change anything. I still have to worry about walking in a dark alley. I still have to plan an alternative route home just in case something happens. And yes, when I see a creepy guy in the middle of the night, I cross the street to avoid him. It doesn’t matter that I know how to kick someone’s ass. In the heat of the moment, I’m still going to be the same as your sisters, smaller and more fragile than a man would be in that situation. That’s not a problem you can solve.”

“It’s frustrating,” I admit. “I want to be able to help. To do something.”

“You do help.” Emma smiles at me, reaches over, and puts her hand on my cheek. “You’re you.”

She turns her head, and I see my mother standing on the front porch, waving at us like a maniac.

“She’s going to come knock on the door here in a second if we don’t get out,” I tell her. “We might as well go in.”

“Good.” Emma pats her stomach. “All that ass-kicking made me hungry. And sore.”

“You’re literally the only person I know who would think about food after your day.”

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