Page 30 of No Sweet Goodbyes

Forcing myself to take a breath, I check her for obvious injury.

Stryker is kneeling down at her side at the same time, checking her pulse. It takes everything in my body, every ounce of strength I possess, to keep from hitting him.

“She went on a run at lunch,” he says briefly and breathes a sigh of relief when he gets her pulse, nodding at me. “But she said she twisted her ankle, so I was helping her back to the shop.”

Why he’s telling me, defending the way he was touching her, is beyond me. I’m not an idiot. I know that Linc can see how I feel about her, but he wouldn’t go and share that with the rest of the world. Especially not Stryker.

“What the fuck happened?” Linc shoves both of us aside to get to his little sister. “Back the fuck up, assholes, you’re too big.”

“Shit.” Emma gasps. “My head.” She opens her eyes and punches her brother in the face. “What the fuck, Linc!”

Linc, whose head snaps to the side with her hit, falls back on his ass.

“Me?” He roars back. “You’re the one who hit me. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Just like when we were kids, you just had to be creepy.” She winces but keeps going. “You want to know why you got hit? Remember the time you put a frog in my hair when I was in middle school? You surprise me, you get hit.” She sniffs, and I watch as Linc rubs his face.

He offers his sister a hand getting up. “You hit like a girl.”

“I got dizzy and passed out, asshole.” Emma sits up with a groan. “That doesn’t mean I’m dying. You’re all fuckin’ weirdos.”

Emma, dead, staring up at me with blank eyes. That’s the image that’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.

I thought it was bad thinking of her waiting for me to come home and then having to hear that I died. But a world where she doesn’t exist?

That’s a whole new version of hell that I hadn’t even contemplated before this very moment.

But I know it’s going to be my nightmare for the rest of my life.

11

DOM

I’m going to hell, and I know exactly what I’m going to be tortured with. Emma’s smell, fading away because not only can I not have her, but I’m the reason she’s gone.

I sit in my office, wishing Emma had been sent home after fainting. Really, I do. Instead, she changes back into her uniform, tells her brother to go to hell, and goes back to work like nothing happened.

The girl has balls. I have to give her that.

But she should have gone home.

Anything to get her away from me.

No, not Emma.

She walks through the office and makes me want to gouge out someone’s eyes just for looking at her.

By someone, I mean Stryker.

Stryker, who hovers around her in dispatch and every time she walks into the bullpen like she’s going to collapse and he’s going to do whatever he can to keep it from happening.

“She’s fine,” I hear Linc tell him. “Back off, Stryker.”

Daisy barks, and I laugh at what I can only imagine is Remy ordering his dog to go after another deputy.

“You’ve got it almost as bad as I do.” Logan throws a wad of paper across my office and it lands in the garbage can. “Are you gonna do anything about it?”

“Can’t,” I answer. “She’s my rookie, and she’s going to the academy next week.” I give him the abridged version. The same one that would convince any other man to drop it.

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