Page 19 of Family Bonds- Kelsey & Van

“I don’t need pity,” he said.

“It’s not pity at all and I’m sorry you feel that way. It’s sadness that anyone should go through that much pain. I’ve got cousins in law enforcement. I don’t know how their spouses or parents could deal with that daily.”

“My mother struggled with it. She died of brain cancer when I was twenty-six. I’d been on the force a few years at that point.”

It would have killed him if his mother had been alive when he was stabbed and he would have worried her.

He remembered thinking it wasn’t time to see her again, as much as he wanted to hold her in his arms.

“You’ve had a lot of loss in your life. I can’t imagine. Life will be much slower on Amore Island.”

“I’m learning. Not a lot of excitement other than some dogs stuck under decks and burned toast.”

She smiled and pulled her hand away. “I’m good at adding excitement to people’s lives. What brought you to Amore Island from Kansas? It doesn’t sound as if it’s family and I’m shocked a nine-one-one operator job did it. You could do that anywhere other than here.”

“Actually,” he said. “It was family.”

He picked up a wing and bit into it and chewed. The spicy sauce hit his tongue while he tried to formulate the rest of what he was going to say.

“I do find family is always there when you need them.”

“It’s not like that for me,” he said. “I never knew my grandfather. My mother’s father. She left home after dropping out of college. While I was recovering four months ago, I get this letter in the mail that he passed and to call this law firm representing him for my inheritance.”

“Wow,” she said. “That’s something you normally hear on TV and not in real life.”

“I thought it was a joke, but I called and found out it wasn’t. I was left a house here on the island. I’d planned on returning to my job when I was healed, but I was getting in my head.”

“It’s okay to say that you might have had nightmares about it,” she said. “I’m sure I would have cried myself to sleep nightly while I slept with a gun under my pillow, chased by a knife, and a light on.”

He snorted out a laugh. “Damn close. I did shut the light off.”

The gun never left his side. He still had it next to his bed, but it wasn’t under his pillow anymore.

The first thing he did before he moved here was make sure he had his permit.

When he was being interviewed for the job, Mac Bond, chief of police, had contacted him and asked if he’d be willing to take a part-time officer slot. They were struggling to find people.

He considered it and said he’d keep an open mind but needed to just settle in and it’d be easier with a straight eight-hour day where he could go home without thinking of his job.

He could easily shut it off when he walked out the door being the operator.

There was no trying to solve a case even during his off hours.

No worrying about being called in either.

Here he put his time in and came home.

The pay was shit, but he didn’t care about that either.

He didn’t need the money.

He had another potential career waiting for him, but all he had to do was pull the trigger on that too.

He didn’t know the last time he was this scared of doing things in his life. Though his father would insist he was afraid of his own shadow.

This wasn’t fear of the unknown as much as the can of worms he’d be opening.

But he knew moving here was only part of it.

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