Page 41 of What's Left of Us

His brows go up. “I didn’t tell you?” When I shake my head, he chuckles softly to himself. “I’m in the State Police Academy.”

“You’re already a cop though.”

“A deputy,” he reminds me, grabbing a cookie from the tray and biting into it. “Maybe after I graduate, I’ll finally get to know the captain as well as you do.”

He’s teasing me. I think. “I thought you said it would be bad if you got to know him.”

He lifts a shoulder, walks over, and drops down beside me. Not at the other end of the couch but on the cushion next to myfeet. Shoving the rest of the cookie into his mouth, he grabs my legs and extends them over his lap.

I stare in confusion as he pats my calf, squeezing and rubbing the muscles with an easy smile on his face. “There are usually only two ways somebody that high up the chain knows your name. You either did something very good or very bad. Most of the time, it’s the second.”

Watching him massage my legs is oddly…attractive. He doesn’t even think twice before switching from one to the other. “My family knows Captain Chamberlin from the country club. He and my father play golf together while his wife and my stepmother spend time at the spa. They get invited to a lot of charity galas my father hosts. I’ve had to dance with him a couple times.”

I cringe, remembering the rancid smell of alcohol on his breath as he told me about what a good man my father was. I’m not sure how much he’d had to drink that night, but I remember him getting a little handsy during the second song my stepmother made me dance with him to. His hands tended to linger farther south than I liked.

“They’re important public figures in the community,” Lincoln says. “I’d be surprised if they didn’t shake hands and kiss babies whenever they could.”

The comment has my brows furrowing, but I don’t reply right away. I’m too transfixed by how good the pseudo-massage is. I clear my throat and try pulling my leg away when my leggings start rising up my shin, revealing the prickle of dark hair sprouting. “I haven’t been able to shave,” I admit in embarrassment.

His hand comes down on my ankle to stop me from moving away, his thumb caressing the stubble. “It’s just hair, Georgia. Not the end of the world. If you need razors, I can pick some up for you at the store tomorrow to have here.”

He’d buy me razors? “That’s nice of you.”

Despite the prickly stubble meeting his fingertips, he doesn’t stop. “Is there anything else you need? A certain type of shampoo you like? Soap? Make me a list. Or we can go together and grab some stuff to last you for a while.”

A while.“Why are you being nice to me?”

His fingers pause briefly on my leg. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Does he need me to point out that we’re strangers? I don’t. “So, you’re training to be a police officer?” I ask to change the subject, peeling my gaze away from how his hands move over the tight muscles in my calf.

“A state trooper,” he explains, a secretive smile curling his lips. “Better money, better benefits. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time.”

“You always knew you wanted to be one?”

His nod is nostalgic as he leans back, keeping a hand on my shin and using the pad of his thumb to lazily caress the skin under the leggings. “I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was a kid. Every Halloween, I’d dress up as one. My mom will tell you the same story she likes to share with everyone—that I’d go door to door asking people if they had any bad guys they needed me to get rid of instead of asking for candy.”

I try picturing a little Lincoln in a cop uniform. “I think that’s cute. I never went trick-or-treating. The Del Rossis were above the ‘silliness’ that came with dressing up in costumes and begging for sweets. I tried getting my stepmother to let me go with friends from school, but she’d always tell me no.”

I’d always been a little envious, especially when the girls I went to school with brought bags of candy in with them with stories of their Halloween adventures.

“Never?” he asks in surprise.

“The Del Rossis don’t do Halloween,” is all I say with a loose shrug. Mrs. Ricci would always give me a bag of candy that her children collected and told me to hide it well.

He watches me for a second before squeezing my shin. “That’s a real shame, Peaches.”

My cheeks heat. “Is that nickname necessary?”

“Do you not like it?”

I still remember what he said the first time he used it, fighting the heat creeping up the back of my neck, thinking about what he’d said about mytaste. “It’s not that. It’s just…”

His lips stretch wider, knowing good and well what I’m thinking about but not calling me out on it. “It’s just what?”

“Crude.”

“I can be a crude person.”

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