Page 4 of Going the Distance

It had been a stupid ass mistake that had gotten me stabbed in the thigh. Nate and Liz had come to the station to talk to me about a man who was stalking Liz. The situation escalated when the man, who turned out to be her ex-boyfriend, broke into her apartment. It needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.

The two had left the station in separate vehicles. Liz had arrived home, and when Nate didn’t, she gave me a call. Rather than be smart about the situation, I’d jumped in my patrol car and went looking for Nate. I’d found him in the ditch, having been run off the road by the man who was after Liz. By the time the two of us pulled into Nate’s driveway, Liz had wrestled the stalker to the ground and had him pinned. If she hadn’t known basic self-defense, I don’t know what would have happened. I had gotten down on the ground with her to put the cuffs on the bastard, and then things went wrong. I should have let mypartner know where I was going. I had ignored every protocol and just jumped in the car and went cowboy on the situation. A millisecond of distraction and I had a knife in my thigh. One bad decision had led to surgery, pain, and weeks of rehab.

Being a police officer was a dangerous job. I knew that. I had never been on a scene where an officer had been killed, but I had marched in more than one funeral parade. Trailing after a coffin containing a man or woman who had done the same job I did. It wasn’t until that knife hit my thigh that I really realized how quickly it could happen. It didn’t have to be a series of fuck ups. It could happen in one heartbeat.

Kamloops wasn’t a dangerous city overall, but like most cities, it depended on where someone went. We were surrounded by mountain ranges, farms, lakes, and rivers. Endless, beautiful places to hunt, fish, hike, bike, and boat. In the winter, we had a luxury ski resort just a twenty-minute drive away, not to mention ice fishing and snowshoeing. The list went on.

We also had a drug epidemic. The city had been a small working-class kind of place. Boarded by two rivers and the Secwepemc First Nations Reservation, where I grew up. In the last few decades, things had changed. The population increased to more than a hundred thousand people. The mine, mill, and factory jobs dried up—thanks to an epidemic of pine beetle that killed off a lot of the lumber—and year after year of forest fires. Now, the city was an interesting mix of old houses and new high rises. Blue collar and white collar. Lifted pickup trucks and luxury electric cars. None of that was necessarily a bad change. What was a bad change was the number of people living on the streets with nowhere to go. It wasn’t just a problem here but everywhere. This province officially had a drug crisis going on thanks to fentanyl. Everyone from cops to social workers to librarians at the public library has noticed the difference.Families, schools, hospitals, and businesses had all felt the effect.

It was easy to get jaded. To see the mess, the vandalism, and the discarded needles and blame the homeless and the addicted. That was one thing that, as a cop, I prioritized not doing. These were people who needed help. They needed rehab, homes, treatment, a hot meal, whatever it was. I couldn’t let myself grow cold towards those who needed help. Being stuck on desk duty was making me cold towards the whole goddamned job. I couldn’t sit all day and file paperwork. Sometimes, we got people walking into the station who needed help, so at least I could do that. I wanted to be out there, on the streets, in the patrol car, helping people, preventing crimes, and most importantly, making sure my best friend and partner didn’t get hurt on the job the way that I had.

Pent-up energy, training with Dani, an injury that could have been so much worse, and a job that meant it could happen again led to one thing: I couldn’t get Dani out of my head. There had to be a way I could have her and not betray my best friend. I just didn’t know what it was.

Chapter 5

Dani

Another day, another round of torture helping Brock work out. At first, we had only focused on cardio, upper body, and abs. Fuck he had nice abs. Today was our first crack at a lower-body workout. On the plus side, he hadn’t had any pain or issues with his injured quad. On the negative side, my eyes had a very hard time leaving his ass. Seriously, the sight of a man squatting, even with light weights was porn. Calves, quads, glutes, everything flexing and straining. For a girl who grew up being bigger than everyone else, it made me feel like he could pick me up and toss me. It appealed in a way that was less than feminist.

Unfortunately, his legs hadn’t had a decent workout in a while, and around rep number five, his form started to waiver. I moved and stood behind him. “Don’t arch your lower back. Keep it straight.” I laid one hand against his spine and wrapped the other around his middle to press against his lower abs. I felt him suck in a breath, but he dutifully followed my direction. Even so, I stayed where I was. It was what a good trainer would do. Certainly, had nothing to do with how good he smelled even as he worked up a sweat. Or how easily I could picture sliding my hand lower and cupping him through his shorts. In my mind, he would be rock-hard for me. Then we would switch positions, and he’d show me just how much he had healed since the stabbing.

“I think that’s twelve reps.” I had no idea. I had stopped counting. Maybe all of my training was getting to me mentally. Maybe I was just missing chocolate since Nate told me I couldn’t have it on my fight training food plan. Maybe after spending half my life crushing on this guy, having him under my hands was just too much.

“How does your leg feel?” I still hadn’t moved. I couldn’t help but notice that neither had he. If anything, he had gotten closer.

“You tell me.” There was a husky quality to his voice that made my pulse pound. He put his hand over mine and slid it down over his hip and to the top of his quad. My thumb grazed the side of his dick as it moved over his hip. He was half hard. He sucked in a breath, and so did I. It wasn’t an accident. I knew it wasn’t. I’d gotten the odd hint here and there that maybe he saw me as a woman and not just as his friend’s sister. This was the clearest sign I’d had. Maybe he was suffering as much as I was. He had more to lose. Me sleeping with my brother’s friend wasn’t as bad as his friend sleeping with me. Either way, the temptation was too much.

I walked my fingers so the fabric of his shorts moved up until my hand landed on his bare thigh. “Feels a little stiff.”

He huffed out a breath as I kneaded the muscle, just inches from where he tented the front of his shorts. “That tends to happen when you’re around.”

“Yeah?” The heat pooling between my legs was getting hard to ignore and my hips came to rest against his ass. “Want me to rub it out for you?”

“You have no idea how much I want that.” He started to move my hand over towards his dick. It wasn’t far to go but we both knew it was crossing a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. I held my breath as first my thumb then my palm moved over his hard length. “Fuck.” His voice was breathy and unsteady. A loud whirring broke the sound of our combined breaths, and Ijumped away from him. His phone vibrated gently on his coffee table. He ran a hand through his hair and picked it up looking at the screen. He cleared his throat. “It’s a text from your brother. He’s coming over to borrow a socket set.”

I licked my lips. My eyes darted to his crotch, then away. “I guess I should head out then.” We were only halfway through the workout, and we both knew it. I couldn’t stay in the room with him anymore. I couldn’t watch him interact with my brother when I’d been an inch away from giving the man an over-the-pants hand job in his living room. Not exactly Shakespearean romance, but the same principle applied here as it did for Romeo and Juliet.If you don’t want to piss off your family, keep your hands to yourself.

Chapter 6

Brock

“Ready to get out of here?” Josh smacked me on the shoulder as he walked into the station.

“Hell yes, I’ve been on paperwork patrol for way too long.”

“Would probably help if you had a life outside of work. Go out, get laid. You broke your leg, not your dick.”

I shot him a look. Fuck, if only he knew who I wanted. My gut twisted every time I’d seen him since my last session with Dani. Feeling her warm breath against the back of my neck while her hand slid over my abs just inches from where I wanted her most had been too much. The way she looked at me and touched me when we trained together had me realizing that thing was far from one-sided. The heat in her voice when she’d offered to rub me down had been a green light, and I’d almost stomped on the gas.

“I’m thirty, I’m past the whole bar-and-party scene.”

“Well, I’ve never seen you keep a girl around for more than a week or two, so you better find out where the old people hang out. You get cranky when you haven’t gotten any.”

Yeah, there was a reason I never kept a woman around long. It had nothing to do with womanizing and everything to do with knowing who I wanted and not being able to have her. No matter how many times I put myself out there, it all came back to her.With all the shit that had happened in my life recently, seeing her, even if it was to get my ass kicked, had become a bright spot.

“I’ll work on it.” It was a lie, but it moved the conversation along.

“Good, want to hit the pub? I feel like I never see your goofy ass face anymore.” And there it was. The roadblock, or cockblock, of the situation. The man standing next to me had been my closest friend since before my balls dropped. We’d been tight through high school, sports, me moving away to college, and now on the force. We were as close as brothers. Here he was, trying to cheer me up even when it was my dumbass fault I got stabbed in the first place. He would never approve of me and Dani. He didn’t think I had it in me to stick around for the long haul. Logically, I knew this, but when we touched, those thoughts went flying out the window.

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