Page 30 of Loco

He grinned, shaking his head. “God help me, I think I’m in trouble.”

“You absolutely are.”

And this—this—was why I liked him. Not just because he was ridiculously good in bed, though that definitely didn’t hurt, it was moments like these when the walls came down, and he wasn’t off doing whatever mysterious, complicated things he did with the rest of his time. When he let himself justbe—easygoing, quick to laugh, a little goofy around the edges—he was genuinely fun to be around. The kind of person who made you forget, for a second, how messy everything else was.

Roque

I watched Sayla, her head tilted back in laughter, eyes alight with mischief. It was the kind of sound that made everything feel a little less heavy—sharp and bright, cutting straight through the fog still clinging to me from that damn phone call.

Judd’s voice was still bouncing around my skull. He’d sounded tight and measured, hiding more emotion than he was letting on. Another development, another name, and another betrayal. This thing was deeper than we thought, and somehow, it keptgetting darker the closer we looked. What started as whispers about a prostitution ring in Palmerstown had unraveled into a full-blown case involving money laundering, corruption, and now—God help us—the chief of our own department.

I didn’t want it to be true, but it fit. All the loose ends we couldn’t tie, the way some reports vanished, how people kept turning up silent or scared. And now that Sayla’s old neighbor—a woman I wouldn’t have looked at twice before this—had come forward, we were seeing the truth behind the curtain. She’d risked everything to tell us what she knew. The kind of bravery that gets people killed if you’re not careful. She was done being silent, and now we were trying to make sure she didn’t regret that.

I ran a hand over my jaw, the tension still coiled in my shoulders from the call. We were walking a tightrope, and the longer this continued, the more it felt like the ground was crumbling under our feet. Judd, a few trusted guys, and I were flying blind, trying to root this thing out without tipping our hand. We couldn’t trust most of our own. That was the worst part.

But then there was her—Sayla, sitting there like nothing could touch her. Like she belonged in a world far removed from backroom deals and dirty money. She had no idea how much I needed that. Just being near her—hearing her laugh, watching her scrunch her nose when she told her ridiculous stories—made everything else fade for a minute.

Before the phone rang, I’d been happy. Actuallyhappy. I didn’t even realize I missed that rare contentment until it was yanked away again. Being around her did that—cut through all the shit I kept buried under duty and silence. When she looked at me, it wasn’t as a cop or a guy neck-deep in secrets. It was justme. That version of myself I barely remembered these days.

I wanted that feeling back.

So I straightened up, rolled my shoulders once, and pushed the call—and everything tied to it—out of my mind. There’d be time to go back to it later. Time to plan, to dig, to fight, but not now.

Now, I just wanted to make her laugh again.

There were nights I sat in my truck outside the station for twenty or thirty minutes, staring at the building and wondering what I was still doing.

I used to be proud of that badge. Proud to wear the uniform, to show up and serve, to be part of something that meant something. But over the past year, that pride had started to rot. It hadn’t happened all at once and wasn’t in some big dramatic moment. No, it was slower than that—like watching rust creep over steel you once believed was unbreakable.

It started with reports, just like the ones I wrote, with the same sense of duty I always had. I’d made sure they were detailed, honest, and by the book, but then they’d stopped going anywhere. There’d been no follow-ups or charges, just paperwork that disappeared into the system like smoke. I’d ask questions politely at first and was told to be patient, to “let it work through the proper channels.” Then I’d started pressing harder. That’s when the looks started, the sidesteps, and the subtle warnings to back off.

At first, I thought it was just red tape—bureaucracy dragging its feet like usual. But then patterns started to emerge: cases getting dropped when they shouldn’t, evidence going missing, witnesses being intimidated or “miscommunicated” with. And no one seemed surprised like it was just part of the game.

And the worst part? Itwas.

Some of the guys I used to get drinks with I wouldn’t trust with a traffic ticket now, let alone someone’s life. Others I’d looked up to, I’d come to realize, were just good at wearing masks. Hell, the damnchiefwas knee-deep in it. And the higher I looked, the more rot I saw. Palmerstown was festering from the inside out, and I was supposed to keep pretending we were the cure? I didn’t know if I could anymore.

Everyday, I woke up and asked myself if I still wanted this, if this job—this badge—still stood for anything, if I was part of the solution, or just another name on a payroll keeping the machine turning.

But then I’d walk into a room and see her. Sayla.

She didn’t know it, but she was the only part of my life lately that didn’t feel tainted. The only thing that didn’t come with hidden motives or buried agendas. Being with her—talking, laughing, justexistingin her orbit—I felt better than I had in months as if I could breathe again without waiting for the air to turn to ash in my lungs.

I didn’t want to lose that.

So yeah, maybe I was hanging on by a thread. Maybe I was one more buried report away from walking away from it all. But I wasn’t going to let this job poison the one good thing I had left. Not this time.

Shaking off the weight of everything else, I exhaled and glanced at the iPad she had propped up beside her. “What’ve you been working on?”

Sayla looked up at me with that smirk I was starting to recognize as a warning sign. “I’d tell you,” She said, casually tapping thescreen, “but then I’d have to cut your hair and dye it like a cheetah.”

My head snapped back as laughter burst out of me—loud, unexpected, and way too needed. “Jesus,” I wheezed, clutching my side. “Okay, okay. You can keep your secrets.”

She grinned like she’d just won a round. “I’ll probably tell your pets first anyway.”

Honestly, that tracked. She spent more time chatting to them like they were her roommates than most people did with actual humans. I half-expected them to answer her one of these days.

“Anyway,” she said nonchalantly, “how do you feel about a barbecue tonight?”

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