Page 127 of Give Me Redemption

I take a sip of my beer, trying to contain my grin.

“One day,” he says. “One day I’m going to get you to change your mind about us. You’ll have the time of your life.”

“You quotingDirty Dancingsongs now?” I ask him.

“I’ll show you dirty dancing,” he replies with a cheeky grin.

“Oh God,” I groan. He throws his fist into the air.

“It’s the truth,” he yells in a singsong voice. I snort, looking over at Monroe.

“He’s losing it.”

“Yeah, I think that ship sailed a long time ago,” he says to me.

I laugh.

“You doing okay?” Monroe asks.

I exhale. “Truthfully? No. But I’ve been through worse, right? I just need to get back to my routine. Focus on the cases I like to work on and continue looking for Chloe.”

Monroe nods. “But you know you need to live, too, right?”

“I live,” I say, defending myself.

“I don’t think going home every night to Slim and staring at Chloe’s file, trying to find something you think you might have missed is living, Dalton.”

“I don’t do that every night. Come on.”

He looks at me disbelievingly.

I dart my eyes to the TV as Chris, the bartender, walks up to us. “Case over?” he asks.

Usually when we finish a case, the whole crew comes here and has a drink or two, hence why he’s asking.

“This the one I helped out with?”

“Yep.” I nod.

He reaches down and pulls out three shot glasses. “We should toast,” he says, filling them.

We three pick up our glasses as Chris says, “To my awesome performance in Harlow’s case.”

I grin and Monroe shakes his head. We clink our glasses and toss back the shots. It’s like fire going down and makes me cough. “Jesus, what the hell was that?”

“151,” he says.

“You trying to catch our mouths on fire?” Monroe asks.

Chris laughs. “Come on, pussies. You take down the worst of the worst and you can’t handle a little rum?”

“Get the hell out of here,” Monroe says to him with an eye roll.

I take a sip of my beer, trying to ease the burn.

“So what were we saying?” Monroe asks.

“You were telling me that my life is boring.”

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