Page 171 of Hot Cops

Now that he’d opened the vault to his past, Blake found too many memories coming at him too fast. Maybe that was good. He could keep the emotions at bay because there wasn’t time to process them. “Eleven. After she left, my dad fell into a bottle of whiskey and passed out. It was cold as shit that night. So, I covered my old man up with my blanket and walked nearly two miles in the dark until I found the address of the Blessing House. I’d been lied to by nearly every adult I’d ever met, so when I knocked on the door, I was more than ready to run in case it was a trap.”

“A trap?”

He shrugged. “My dad wasn’t the most law-abiding citizen. He’d taught me at a young age to always be on the lookout for the law.”

“He told you the police were the bad guys?”

Blake nodded.

“And yet you joined the force.”

He grinned sadly. “It seemed like the best way to stick it to my old man. The guy was a fucking asshole in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

Chloe didn’t reply. His words had come out too bitter, too strong. Most folks would have accepted that at face value. She didn’t. “He was still your dad.”

“I know. I spent one night in the Blessing House, watching all the other kids—some with folks, some without—and in the morning, there was a present for me and I got a holiday meal.”

“Sounds nicer than the street.”

Blake lifted one shoulder. “I guess. I didn’t stick around. I left the toy I’d gotten—some plastic fire truck—stole a bunch of food from the kitchen and a couple of blankets and took off.”

“You went to find your dad.”

Blake picked up a blade of grass, pressing it between his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah. I got worried about him being hungry.”

Blake looked out over the lake. He hated trudging up all this old shit. It didn’t change anything. His jaw tensed as he fought to beat back the anger. After several deep breaths, he was able to center himself again.

Chloe didn’t seek to fill the silence with questions. She let him find his way through the story at his own pace. He appreciated that she didn’t push him for more.

“I always took care of him. He was an alcoholic. He couldn’t hold down a job for more than a few days at a time.”

“So you became the caregiver.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“It was the same for Zac and Noah. They kept the house as clean as they could while their mom was strung out. Zac made sure Noah did his homework, got something for dinner, put him in bed at a reasonable hour. Parents shouldn’t do that to their kids.”

Blake turned to face her. He’d avoided looking at her for fear of seeing pity in her eyes. There were a lot of things he could take from her, but sympathy wasn’t one. What he saw instead was anger. Strangely that helped. Made Blake feel like they were on the same page. “I’m not making excuses for what I did, Chloe. I’m not playing the poor pitiful me card. My dad was a lousy excuse for a person, but the choices I made were mine. Right or wrong, I can’t blame him for what I did. All I can do is hope to make you understand why I stole the money, why I left.”

She reached out and took his hand in hers, giving it an encouraging squeeze. “So tell me about that night.”

“We’d told your mother we were going to the movies, but we actually snuck into that old shed behind your girlfriend’s house.”

Chloe laughed. “Her family was on vacation. You brought those sleeping bags and threw them on the floor. You’d bought a rose and scattered the petals on them. I thought it was all completely romantic.”

He was glad she remembered that part of the night with fondness. “We were pretty damn horny most of the time.”

“God,” she joked. “That’s a mild word for it. We were ravenous, insatiable. We couldn’t walk three steps without touching and we couldn’t touch without it sparking something hotter.”

“I remember. We did it in two public restrooms, the backseat of your brother’s car, no less than half a dozen times around this lake and God only knows where else.”

“We were young. For me, sex was new. Sometimes, when I looked at you, it was almost painful how much I wanted you.”

He understood that. He’d felt the same way back then. Hell, he’d felt that way since bumping into her two weeks ago. He went to bed every night with a physical ache caused by longing.

“You had to be home by midnight, but we were a little late.”

Chloe nodded. “We were a lot late. I used the hidden key under the mat in the backyard, thinking I could sneak in through the back door in the kitchen.

---