Page 11 of Enemies with Benefits
Which wasn't much different from the other guys at the precinct either, but it was Kayden. I'd been partnered with him for around a decade, and I was so used to him and his ridiculousness that, despite my annoyance, I couldn't take him seriously. He'd been there when my mom had died, and I'd been there when his brother had been diagnosed with cancer. When I'd broken my leg and been put on medical leave, he'd been the one to show up after a shift and make sure I didn't do anything stupid like let myself rot because I wasn't working or active. When his last real relationship had crashed and burned after he'd walked in on her with his step-brother, it had been me who made sure he hadn't hunted the bastard down and earned himself a prison sentence, or drank himself to an early grave in the aftermath.
So yeah, if he wanted to occasionally make awkward jokes, even andespeciallyawkward gay jokes, knowing how much I hated them, then I would allow it with little more than a slap or threats of violence, I would never follow through on. He was my partner on the job and my best friend off the clock, and there were some things you made allowances for when the person was special enough.
"That's gay," Lawrence threw out, and I resisted the urge to see if his legs were really broken by putting some extra weight on them and focused on giving Kayden's hands another swat when I saw them reach for my chest again. Sometimes it really was hard to believe the man was a fully capable cop who kept cool under fire. He had once been a marine who’d seen plenty of danger andfighting in his first and only term in the service. And that was from me, someone who had seen him operate cool and collected, as in control as he was dangerous when he finally pulled his weapon to use it.
"Moron," I snapped at him, pushing him away. "Could you act like you took pepper spray to the face?"
"Oh hell, it wasn't anything. Throwing hot sauce in my face would have been worse."
"You were doubled over."
"Well, yeah, you get even regular pepper in your eyes and you're going to be out of it for a bit. I would have been right on your ass, butsomeonedecided they were a rogue cop who didn't need backup and didn't tell hispartnerwhere he was going."
That...shut me up in an instant. It had been said with his typical playful tone and a smirk on his face, but I didn't need to look to know there was a steely glint in his eyes. Kayden might have been former military, but wasn't the type to think that rules were the end-all, be-all of doing his job and was pretty tolerant of that sort of thing...he'd had to be to be partners with me for so long. What he wasn't showing because there was a witness present, was that he was pissed that I’d lefthimbehind and hadn't let him back me up because I'd been so focused on hunting our whining degenerate down.
God, I was going to get an earful from the captain and my partner later.
"Ah," I said, clearing my throat in what I hoped he took as a sign of understanding and acceptance.
"Mmm," he hummed, shaking his head and looking back toward the mouth of the alley. Which was his way of saying 'good, but you're still in for it later'. Honestly, having a partner was like having a particularly needy and cranky wife sometimes.
And people wondered why I’d stayed unmarried and mostly single for my adult life.
"Ah," Kayden said, perking up. "And here comes the cavalry."
Sure enough, the distant sirens were growing closer, and I prepared myself for the upcoming gauntlet. There were going to be plenty of questions from the responding units, and I was going to bet there would be more melodramatics from the whimpering idiot still sitting handcuffed at my feet. By the time that was done, we would be just in time for our shift change to return to the precinct, grab some food on the way, and start doing any reports we needed to finish up. Except now I knew damn well we were going to be ordered back to the precinct on empty stomachs while the captain fired himself up to lay into me.
Again.
"Ready for the show?" Kayden asked with an amused smirk.
"Not as ready as you are."
"Well, that's normal."
"You still owe me lunch."
"Yeah, yeah."
I kicked the front doors to the precinct open and stormed out onto the sidewalk. “I can't believe he suspended me!"
"Actually, what he said was don't come in for the next couple of shifts until we see how much of a shitstorm is kicked up," Kayden reminded me, because he was helpful like that, as he jogged to keep up with me. He wasn't exactly a short man, but I stood at almost six and a half feet tall, and my long legs could outpace most people unless they picked up the pace. "Which is not the same thing as suspended."
"I might as well be," I grumbled. "First, he takes me out of Narcotics, and then he suspends me."
"Since it's not going in your record or being broadcast, it's not really a suspension."
"Seriously?"
"Well...it is."
"Yeah, except now I'm not even getting paid for this shit. At least if he pulled this crap while I was still in Narcotics, then I would be getting paid no matter how many hours I missed."
Of course, going back to being a beat cop instead of a narcotics officer had been the compromise to my getting fired instead. It had been done with the understanding that if I kept my 'nose clean' and my 'head on straight' for a year or two, then talk of reinstating me would be considered. Of course, that clearly wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and now I was going to go without pay, which wasn't a disaster since I lived well below my means and had money to spare for a rainy day, but still...in all but name, suspended.
"Well, if you end up homeless and destitute, I promise you can crash on my couch."
"I refuse to sleep in your living room with the long train of women you drag through there."
