Page 8 of Needing Your Love
Pulling into the station’s lot, my mind turned toward the manipulative terror who somehow continued to live rent-free in my head.
Jimmy had always been too thin and gaunt, tiny compared to me and my son who’d passed him in size not long after that first call out to their property. I’d taken to bagging up clothing Jamie had outgrown and secretly leaving them on the Riley porch while on the night shift. Every few weeks, I’d ordered staples from The Market for the Ellis family to deliver anonymously.
Rich might have been an asshole, but he’d never turned the gifts away.
Jimmy had been fourteen the first time I’d let him sleep off drunkenness at the station. While the right choice according to the books would have been for me to call his dad, I’d let the kid sack out on the same small cot Rich sprawled across on a monthly basis.
While Jimmy was tougher than most of the other kids in Pippen Creek’s tiny school system, it was the fact he’d tended toward feminine that had gotten him into trouble. But things had changed since those days. No longer did we allow bullying of any sort, and homophobia, while it probably hadn’t disappeared entirely, now sat silent in the back of minds of those who refused the “wokeness” that had slowly crept into and rooted deep inside my town’s limits.
Jamie and my soon-to-be son-in-law weren’t the only queer folk in Pippen Creek. My best friend, Dex, who worked at the fire station on the other side of the intersection was an out and proud gay man. The owner of Scone Haven, Kelly Powell, was as well, along with the lesbian couple who owned Frenchie’s, the local bar in town. And while I hadn’t announced my own queerness, those closest to me knew I swung both ways.
I hadn’t realized the truth about myself until that night Jimmy had wanted me towreck his virgin hole.
I’d become obsessed with Jimmy after he’d left. I’d kept tabs on him, going so far as to hire a detective to make sure he hadn’t ended up in a ditch somewhere. Dex called me a stalker, but I reasoned my infatuation away with years of seeing Jimmy as my responsibility.
I stumbled upon a website’s page that showcased him for hire as an escort around the time he’d turned twenty-one. The images of his trim torso and pale, smooth skin no longer marred by scratching shouldn’t have made me hard, but the suggestiveposes and familiar glint in his blue eyes had fully roused that secret desire inside me.
He was stunning—and all man.
Longing to see the little liar saunter back into town and once more offer that ass many others had paid for swept over me whenever I allowed my thoughts to linger on him. Jimmy Riley had become my obsession, the man I dreamed of at night.
My dick thickened in my uniform pants, and I cleared my throat, denying myself another minute of fantasy. Lips pressed into a thin line, I shoved my cruiser’s door open and stepped out into the heat.
“I was starting to think I needed to radio in help,” Babs said when I entered the air-conditioned station. Shrewd eyes slid over me as I ran a hand through my hair while passing her desk. “Got a call from Georgie,” she continued, and I paused. “He hit the Dixon’s lab while out delivering groceries and was pretty upset. He asked for you, but I sent Officer Jones.”
“How long ago?”
“Five minutes.”
“I’ll handle it.” I turned toward the door that had just shut behind me.
“You stop right there, Chief Sutton Forrester.” My feet paused at Bab’s order, same as they always did when she used that tone on me. “You’re a magnet to needy people, and they take advantage of your goodness and desire to help?—”
She didn’t lie. Needy people were my kryptonite.
“—but Jones has this one covered.” She set aside a file and leaned onto her desk, arms crossed and gaze probing. “You’ve got another voicemail fromyou know who.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed a weary hand over my beard. Darla had called out of the blue earlier in the year and persisted in begging for a chance to talk to me even though I never rang her back.
Babs was the only person besides Dex who was aware that my ex had skewed my thought processes when it came to believing a person was innocent until proven guilty. At least my suspicion made keeping my town safe easier. “Was she crying?”
“Of course she was,” Babs grumbled. “Manipulative little bitch. Are you sure I can’t tell her to fuck off next time she calls to wail about her woes?”
Heaving a heavy sigh, I shook my head.
Babs’s lips pursed, eyes narrowing. “Don’t let her use you again, Sutton—I mean it. She comes sniffing around this town again, and I’m going to have to ask you to look the other way while I pull out the three S’s.”
Shoot. Shovel. Shut up.
I couldn’t stop my lips from twitching. Babs might have twenty-plus years on me, but she was still a feisty force to be reckoned with. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
She hmphed, finally settling in her chair. “Have you told Jamie she’s been harassing you?”
“No, and I would appreciate if you wouldn’t either.”
“Fine,” she snipped, her annoyance over my shutting down her usual gossip factory spelled out across her face. “On to better things—how are you feeling about Jamie’s graduation and joining our small force?”
The satisfaction I’d felt earlier leaked back in, a hint of excitement over the change I’d been desperate for lately overshadowing the fact a voicemail from my lying ex-wife awaited me. “Can’t wait.” I stated the honest truth.
