Page 31 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
We stand there wrapped in leftover adrenaline and our favorite pastime: irritating each other. When the sirens soften to a hum, he tips his head toward me, something gentler under the gravel.
“Lock the back door. Let a friend stay with you for the rest of the day. I’ll swing by later to take your statement.”
“I don’t need—”
“Please,” he says, and the word lands like a hand on my elbow guiding me away from a hole I can’t see.
“Fine,” I say. “But if you wring any more blood out of me for forms, I’m charging you per line.”
“Send an invoice to the county.” He dips his chin. “You did good.”
“I stood there and tried not to pass out.”
“That’s doing good,” he says, like it’s the simplest equation.
He turns, clips his cap back on, and heads for the door. I tell myself not to watch him leave. I watch him leave.
The knot in my stomach untangles as the cruiser pulls away. The butterflies go with it.
For now.
***
It’s nearly six when Riley shows up, the diner smells like cinnamon and the inside of my head is a junk drawer I can’t close. She drifts behind the counter in a highlighter-green dress that could be seen from space and drops onto the stool like the day just slung her over its shoulder.
“If I smell like puke,” she says, “it’s because a third grader decorated me with it. Do not hug me.”
“Noted.” I pull a tray from the oven and let a wave of warm sweet air buff my nerves. “Why were you carrying a third grader?”
“Fred had a family emergency. I covered elementary.” She fans herself with a menu. “Never again.”
“Isn’t the elementary across the courtyard from your office?”
“Yes, which is still too close for bodily fluids.”
I put the pan down and look at her. Riley’s hair is down now, a riot across her shoulders. She looks like a warning label for whimsy. “Want coffee?”
“I want a refund on my day.” Then, gentler: “And your day. I heard.”
Of course she did. This town moves information around like air.
“I’m fine,” I say, because I don’t know how to talk about the moment the guns went sliding and the world flooded back in.
She tilts her head. “Fine-fine or Jasmine-fine?”
“Fine,” I repeat. “The sheriff showed up.”
“The sheriff shows up,” she says dryly. “That’s his whole deal.”
“Riley.”
“Okay, okay.” She sips water. “Did he—”
“Don’t say rescue,” I warn.
“…‘render the situation safe for civilians’?” She grins into her cup. “How very… sheriff.”
I should tell her about the way he moved—precise and clean and un-dramatic; how he didn’t grandstand, how he kept looking past me to every corner of the room like there were other people here he needed to save too. Instead, I cut lemon bars into neat squares that are suddenly too tidy for the chaos inside me.
