Page 62 of What We May Be

Tracy lurched to her feet and slapped her palms on the table, mirroring Charlie’s attack posture. “Not as much as he loved you.”

“Maybe if you’d supported him—”

“Like he’d notice. He was too busy supporting you and your family.”

“Enough!” Trevor barked from the doorway, drawing everyone’s attention. “The whole station can hear you.” He looked back and forth between the two women, seemingly unsurprised, and Sean got the impression this was not the first scene of the sort he’d broken up. “Sean”—he nodded toward Charlie—“get her out of here.”

“No need.” Charlie backed off herself. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.” But she didn’t let Tracy have the last word. “My best friend loved you. He would have made you happy and given you a good life. We would have welcomed you into our family. I’m sorry you didn’t give him or us a chance.”

Maybe Charlie’s words would sink in eventually, but today was not that day, not with Tracy already on the defensive. “It would have just delayed the inevitable.” Sean was surprised when Tracy’s gaze swung to him. “You’re back.” Followed by a snide remark aimed at Trevor. “You can have your happily ever after now.”

“You never got it, did you?” Trevor shook his head, then looked to Sean and Charlie. “Give us the room, please.”

Charlie exited in front of Sean, making a beeline for the stairs. He paused in the doorway, catching Trevor’s tired hazel eyes. He wasn’t looking forward to this conversation, but the determined set of his shoulders and spine indicated to Sean he was going to have it, regardless. It was long overdue. Sean waited for his nod, then followed Charlie out.

Abel was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. “Tracy’s not involved,” Sean told him. He glanced around the chief at Jaylen and Diego waiting in his office.

“Go,” Abel said. “I’ll fill them in.”

Raised voices from the conference room drew his gaze back that direction. “Maybe I should help Trev.”

Abel’s line of sight followed his. “That blow-up’s been comin’ for years. Might as well let ’em have it out here where we’ve got the means to contain it. Go.” He jutted his chin toward the stairs. “Make sure Charlie’s okay. I’ll send Trevor your way when he’s done.”

Confident Abel could manage, Sean nodded and followed his concern for Charlie down the stairs. “Charlie?” he called at the bottom, not sure if she went the direction of the gym, the locker room, the morgue, or the holding cell.

“In here,” came her voice from the locker room directly across the hallway.

He pushed open the cracked door and stepped into the dimly lit room. And smiled at the trail she’d left on the floor. Red pumps on their sides just inside the door. Black blazer in the open area near the sinks. The claw clip that had held up her hair in the aisle between the lockers. He picked up the discarded items as he made his way to where she sat, midway down the second-row bench, elbows to her knees, cradling one hand in the other. A quick scan of the surrounding lockers revealed the unfortunate victim of her pent-up anger—a crumpled metal door in the back corner.

He leaned against the locker across from her. “You couldn’t hit a bag instead.”

She glared up at him through a thick fall of dark hair. It had been a month since he’d run his hands through the rich brown locks, a month since he’d twirled his fingers around an errant lock like he used to do in bed—and right then his fingers itched to reacquaint themselves with the sensation.

“I wanted to change first,” she said, distracting him from his impulse to reach for her. “But my inner hulk couldn’t wait.”

“I can see that.” He dropped the suit jacket and hair clip on the bench beside her and the pumps at her feet. “Why do you insist on wearing those things when you’re kicking them off all the time?”

Proving his point, she kicked them aside. “Because I’ve lived my entire life with men over six feet. And they’re pretty.”

He knelt in front of her and took her right hand in his, gently prodding each scraped and swollen knuckle. “You did good to back off.”

“I shouldn’t have let it get that far at all, especially here at the station. It only feeds her delusions.”

“Light crowd on the floor, and she did bait you. Repeatedly. I was about ready to explode myself.” Knuckles checked, he curled her fingers into a fist and got a curse for the effort. He set her hand on her thigh. “Wraps in your locker?”

“Yeah, number—”

“Twelve.”

She smiled. “You remembered.”

“Twelve. Pizza. Raisinets. Cheerwine. Lagavulin. The Departed. The Wire. October…” He continued to rattle off her favorite things as he popped open her locker, dug around for her boxing gloves, and found the wraps and tape shoved inside.

“An update to that list,” she said.

He opened the first aid cabinet over the sinks and gathered supplies. “And what’s that?”

“Ardbeg.”

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