Page 31 of Never Alone
"Martinez."
"Anything you want to share with the group?"
"No."
I walked to the cubby for my bag.
"Lieutenant—"
"Martinez."
"Hear me out."
"No."
"If you're not interested in her, can I give it a go?"
I lifted my bag off the hook. Turned around.
The whole kitchen was looking at me. Both shifts. Eight grown men, holding very still.
"I'd like to see you try."
The kitchen detonated.
I walked out before the noise was done coming up. Down the hall. Out the side door. Across the lot to my truck.
I got in. Shut the door. Sat with my hands on the wheel.
The Sunday before Thanksgiving, A-shift and B-shift were both off, so we'd folded the holiday and the barbecue into one. Samwas at the grill helping Jamie work out the turkey, which he was about to make her regret. Aunt Jenna was in the kitchen with Carol and Megan, doing whatever it was the three of them did when they ended up in a kitchen together. Ben and Sean's older daughter were in the yard with Biscuit. Martinez was on his second beer. Davis was on his third.
I'd been at it for an hour. I'd held the same beer the whole time.
"Rosie!"
"Hey, Cole! How are you?"
Rosie was Jamie's niece. Jamie had taken her in after Rosie's father, Jack Donovan, died of injuries he'd sustained pulling Quinn and Aunt Jenna out of a structure fire. Sam married Jamie a year later, and the two of them adopted Rosie together. They'd treated her as their first kid way before they'd signed the papers.
Jack was the reason Aunt Jenna and Quinn had a life. Sam and Jamie were the people they'd built that life around afterward. That was why I counted the Reeves family as my own.
"It's good to see you."
I pulled her into a one-armed hug. She fit under my arm the way she had when she was twelve. Twenty-three now, in her last year at Wake Forest, English Lit and reading whatever they put in front of her like a person who'd been waiting for the next book her whole life. She came home a couple of times a year. Always for Thanksgiving.
"What's that you're reading?"
Quinn shut the book she and Rosie had been hunched over, giggling about, before I'd walked over. Closed it on her finger to hold the page. Held it cover-down in her lap.
"Nothing."
She gave me the grin—the one that meant she didn't want me to know what it was about.
Rosie was looking at the bench.
I raised an eyebrow. Both of them laughed.
As if I didn't know they were reading a romance novel. Quinn read them on the firehouse couch when she came by to wait for me after a shift. Aunt Jenna kept a stack on the side table next to her chair. There was no reason for it to be a thing.
