Page 12 of Falling For You

"Why else would they come?"

"I don't know. Maybe because I take my job seriously?"

It all started flashing back. All those times he stared down a colleague who came to my desk. The look on his face when Zeus pulled me aside at a scene. The way he went quiet after the Christmas party, after the patrol officer walked me to my car, after Brandon stopped by to say thanks. I spent four years reading that as a man who was afraid of losing me.

I was wrong.

He shrugged. "You slept with me. I wouldn't put it past you to sleep with everyone else."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

He asked me out first. He set every rule from the beginning. He wanted secrecy. And now he was standing in front of me twisting the story to make it sound like I'd somehow seduced him.

"Go to hell, Elliot." I pulled up my pants and grabbed the tote.

I walked out of the bedroom and grabbed my shoes by the front door.

"I just want to understand, Andy. Why? Was it the validation? Did it make you feel like some kind of powerful woman, having all these guys come to you?"

I didn't look up. I couldn't believe the words that were still coming out of his mouth. I was lacing my shoes and this man was still finding new ways to rewrite four years of my life.

"You know what, let's just be honest with each other."

He dropped his voice the way people do when they think they're being kind.

"We both know you're not that kind of girl. The candles, the baths, the romance novels. I watched you try, Andy. It was never you. You're a cop through and through. You've got calluses and a braid you pin up so tight nobody can grab it. That's who you are. You dress like a man, Andy. You think like a man. Some days I think you're more of a man than I am."

I stood up. Felt every word go exactly where he meant it to.

I showed him. I let him see the candles, the baths, the books. I let him into the only part of me I'd never given anyone else. And he'd just held it up in front of me and told me none of it was real. This was exactly why I should never have let anyone in.

My chest was caving in and my eyes were burning. Every part of me wanted to break right there in his hallway. But I wasn't going to let him have the last word.

"You just told me every guy in the precinct wants to sleep with me. And then you told me I'm more of a man than you are. Which one is it, Elliot? Because it can't be both." I looked at him. "I don't know who you are anymore. You used to be smarter than this. And I'm the idiot who believed every word."

I picked up the tote. "Anyway, thanks for the shittiest four years of my life, Sarge. Your sister is a very lucky girl."

I slammed the door behind me.

I made it back to my apartment without shedding a single tear. Throughout the drive home, I held everything in my chest, inside the part of me that knew how to take a hit and keep moving.

I walked through my front door and made it three steps before my legs gave out.

I don't know how long I was on the floor. Long enough for my legs to go numb. Long enough to stop fighting it and just let every sound I'd been swallowing since I pulled that flimsy piece of fabric out of his closet come out.

Was it the validation? Did it make you feel like some kind of powerful woman, having all these guys come to you?

Four years. Four years of keeping his secret because he told me it was ours. Four years of eating dinner alone and telling myself it was the job. Four years of loving a man in the dark because he said the light would ruin us. I should have said no. You don't date someone you work with. Everyone knows that. But he was my FTO. He taught me how to do this job. I respected him before I ever loved him. And when he said we had to keep it quiet, I believed him. I thought he was protecting both of us. He was protecting only himself.

You're not that kind of girl.

I'd heard those words before. A long time ago, from people who said them when I was small enough to believe them. I thought I'd moved past it. But Elliot Handler just found the oldest wound I had and watched me bleed.

I curled into myself on the floor of my apartment and let the tears fall.

CHAPTER 4

The Block