Page 26 of Falling For You

"Birdie." She said it like a fact, already past it. "I like your hair."

"Thank you, Birdie."

"How do you get it like that? All twisty at the back?"

"It's a braid. I wrap it up so it stays out of my way while I work."

She thought about that for a second, head tipping one way and then the other. "My daddy tries to do my hair but he's really bad at it."

I bit down on a smile. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. He can only do ponytails." She held up her ponytail as evidence. Then she looked at me again. Her eyebrows pulled together.

"I didn't know girls could be cops too."

She didn't say it as a question. She said it as a discovery, like the world had just rearranged itself in front of her eyes.

"We can," I said. "And we're pretty good at it."

She grinned, wide and unguarded, and something about it tugged at me. Like I'd seen that grin somewhere before.

A teacher called the kids back to line up. Birdie looked over her shoulder, then back at me.

"Bye!" She waved and ran off to join her class.

I watched her go, still trying to place the face.

She was almost back to the line when she broke off and ran toward the crew. She threw her arms around one of them, and he crouched down and kissed her forehead.

"See you tomorrow, Daddy!"

Wyatt Brooks straightened up and watched Birdie run back to her teacher.

Blonde hair. Blue eyes. The grin I couldn't place.

His daughter.

I'd been hearing a child's laughter from across the street for weeks. Through open windows, on the porch, drifting across the block on quiet evenings. I always assumed it was coming from one of the other houses. I never once connected it to him.

The guy who grinned at me on scene calls, who sat down beside me at the bar without being invited, who spotted me at the gym with his hands hovering over the bar. That was a man with a family. A daughter meant a mother. All those times he'd turned on that charm, the jokes, the conversations at The Lantern, walking me home like it meant something.

There was a woman somewhere raising his child.

My stomach dropped.

A few days ago, at the gym. The tightening in my stomach that had nothing to do with the weight. I noticed his arms. His shoulders. I lay on that bench, looked up at him, and felt something I hadn't let myself feel since Elliot and I broke up.

The whole time, he had a daughter and a wife at home.

I'd been looking at a married man the same way Elliot's other woman had been looking at mine.

I picked up my bag and walked out of the gymnasium before anyone could see my face.

CHAPTER 9

Cheaters

WYATT