The shame was lying naked in your own bed listening to a man be quiet while dressing because he woke up next to you not wanting one thing to do with you. It didn’t matter how that happened—if you gauged what was going on with him wrong and he was just out for a fuck, or if you both got trashed and things got out of hand when you didn’t mean them to.
I lay still feeling the burn of that shame that singed deeper because the man who wanted not one thing to do with me was Merry.
It would be okay. For me, it’d be totally okay.
Okay, right. Not really. That thorn had driven itself deeper, knowing how he kissed—the range of intensity, the level of expertise—not to mention knowing a whole lot more about what Garrett Merrick could do.
But I’d make myself okay to keep him as I had him.
I’d have to work him.
He’d start out cool. Definitely. He’d be cautious with me. He’d see to my feelings. He’d be sensitive in his badass cop way, but he’d still do it.
But he’d be embarrassed. Losing control like that. Stooping so low as to fuck the bartender at his local. The bartender who was a single mom and who used to be a stripper. The bartender who got played by a serial killer.
I’d work him, though. I wouldn’t let it slide to awkward. I’d show him it was all good. I’d show him we could be who we were; we didn’t lose what we had. It happened. It was good (I hoped for him too). It was a one-time thing. And now…onward.
I kept silent and still, breathing steady so he’d think I was asleep, wanting it to be done. I had shit to do that day. Ethan was going to be gone in the morning, still at his friend’s. I had the day off work. It was Saturday. I had groceries to buy. A house to clean. Bills to pay.
And then I would have my son and it would be all about him.
I tried to take my mind off Merry, thinking first up was my hangover cocktail. Then, depending on the time, the grocery store, but only if it was early and I could beat the crowds.
People annoyed me. They were rude. And the more people there were, the ruder they were. They totally did not get that we were all in this game of life together and playing on the same team, working toward the same goal. Every single one of us had something to do, and we just wanted to do it without a lot of hassle and eventually get home safe.
Somewhere along the way, people got the idea that whatever they had to do was the priority and everyone else could eat shit. So they drove like lunatics. They were impatient in lines. They were assholes to clerks when a clerk could no way memorize the price of everything in the entire store at Walmart so they wouldn’t have to inconvenience some jerk to call for a price check. They acted like waiting the whole five minutes it took to get that price check was akin to torture. Then again, the number of folks who ran orange lights that were only a hint of yellow, instead of waiting the whole maybe five minutes for the light to change to green, was the same damn thing.
Everyone was in a hurry. Everyone was out for themselves. No one gave a shit about anyone else. Long ago, kindness, courtesy, and civility had taken a hike.
So, yeah.
People annoyed me.
These were my thoughts as I felt the bed move again, and the bed moving freaked me way the fuck out.
So I opened my eyes and got freaked out a whole lot more.
Merry was not sneaking out of my room.
He was instead clothed and sitting on the edge of the bed, chin dipped, dark hair the good kind of hot mess, some of it falling on his forehead, sleepy, gorgeous blue eyes aimed at me.
He also had a hand coming my way, and I tensed when he used it to brush the hair off my neck, then curl it warm there.
God, no man had ever touched me like that.
Not one.
Not in thirty-four years.
“Hey,” he whispered.
What was happening?
“Hey,” I whispered back, uncertain how to proceed in this unprecedented situation.
“Didn’t wanna wake you.” He was still talking quietly. “But also didn’t wanna disappear on you.”
At his words, I felt something weird happening to me. Like the beginning of a release. A release that was both pain and relief, the kind that comes as a splinter is being pulled out.
Or a thorn is working its way out.
“I’m on this weekend,” he continued. “Gotta get home, shower, change clothes, get to the station.”
That was when something weirder happened to me.
I felt like I was going to cry.
The last two times I shed tears, I remembered.
One was sitting in Mimi’s Coffee Shop, listening to Alec Colton be cool to me after what I’d thought was a death blow had been delivered. Not a literal one, but definitely a figuratively emotional one.
The other was when I’d heard that Dennis Lowe was dead.
The first were tears of bitterness, sadness, defeat, and shame.
The last were tears of happiness.
Considering Merry was talking, I realized I had to pull my head together and respond.
So I said, “Okay.”
“I’m on all weekend, but we’ll talk later,” he declared.
I stared into his face, my eyes tipped up his way, not moving my head from the pillow.
I tried to read something, anything that would tell me what was going on in his mind.
He just looked sleepy and kind of cute.
This was shocking.
Garrett Merrick was all man, not all-cute man.
He was a cop. He was built, muscular but lean. His tough, sinewy frame, which I knew from my time as a waitress, then a stripper, and finally a bartender, concealed the power packed in his build. He wasn’t a hulk, and therefore, you might think you could mess with him when you absolutely could not. I knew this from looking at him. But he’d broken up three bar brawls in my tenure at J&J’s Saloon, so I’d also seen it firsthand.
Further, he was handsome in a smooth way that didn’t quite succeed in hiding the fact that, under the surface, he was not smooth at all. He was rough.
His sense of humor was wicked.
And his personal sense of right and wrong was razor-sharp (if perhaps a little crazy). There wasn’t a lot of gray in the world of Garrett Merrick. There was black and there was white. He had a reputation in that town and I was a bartender in that town, so I knew his reputation. He was a cop for a reason. He was about order and justice. There was just a part of him that was compelled to decide what kind of order there should be and how justice should take place.
He had a good ole boy exterior.
Under that was something else entirely.
I got this. I knew his history. There were several ways to go on with your life after what had happened to his family and none of them were good.
Except the one Merry chose.
So he was not cute.
Not at all.
Until right then.
Sleepy and cute and not even looking a little bit hungover.
“Cher?” he called.
I blinked away my thoughts and muttered, “Sorry, kinda out of it.”
He grinned, the cute took a hike, and a miracle occurred.
I had been completely hungover, freaked out, and uncertain.
Witnessing that cocky grin, I was straight up, full-on turned on.
He knew what he did to me last night. He knew how much I liked it. He also knew I might have participated fully, but he’d dominated the play and he got off, but he got me off spectacularly.
Five times.
My legs shifted and Merry bent closer.
“Rest up,” he murmured. “Get some aspirin in you when you wake up. I’ll call you later.”
I nodded, head sliding on the pillow.
He bent deeper, and I didn’t know whether to brace or turn my head just in case he needed a straight shot to my mouth because he intended to give me a kiss.
I found he was giving me a kiss. A sweet one. Brushing his lips lightly along my cheek, he moved his m
outh to my ear.
“Never forget last night, babe. None of it,” he whispered there, then gave me another kiss, touching his mouth to the skin in front of my ear before he finished, “Thank you for that.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. It was sweet, but was it final?
Or was it a beginning?
He pulled his head away but slid his hand from my neck to my jaw, where he used his thumb to sweep the apple of my cheek as he caught my eyes.
Another touch no man had ever given me. A simple maneuver, only his thumb moving, but it still felt like it spoke volumes, every word beauty.
“I’ll call you.”
That said beginning.
Oh God, were Merry and me beginning?
My heart clutched.
“Okay, Merry,” I replied.
He grinned. He winked. My stomach curled in a nervous, excited way I almost didn’t recognize because I hadn’t felt it since I was fifteen years old.
Then he straightened from my bed and walked out of my room.
* * * * *
I did not go back to sleep to get rest I desperately needed (considering I had slept about twenty minutes).
I also did not get up to go to the grocery store.
I got up and went to the bathroom.
I brushed my teeth and looked into the mirror, thanking God for the first time that I’d perfected the art of makeup application through my stripper days so that shit would not move unless it was removed. The day before, I’d worked a shift with it on. I’d gotten drunk after that. I’d gotten royally laid after that, and it still looked awesome.
Nevertheless, I took it off.
I then went to the kitchen and got my hangover cure-all: two ibuprofen, two migraine pills (caffeine and aspirin), one Tylenol. I sucked that back, then power-slammed a huge glass of cold water. After that, I grabbed a Diet 7UP, made a pot of coffee, and hit the shower.
I did the hair gig. The makeup gig. The clothes gig. The jewelry gig.
Once ready, I called a taxi.
I could walk to J&J’s from my house, but I wasn’t going to do that, and not because I was wearing high-heeled boots. I could walk a mile in high heels. But the taxi ride would only cost five dollars, and I wasn’t doing what I was going to do with the hangover hovering and my energy zapped from hoofing it to the bar.
Or the station.
I sat in the taxi, knowing what I was about to do was a risk. A huge one, and not one I’d taken in years.
Then again, I hadn’t let anyone in in order for there to be a risk to take.
Not to mention, even before I built my shell, I’d never known with absolute certainty like I knew right then, that it was a risk worth taking.
I had to do it. I had to make that statement. I had to communicate without delay where I was. I was not going to make the same mistake as the stupidest bitch on the planet.
I was going to share what needed to be shared.
That being, I didn’t just like getting laid by Garrett Merrick last night.
I liked him.
And if this was our beginning, I was all in.
The taxi let me out in front of J&J’s, and since I knew the driver—he drank at the bar and he’d given me a ride more than once—I tipped him one hundred percent on the five dollar ride.
I didn’t go to J&J’s or through it to get to my car in the back.
I went to Mimi’s Coffee Shop.
I bought two lattes and two of her blueberry muffins with the sprinkles on top.
Luckily, my girl Mimi was in the back, baking, so I didn’t have to take time to chat. Two of the kids she employed were manning the counter—one who was a cheerleader at the high school, and the yin to her happy-go-lucky, my-life-is-golden yang—one who, this time, had green hair and, if I was right, two new piercings.
I got the stuff, balanced the tray of coffees and the bag, and left.
I hit the sidewalk and headed down the block to the station.
I made it there, climbed the steps, pushed through the door, and saw Kath at the reception desk.
Her eyes got big when she saw me.
“Hey, Cher!” she cried.
“Hey, Kath.” I smiled at her and jerked my chin up the stairs that led to the bullpen behind her. “Merry up there?”
She shook her head.
From her seat at the reception desk at the ’burg’s PD, she knew it all before anyone but the cops knew it. She also drank at J&J’s, so she knew me. And, of course, she knew Merry.
She’d seen me shooting the shit with Merry, so she also knew we were tight.
But more, she knew Merry wouldn’t go for me. Merry went for a lot of tail since he’d left Mia; however, I was not the kind of tail he went for.
So she wouldn’t have any thoughts about why I was there…at least not the correct ones.
“He’s out back,” Kath didn’t hesitate to tell me. “Mike needs a ride. Think Rees has his truck and Dusty’s doin’ somethin’ and needs hers, so Merry took off to go pick him up.”
Shit.
“Left about two seconds ago, so you could still catch him,” she went on.
I nodded, turning and moving swiftly back to the front door, calling, “Cool. Thanks. See you later.”
“Later, babe,” she called back.
I was out the door and hoofing it around the station, taking my shot at catching him before he took off but not thinking I’d get that chance. Merry would go out the back door, which led direct to the parking lot where he’d left his truck last night and walked down to J&J’s so he could get hammered. He’d probably be gone by the time I made it around the building.
I was about to turn the corner to the back when I heard a familiar voice that came from a familiar man, this man being Alec Colton, that voice raised and irate, saying, “What the fuck, Merry? Jesus Christ. Did you bang Cher?”
Holy fuck.
How could he know that?
I stopped dead, out of sight at the corner of the building.
“Colt.” I heard Merry rumble.
“Feb went in this morning to do paperwork. I dropped her. Cher’s car there. Empty bottle of whisky you like on the bar. I get to the station, see your truck in the lot where it was parked yesterday. I walk up to the bullpen, you can’t meet my eyes.”
Shit.
Cops.
They figured out everything.
“Sorry, brother, gotta get Mike. Greetin’ you like a happy puppy was not top of my priority list,” Merry returned, voice not raised but instead sarcastic and also irate.
“Bullshit. Darryl walked in before I left Feb, said he left Cheryl with you, you drunk, her lookin’ to mother hen you. You take advantage of that?”
I peeked around the corner and saw them both in front of Colt’s truck. They were in standoff mode. Merry was pissed. Colt was more pissed.
“You need to stand down,” Merry warned.
“You take advantage of that?” Colt repeated when Merry didn’t answer, and I watched around the corner as Colt got an inch closer to Merry, and Merry’s already taut and alert frame got more of both. “You fuck your cares away, Mia gettin’ a ring on her finger not yours? You bury that shit in Cher?”
I watched this going down having no clue what to do.
Normally, I would charge right in. Take Merry’s back.
But I’d never had anyone but my mom take care of me the way Alexander Colton, his wife, February, and their family and friends took care of me when my life turned to shit. Took care of me. Took care of Ethan. Didn’t do it from guilt or pity; they did it out of kindness and then love.
In my life, I had a great mom, a shit dad, made an awesome kid, and there was not much else.
Until I hit that ’burg. Until Colt talked me into moving there, working at Feb’s bar, and turning my life around.
Then I got it all, worked to keep it good, and handed it right to my boy.
And there Colt was, taking care of me again. It wasn’t the first time. It was just that
it was new this time, and straight up, even if years had passed, I still wasn’t used to it.
No doubt about it, the man had no sisters, but Colt made me one. He did not fuck around doing that. He took care of me. He spent time with Ethan, quality and quantity. He did everything a big brother would do.
I had no idea if this was true. I had no brothers or sisters.
But Colt did everything a big brother would do, the kind of brother you had in your dreams.
“Careful, Colt.” Merry’s deep voice wasn’t a warning now, it was a threat.
“This is Cher we’re talkin’ about, Merry,” Colt fired back. “You know I’m not gonna be careful, a man, he’s my brother or not, walks all over her. So you better stand there tellin’ me you did not drown your sorrows in her kindness and now you’re gonna walk all over her.”
“Cher and I are gonna talk it out,” Merry replied.
“And how’s that gonna go?” Colt pushed.
“Colt, you know Cher knows how it’s gonna go. And you know it’s gonna be good. She and me, we’re tight. Woman she is, she knows. She isn’t gonna have a drunken fuck with some asshole who was hung up on his ex-wife and not know how it’s gonna go. We’ll talk it out and go back to what we had. Fuck, she’ll probably be the one who suggests it, thinkin’ she’s letting me off the hook for kickin’ my ass for the exact shit you’re spewin’ at me right now.”
I pulled my head from around the corner and leaned back hard against the stone of the station behind me. It was cold and I felt that cold instantly start seeping through my sweater.
At the same time, I didn’t feel it.
I didn’t feel anything.
“You take care a’ her, man.” I heard Colt demand, losing some of the pissed from his voice.
“You know me better than that,” Merry returned, still fully pissed. “I get you. I get you’re lookin’ after her. But you know what she and me got, so when you calm the fuck down, you’ll understand that this is a kick in the teeth you wished you didn’t deliver because I’m gonna take care of her and you fuckin’ know it.”
He would.
He’d take care of me like he took care of me by not sneaking out of my house and making me feel like a stupid slut.