RYAN
door to the chief’s office, cupped my hand to my mouth, and breathed. Yep. I smelled like beer. Also, I’d changed out of my uniform ages ago and was now dressed in ratty jeans and a tee shirt. Well, Wade had known I was going to Foley’s. If he’d wanted me well-dressed and sober, he should have texted me earlier in the evening.
I knocked on his door.
“Come in.”
I entered. He sat at his desk, leaning his jaw on his fist. He was still wearing his dress uniform from the funeral, but he’d pulled off his tie and loosened his collar. The windows behind his desk were black, the blinds forgotten open. The room was softly lit by the floor lamp behind his desk, easier to reach from his chair than the light switch by the door. Put together, the evidence suggested he’d been sitting here for hours.
“Burning the midnight oil, sir?” I asked, closing the door behind me.
He shuffled the stack of papers he’d been looking at. “No shortage of oil to burn.”
“True,” I agreed. “How’s the task force getting along?” After three homicides, a shooting, and a bombing, all tied to a cold case with no end of leads to follow, Monica and her partners in the detective bureau had simply run out of manpower and daylight hours. They’d reached out to both neighboring and overarching departments, asking for aid, and those departments had swooped in to help the way you’d rush to a kid getting his ass pounded on the playground. That’s about how our department felt. And that’s about how the other departments felt, watching us.
“They’re keeping plenty busy,” Wade said. “But that’s not what I called you in to talk about.” With his pen, he pointed to a chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
I sat, half wondering if I’d done something wrong. Getting called into the chief’s office was about as tense as being called into the principal’s office.
Wade rotated his stack of paperwork so it faced me. The one on top said “W2.”
“Fifty-one thousand a year,” Wade said. “All the usual benefits and pension. And you can park the ten-speed. We’ll get you a patrol car.” He threw the pen down on top and leaned back in his chair.
I glanced between the paperwork and Wade. He was offering me a year-round job. He wanted me off the summer reserves. Off bike patrol. And I knew why. He was short an officer. Mike Schultz was dead.
The fan inside Wade’s computer hummed to life, only emphasizing the silence. A few months ago, when I’d applied for a job in my hometown, I would have been thrilled to get a year-round. That was before I’d known Monica was working at our home department again, too. I’d known better than to kick the broken bee’s nest of our relationship. But for some reason, Wade had never thought to warn me that I’d be working with my ex again when he hired me on.
I coughed into my fist. Shifted in my seat. “You, ah… You want me to stay?”
Wade nodded.
“Permanently?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll lose Monica.” I’d heard the rumors. She’d threatened to resign if I didn’t leave by the end of the summer like I was supposed to.
Wade shook his head. “Monica’s not going anywhere.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure?”
“She’ll never leave you.”
Wade’s words socked me like a brick to the chest, not least because he well knew I was the one who had left her ten years ago. Well, I had cheated on her, and she’d kicked me out. Same difference. I gaped at the chief, waiting for my lungs to function again. He simply punched me again.
“She’s in love with you. Always has been, always will be.”
I laughed, finally finding the air for such a thing. “Is that why she invites me to go down-range any time she’s practicing?” In her eyes, I made a more appropriate shooting target than the paper posters.
Wade looked me pointedly in the eye. “That’s why she’s never dated anyone else.”
That stopped me. He was right. In the ten years we’d been apart, I’d gone out with whole carousels of women. But Monica? I’d never so much as heard that she’d gone for drinks with anyone. Taken in a movie. So far as I knew, she’d never even let someone jog with her on her morning runs. The vast, sheer loneliness of the past decade of her life slammed into me full force.
Wade drummed a finger on his desk. “Ryan, I knew the day I accepted your app for bike patrol that there were going to be fireworks. I also knew it would be nothing but a show. Because that woman has loved you and no one else since high school.” He twisted his head and lifted his hands. “She was going to demand her pound of flesh, absolutely. But that’s only because she could never dream of being with anyone else.”
And I screwed it up, I added silently. I toyed with a rip at the knee of my jeans. “I just thought you’d forgotten we had a history.” I shrugged. “I mean, either that or you enjoy watching gladiatorial combat.”
Wade chuckled. “I didn’t get to be chief of police by not knowing my officers.” He nodded his chin at the pen and the sheet of paper. “Go on. Sign it.”
I hesitated, then tapped the page, eying Wade dubiously. “You’re telling me that if I sign this, Monica won’t pack up her desk tomorrow?”
Wade steepled his fingers and shook his head. “Not tomorrow or any other day. Especially not with a case like this on her hands.”
He had a good point. Monica would never abandon her hometown right when it needed her.
I drew a deep breath. So this was it, then. The moment when I decided once and for all whether I was staying or going. If I was the drifter or the dreamer. If I was ready to take up the challenge of relentless love. For Monica. For Bailey. And let’s face it—for me. For my own dreams. For my own future. For possibilities I could barely glimpse, even if I couldn’t quite believe in them yet.
I swallowed down one last gulp of terrified insecurity. Then I grabbed the pen and firmly scrawled my name.
Wade smiled. “Welcome home, Ryan.”