Joel
“We’d like to issue a public apology to Mayor Donovan and do it as quickly and openly as possible.”
The crowd gasped, background noise making it difficult to hear what Dave—the bastard who’d had his hands on my woman when I’d come home from the game the week before—was saying. He was in full police regalia, positioned in front of a plethora of microphones, a bevy of press surrounding him.
“As law enforcement officers, we do our best to always get it right, and in this case, we didn’t,” he said and turned to my Rosie, who was standing behind the podium, my dad next to her. “I’m sorry.”
I watched the apology hit my woman, wished I was at her side instead of states away, playing in the next round of the playoffs.
Hating that I was watching this shit on my phone.
Hating that my job took me away from her.
Again.
She nodded slightly, and I watched my dad squeeze her shoulder, thanked fuck for my family, for Rosie’s found family, who I knew were standing in the wings, ready to shelter her, to support and protect her.
I knew I’d be there soon.
Just not as soon as I wanted.
We had our game tonight and then we were jumping on a plane and flying home.
So, I’d be able to hold her tonight—or the middle of it, anyway. I’d be able to tell her how proud I was of her.
But I wasn’t there now.
I clenched my phone as Dave turned back to the cameras, to the microphones. “We’ve had more evidence come to light over the last week, and the district attorney will brief the media on that once she is available to do so. For now, this department felt it was important to share the information that all of the charges that had been filed against Mayor Donovan have been dropped.”
More crowd noise.
But Dave shook his head. “We won’t be taking any questions. Thank you.” He spun away from the microphones, moved to my Rosie and shook her hand.
Then they were all walking back into the building, disappearing inside, and the feed was cutting back to a news desk.
“You’ve heard it here first, folks. Mayor Donovan has been cleared of any involvement in the money laundering scheme in River’s Bend. But the question remains, where have those millions of dollars in state emergency funds gone?”
I hit the button on the side of my phone, locking the screen and cutting off the feed.
“That’s it then,” Fox muttered.
“That’s it,” I agreed, even if I knew that it wasn’t it. They’d come out and cleared my Rosie, but a subset of the population would never hear that retraction, and others wouldn’t believe that a mistake had been made.
They would always look at her like she’d done something wrong.
And maybe she’d be able to ignore it.
But she’d know it, she’d feel it, and she’d hate it.
And I had to go out on the ice tonight and focus, knowing that I wasn’t with my woman, knowing she was hurting, knowing that even though things were finally looking up, they weren’t anywhere near perfect.
I had to go on the ice and play hockey and know it was dividing us.
Again.
A few days later, I knocked softly on the doorway to my Rosie’s office.
Normally I would have left her to do her thing at work, left her to rock her shit as she always did.
But…it was lunchtime.
But…it was her first day back in the office.
And I couldn’t go through my day, looking at the text she’d sent in response to my text, the words a reassurance, and yet, not one either.
Because River’s Bend was going back to normal.
But my Rosie wasn’t.
The recall had been withdrawn—because it turned out that the majority of the signatures on it had been fraudulent.
The petitions were dismissed.
Everyone was business as usual.
Even my Rosie.
But…she wasn’t right.
And I was waffling between striving for patience and wanting her to spill her guts, to admit that she was hurting and confused and—
Instead, she’d just buttoned up her crisp white shirt, slipped on a pair of heels I knew she hated, then had kissed me goodbye and walked out the door.
Like it was a normal morning.
When I fucking knew it wasn’t.
“Hey,” she said, eyes flicking to mine, mouth curving up. “Just give me one second.” Her gaze went back to the screen, she typed a few things on her keyboard, and then she pushed in the keyboard tray, rolled her chair back, and stood, crossing over to me. “You heading to the rink?”
“I’m taking you to lunch.”
Her brows flicked up and her gaze slid to the computer then back to me. “I have a lot of work to do.”
“Sweetheart,” I admonished quietly. “You know I’m not going to let you get away with that shit.”
“I’m mayor again.” A shrug. “And I’ve got a backlog of stuff from when I wasn’t working. And I have media and meetings with your dad about the case and I’m still finding errors that only come from me being in this job, knowing the ins and outs.” She exhaled. “And my mom is gone.”
Back to normal…
And not.
“That doesn’t mean she’s involved,” I pointed out.
Rosie shot me a look that seemed to say, “What else could it mean?” but she didn’t say that aloud, just held perfectly still as I brushed the curls out of her face, as I tried not to look at the patched-over hole in the wall in the corner of her office, where Dave and several officers had removed the camera her father—and perhaps, her mother—had used to spy on her.
They’d checked the entire room, searching it from top to bottom.
But had only found the one camera.
That was something.
A small something.
But I’d come to understand that we had to take the small somethings too.
“Did Dave give you an update on the recordings?”
The police had run another search of her parents’ house and found more monitoring equipment and computers and recordings.
“The hard drives were wiped.” She sighed and leaned heavier against me. “So, no footage of my dad doing anything in here.” She pressed her lips together, released them. “Or my mom.”
“Damn,” I muttered.
“I know,” she said, dropping her head to my collarbone, her arms coming around my middle. “Though, I suppose that’s a good thing, considering the stuff you and I got up to in this office.”
I stilled.
Remembering exactly what we’d gotten up to—or what I’d gotten inside.
Guilt slicing ribbons through my insides. “Shit, sweetheart, I didn’t—”
She rose up on tiptoe, brushed her mouth over mine. “I’ll remind you that I was an active participant in any and all desk fucking.” Her gaze flicking to the filled-in part of the wall. “Though, I don’t think it’s something we’ll be repeating, no matter how glorious it was.”
I tugged a curl. “That’s fair.”
A kiss to my jaw.
She turned away, and I wondered if she’d still put me off for lunch.
But she just opened her desk drawer, tugged out her purse, and moved back over to me. “Ready?”
I plucked it out of her hands, dropped it back into the drawer, and slammed it shut.
“Really?” she asked dryly.
“You’re not paying,” I muttered.
Which—for some reason—made her both smile and shake her head.
Then loop her arm through mine.
“I’m hungry, honey.”