When my phone, which I had left lying right next to my head the night before, went off the next afternoon shrieking Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” I almost rolled out of bed onto the floor in my haste to turn it off. I felt terrible. Partly because I was hardly sleeping anymore, so slipping into a restless catnap in the middle of the day was all that was sustaining me, but mostly because the number on the phone was the one I had been waiting for week after agonizing week to show up.
I silenced the bubblegum-pop song with a swipe of my finger across the screen and tried to sound more alert than I actually was when I gasped out a shaky greeting. I didn’t care what anyone thought of my awful taste in music. I slummed in the gutter all day long. I tangled with junkies, and wife beaters, and parents that neglected their kids every single day. I refused to listen to anything that wasn’t upbeat and full of infectious pop. My job wasn’t always fun, so I tried really hard to make sure the rest of the things in my life were.
“You do know I’m busting out of here today, right?”
I shoved a tangled hank of dark red hair out of my face and scrambled up to the edge of my bed. I chomped down on my bottom lip and tried to regulate my breathing. Of course I knew he was getting out of the hospital today. What I hadn’t known was if he was going to want me anywhere around him when he finally got the green light to go home. I squeezed my eyes shut and was so grateful that we weren’t face-to-face. Dominic Voss knew me better than any living soul on this planet, and if we were in the same room he would be able to feel the guilt and self-loathing I had been drowning in lately. Hell, if my current state of distress was apparent to someone as disconnected as Asa Cross, there was no way my best friend and partner could miss it. Dom being Dom, he would know it all came from what had happened to him on that callout from hell.
“I know. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come or not. I know your sisters are coming to stay with you until you get back on your feet and I didn’t want to get in the way.”
I sounded pathetic and ridiculous to my own ears.
Dom and I had been inseparable since we were five years old. There had never been a time when he didn’t want me around. There had never been a single moment in our friendship where I was ever in his way, and his entire family thought of me as one of their own. I think that made what had happened weigh even more heavily on my shoulders.
I heard Dom sigh and then he swore. His deep voice sounded strained as he gently scolded me. “Get your cute ass here, Royal. I’ve let you sulk for two goddamn weeks. Get over it. Shit happens and it’s gonna keep happening because that’s what being a cop is about. I’m in a fucking cast from my ankle to my junk. I have a broken shoulder and I can’t breathe without it feeling like I’m drinking acid. I look and feel like hammered dog shit, and my best friend hasn’t been around for any of it. Can you maybe knock it off now?” I couldn’t stop the tears that were starting to leak out of my eyes. I used a knuckle to swipe at them as I climbed to my feet. His next words stabbed through me like I was sure he intended for them to do. “I need you here, girly.”
We had always needed each other, both in our day-to-day lives and on the job. That was why I felt so bad. It was why I couldn’t get my head around how badly I had let him down. I was supposed to have his back like he had always had mine, and instead I had almost gotten him killed.
“I’m on my way.”
I hung up the phone after he barked at me that it was about time, and rushed around my apartment trying to make myself look presentable. After a hard night of drinking I never exactly looked great, but throw in a sleepless night and yet another rejection from an outrageously sexy, southern bartender and I probably could match Dom in the looking-like-crap department. I had dark shadows under each eye, I was way paler than normal, fine red veins threaded through the white in each eye, and I had really ugly bruises surrounding each of my wrists, which made shame and regret battle the guilt for the top spot in the flood of emotions I was choking on.