Adrenaline and fear were still shooting through my veins faster than the speed of light, or at least that’s what it felt like. For years I’d heard the guys on the force talk about feeling like this. Even before I wore a badge, I’d heard my dad and his friends talk about this kind of rush. But, I’d never experienced it.
Detached. That’s what I was on the job. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the people I was helping or that I didn’t value my own life, but I learned my first week on the job that when shit hit the fan, when things went sideways, instead of my heart rate accelerating, I went into the zone. My pulse slowed. All of my senses heightened. My mind had an acute sense of clarity and I was totally and completely calm. It wasn’t something I did intentionally; it came as natural as breathing.
During my first week on the job I was part of the first countywide drug bust. We’d set up a sting operation and had been given some bad intel which resulted in us busting a house that was filled with fifteen men, all of them armed with semi-automatics. And the stakes only got higher when I discovered two small children hiding under a table. When I saw them, all of the gunfire, shouting, and chaos around me faded away and I knew what I had to do. I flipped the table over and pushed it against the corner, instructing the kids—who ended up being the inspiration for Reed Ranch—to remain behind it as a shield. I then guarded the far corner of the kitchen and managed to apprehend and restrain six of the fifteen perps.
During the entire thing, I stayed calm. My hand never shook. My adrenaline never spiked. And six years later, it was still that way. No matter what the situation, what I saw, or even how dire the outcome looked, I was steady as a rock.
Until today.
My hand trembled as I brushed my thumb over the soft skin of Harmony’s cheek. I could feel the heat of her breath fan over my face. I could hear the soft sound of her sweet voice. I could see with my eyes that she was alive and well, but none of that was doing anything to slow my heart pounding like a jackhammer beneath my ribs.
When I’d heard the text ding on my phone I was sure it was Harmony informing me that she was quitting. Leaving. I’d been expecting that announcement for the past three days. I’d been doing everything in my power to facilitate and expedite that exact outcome since Monday morning.
Originally I had intended on working on the bunk beds with Harmony and then leave her to sand and stain them. All that changed the second I’d seen her step out of her car in cutoff jean shorts, brown work boots, and a tank top that left little to the imagination. I knew I was in trouble, but when she bent into her car, coming back up with a tool belt, it became painfully clear to me that I couldn’t work in the same area with her without knocking her over with the massive boner I was sporting thanks to her new look. She was a real-life, living, breathing Tool Time girl. She was an exact replica of the hot-as-sin co-stars in Tim Allen’s Home Improvement that I had grown up fantasizing about.
In a flash of clarity as strong and powerful as the lightning that had lit up the sky, I knew this wasn’t going to work. There was no way I’d be able to keep my mind on what I needed to do, stay on track, and most of all, refrain from crossing a line that I had no business crossing. So, I’d been an asshole instead. On purpose. My goal was to get her to throw in the towel.
First it had just been expecting her to assemble, sand and stain the bunkbeds. Which, to my surprise she’d done and done well. For a girl that said she had no carpentry experience, she’d put the pieces together like a giant puzzle.
When the bunk beds hadn’t done the trick, I’d remembered that my mom—who never complained about anything—to this day maintained that removing the wallpaper back when my parents were renovating our home had been the most miserable experience of her life. So I’d figured that was a good project for Harmony. I remembered it had taken my mom weeks to finish our living and dining room. So I was shocked when Harmony knocked out such a large area in one day.
And yesterday I’d stepped things up even further. Installation of an irrigation system. I was convinced there was no way in hell would she be able to pull that off. I was dead wrong. She didn’t know, but I’d watched her from the roof of the bunkhouse that I was repairing. She’d cursed (mainly at me), thrown things, screamed in frustration, but she’d done it. Not perfectly, but she’d done it.
That was when I knew that I had to give her a task that there was no way she could physically perform. It was the only way that the torture of being so close to her, seeing her smile, hearing her sweet voice, wanting her, needing her, craving her was ever going to end.
But instead of her waving the white flag and surrendering, she’d ended up beneath a pile of plywood and four by fours, and it was all my fault. I should have known better. Harmony was stubborn. She didn’t give up. She didn’t back down. That was one of the things that I loved about her.