SEVEN
And so the curse came true, leaving the princess to sleep for a hundred years, her coffin made of glass, a thick wood with thorns grown up around the castle.
Finn
I run my hand over my face, hoping to wake up myself up.
It’s only a thirty minute drive to the station, but coming at the end of a ten hour shift, it feels longer. Or maybe that’s the sleepy vibes from the woman behind me.
When we got about a mile away from her car, she went out like a light, snoozing as peacefully as her baby. I’m glad I caught her before she’d wrapped that broken little car around a tree trunk.
Something about her sleep seemed to call to me, making me want to wrap myself around her, use my body as a shield. To protect her, the instinct stronger and more primal than I felt for ordinary people.
The cruiser slides through the inky black night.
This is my favorite time to patrol, when everyone’s tucked safely in their homes, when I don’t have to wear a fake smile lest anyone worry I was going to fall apart again.
A glimmer of that old panic hit me when I saw the swerving tail lights in the distance. I flashed back in time to when I saw a car careening toward me instead of away. I hadn’t been a cop then. Just a guy out for a night on the town, with a woman in the passenger seat, no fucking clue what would happen next.
A squeal of tires and a horrifying crunch of metal is all I remember after that.
Of course, Jessica wasn’t a drunk driver. Only a drowsy one.
A scared one too.
I recognized that lost look, as if she didn’t know where to go, as if she didn’t think there was any place left, because I felt that way after the accident. I still felt that way, at times, but I kept on pushing, kept on faking it, because I didn’t know how to do anything else.
And then there’s the little boy, the one with adorable footy socks and a new carseat, fully stocked in baby supplies even while the mother wore faded jeans and shadows under her eyes.
Jessica slid sideways in the backseat, leaning on the carseat as if protecting the child even in sleep. Who are they running from? The father, probably. The thought made his blood run hot.
Her head dipped to the side, giving me a flash of her face lit by moonlight in the rearview mirror. Dusky eyebrows that hide ocean-blue eyes. Lips that are full and pink and begging to be kissed. These days I mostly avoid human touch, especially the female kind. But there’s something about this night, so expansive, so isolating. So very random that one woman, years ago, died on this road, and this one safe and alive—and comforting when I believed myself beyond comfort.
I pull into the parking lot behind the station, relieved to see Bridget’s dirt-spattered truck still here. Her shift ends when mine does, but she tended to wait until I return before leaving. It’s her way of looking after me—the whole town did that, as if the depression that held me captive after the accident is still after me and would one day catch up. And maybe they were right.
I circle the car and open the door. Resolutely ignoring the soft skin of her arm or the snuffling sound she makes, I nudge her away from the carseat. I unlatch it and pull it from the car, along with the baby bag.
Bridget meets me at the back entrance of the station, her eyes worried. “Look at the poor dear. She didn’t mention she had a baby with her.”
“I don’t think she wants to be found,” I say, keeping my voice low.
Sadness flickers over Bridget’s face. “You know my lips are sealed. We don’t have to file an official report. Here give me that child. I’ll see if his diaper’s wet.”
Bridget raised three grown men, so I trust her to take care of the child. And she also survived a true asshole of a husband until he went too far. Beaten and bloodied, she took his hunting rifle down and shot him. Self defense, of course.
I return to the patrol car to find Jessica still asleep. God, she must be exhausted.
Bridget would probably take good care of her, too, but Jessica’s stuck with me. Reaching inside I unbuckle her seatbelt and carefully lift her slight weight from the car. Slamming the door shut with my foot, I head inside, carefully not thinking about why I hesitated to wake her, not thinking at all about how good it felt to have a woman in my arms after so long alone.
I carry Jessica through the station and into the single cell. I lay her down on the cot, keeping my eyes averted, as if even a dressed woman on a bed is a sexual tableau.
With her it is.
She’s a beautiful woman—stunning despite her tiredness. Her disarray and shadowed eyes give her a tragic look, stirring something deep inside me, making me want to find a white horse just so I could ride in and save her. It’s goddamned ironic.
I figured out a long time ago that I can’t save anyone.