My job pretty much sucked.

A job like mine takes a toll on you…on your soul.

It makes you stop feeling human. You always feel empty. You’re not comfortable in groups of people, normal gatherings, you just end up looking around and thinking, None of these people have a clue. And you end up feeling completely and utterly alone.

Cops are willing to do the things you think are beneath you. See the things that you don’t want to see. Run into the places that you’d never go. We’re the ones who hold hands with the dying as they struggle to keep breathing, clawing onto the life that quickly spills out of them. We’re the ones who have to try to protect the innocent, even when they are fighting us and spitting in our face. We see violence, and we have to pull it apart, piece by piece, and try to solve the puzzle of why it came to be—how to stop it—all while being trained to be the most violent part of it.

You work side-by-side with the worst part of humanity. Every single day.

Not many people have the fortitude to deal with it.

Like this morning before breakfast, I met with the mutilated body of one Rosemary Morales. The fifty-seven-year-old was splayed on the floor of her roach-infested apartment, her blood sprayed across the walls and ceiling. She sold drugs for a living, and when that didn’t pay enough, she sold herself. Her killer could be anyone. But I knew within weeks, my team and I would handle it. We’d gather all the evidence, investigate, interview, and ultimately arrest the person who did it. The truth was she probably owed someone money or sold them some bad shit.

We were great detectives.

I skipped eating breakfast, and I figured I’d just binge on lunch, but that’s when we got a call that an eight-year-old kid stumbled upon his parents’ corpses when he was trying to get himself ready for school. Both bodies sat stiff on a couch, heads bowed down in that familiar drugged induced nod, needles still stuck in both of their veins. We called in the proper agencies and made sure the kid ended up in the safest place possible. Always fixing the problems we could. The problem being that humanity was pretty much gone from these forgotten pockets of the world.

The late afternoon was full of watching surveillance tapes and trying to find people to question.

Easy day to handle, really. I was used to the grit of the job. I was used to seeing monsters prey on victims, victims becoming monsters. I was used to fixing the thing that lost its humanity by handing out justice when needed.

What I couldn’t put a handle on was when I was not able to make anything better.

And that evening, for Cameron, that was something I was not able to do for him. The simple act of making him feel better.

I couldn’t help him.

Autism wasn’t something I could arrest. It wasn’t a physical entity I could slap a pair of cuffs on and punish for committing a crime. It was something he was living with, and it was invisible and uncontrollable to me.

I couldn’t help him at all.

And he reacted like his world was ending.

I saw it, plain as day, the minute it happened. The exact second that everything became too much for Cameron, and he just imploded. All my tactical training, range time, criminal justice degrees—I had nothing to use to help him.

It started with a low rumbling. A few murmuring tones under his breath. Then, he was pacing up and down, becoming more and more aggressive with everything.

All I did was try and cook him dinner.

Then, everything flew outward. Words. Screams. Fists. Objects. He was punching himself in the head, over and over. Mumbling words and curses. Slapping, palms open, just slapping at his head. Bouncing up and down on his toes, covering his face and wailing into his hands.

All I did was put a plate of spaghetti in front of him.

He roared and pulled out a drawer, throwing it across the room. With one giant swipe of his arm, things flew off the table, dishes crashed against the walls. The spaghetti hit the ceiling and stuck.

There were strands of stringy, sticky spaghetti hanging down from my ceiling.

Stunned, I grabbed him like he was a perp, my own brother. It gutted me, and I couldn’t hold onto him, because he was my brother. I couldn’t restrain my screaming, crying little brother. He flung himself away from me and started banging his head against the wall, so hard. He was just smashing his head against the wall. Fists punching at his own face. His eyes completely vacant.

What triggered it?

Was it me?

The television and me talking at the same time? Was it something I said? Just like the covered pot of spaghetti and water, left unattended, he just boiled over.

Cameron just blew up, exploding over everything.

He ran into the bathroom with all his clothes on and turned on the shower. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know anything. Couldn’t even think. He slammed the door in my face and somehow locked it on me.

I banged on the door and screamed for him.

I pulled out my phone, and I hesitated over Brooke’s number. I didn’t want this to be how I called her for the first time, but I didn’t have anyone else that would know what to do. She was the only face that came to my mind in the chaos.

“Hello?” She sounded like an angel.

“Brooke? Um. I’m really sorry. But I don’t know what the hell to do. Cameron. He’s going crazy. I don’t know what to do. He’s hurting himself. Hitting himself in the head. What do I do?”

“Where are you?” she asked, softly. Her voice so calm I wanted to lose myself in it.

“In my apartment. He’s in the bathroom. In the shower with all his clothes on. He…”

“Give me your address,” she said, quickly.

I gave her everything she needed. Through the phone, I heard her get in her car and the seat belt binging.

“You could shut all the lights.” Her voice drifted like a dream to me.

“What? Why?” I stammered.

“Because it might calm him down.”

“He was punching himself in the head, Brooke.” My voice sounded small and weak. I felt lost. I didn’t know how to help him. She just needed to tell me how to turn it off. “How do I turn him off?”

“I’ll be right over,” she said, calmly. But what was she going to do? What if he was burning himself with the hot water? What if he was using my razors to cut into his skin? What if he swallowed all the mouthwash?

Without another thought, I kicked through the door.

Cameron was soaked, the bathroom filled with steam, and he was under the stream of the shower.

He came out pacing like an animal. Wailing and clawing at his head.

I ran ahead of him and shut all the lights.

How was this supposed to work? Now, it’s just dark in here.

I heard the front door open, and the television shut off. Cameron’s sobs and curses filled in the silence of the room. I never heard him curse before. The words were garbled and awkward in his cries.

Brooke walked in swiftly and gracefully. I watched, dumbfounded, as she took control of the situation. I pressed myself up against the wall and tried to regulate my breathing as I watched her silently redirect him onto the couch, and wrap him in a dry towel she pulled from the bathroom closet.

Eventually, she got him to change into his pajamas.

She took one look at the mess in the kitchen and asked, “Did either of you eat?”

“Dinner is on the ceiling.” My throat was dry, and my voice cracked hoarsely.

She climbed over the mess carefully in the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She came back in and sat in front of Cameron. She held up two hands and asked, “Are you hungry? Yes or no?” The right hand she held out for yes, the left she held up for no.

Cameron tapped her right hand.

She took out her phone and pulled up an app. He watched her hands carefully, trying to grab for her phone when it suddenly said, “I would like to eat…”

Cameron looked at her phone carefully for a moment and pressed the screen. “A sandwich,” the electronic voice said.

Within five minutes, Brooke had him eating a ham sandwich as he sat calmly on my couch.

My knees gave out, and I slid down the wall until my ass hit the floor.

She walked past me, back into the kitchen and returned with another sandwich on a dish, placing it on my lap. “You okay?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said, looking up at her. “It was stupid thinking I could pull this off.”

She dragged my living room chair over to face me and sat down.

I shook my head and glanced toward Cameron. “I had to clean shit out of his pants when we got out of the car today,” I blurted. “There was shit, dried shit caked down his legs.”

Her face softened, and she reached out and placed her hand on my knee.

“And the only thing I could think of was, why me? How freaking selfish is that?” I said, laughing darkly. “All I could think about is what the hell my family could have done to deserve this. I hate myself for it.”

“Don’t,” she said, low. “It’s okay to feel angry about it. It’s normal to not want to have to deal with it. Don’t think you’re the only one, Cage.” She leaned closer, balancing herself on the edge of the cushion. “I’ve volunteered for years with special needs children, each of their families is dealing with the same feelings. Every once in a while you need to stop and scream and question it, as long as at the same time you keep realizing just how amazing these kids are.”

“Yeah, but my poor mother. She got a shitty hand of cards with her husband and kids. I always want to help her, like letting her go on this damn vacation, but it’ll never be enough. Not with all the shit she’s had to deal with.”

Cameron nosily thudded his dish onto the coffee table and walked into the bathroom. The light switch flicked on and with the door wide open we could hear him running the sink water and brushing his teeth. “He’s getting ready for bed,” I whispered, shocked.

“That gives us time to clean up, huh?” she smiled.

I peeked my head around the opening of the kitchen, “I could just move to another apartment. It’d be easier.”

Her smile was dazzling. “Come on,” she said, holding out her hand.

But when I took her hand, and I felt her skin against mine, all I could think of was how much I wanted to kiss her.

And then my lips were against hers. Tasting something I knew I would instantly never get enough of. Backing her up against the wall, feeling something I have never felt before. Some new emotion that I never knew—never thought possible—something intangible and unimaginable. A sensation that breaks open your chest and steals your breath and makes you think that every other pair of lips you’d ever touched before were but shadows of these. Every one of them wrong compared to this kiss. A fiery rush of helplessness, and need exploded with an intensity that made the room sway and bend.

Our bodies were pressed together, but I knew we’d never be close enough. Everything around us vanished. Silence and bliss blanketed over us. Cameron was fine. The world was good and everything was—

Her lips suddenly backed away from me.

“Stop,” she breathed heavily, pushing hard at my shoulders. Her hands slapped over her mouth in disbelief. “We can’t… We can’t do this.” There was a moment when we both stared at each other in combined confusion and shock.

She quickly slid away from me, her eyes teary and not able to look directly into mine. “This can’t happen,” she said, turning her back toward me.

“Why?” I grabbed for her shoulders as she slipped out of my reach.

“Because it can’t, okay? Don’t be an asshole.” Her voice trembled. “Just, don’t do this. Okay? Just don’t.” Her voice was high-pitched now, and her hands clutched at her stomach, like I’d made her sick.

I slumped back against the wall, stunned and more than a little embarrassed.

She looked around the room, confused, like she was suddenly wondering how she got there. “I should go,” she whispered.

“Yeah. Okay,” I replied, softly.

Then, she just walked out, slamming the door behind her, and I was left standing there alone, wondering what the hell just happened—what the hell did I do wrong?