My dad pulls the blinds shut on each window in the conference room. As he pulls the cords, one by one, the metal slats drop down with a resonating thud. The sound of my fate being sealed.
“I’m being interrogated now? I thought you were retired.” I’m being a sarcastic ass, but I’m tired, and fuck, if I care about this police department right now when “To Protect and Serve” feels like a baseless catchphrase.
“This is professional courtesy extended to me by Chief Ramos to let me come down here and level with my son over why he was put in handcuffs tonight. You do realize they could haul you off to booking and charge you with obstruction, right?”
I slump back in my chair and sigh like a ten-year-old kid waiting to have his ass handed to him. “By all means. Let’s get this party started.”
“Would you rather do this out in the precinct where everyone can hear me ask you what the fuck you were doing?”
“Does it really matter? They all know why you’re here so . . . ask away.” I direct every ounce of anger I feel over the situation toward my dad. It’s unfounded, and he doesn’t deserve it, but the only thing that would calm my nerves right now is to know that both Keely and Emerson are all right.
Keely for the obvious, and Emerson because the last time she saw Keely, it messed her up. She doesn’t deserve to be messed up any more than she already is.
When the last blind falls, he takes his time moving around the conference table before sitting directly across from me.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he finally asks as his brow narrows and his eyes demand an answer.
“My job,” I state matter-of-factly.
“Your job?”
“Don’t come at me, Dad, with the holier than thou bullshit. I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You’re lucky I didn’t do what I really wanted, which was to beat the shit out of him, because I don’t think I would have been able to stop once I started. So, yeah, it’s a lot better than the alternative could have been. It’s been a rough night, so if you came to give me a lecture, thanks but no thanks. I’m not in the mood for one.”
He sighs and leans back in his chair shaking his head. “What you did was incredibly stupid and profoundly valiant.”
I grunt, not feeling too valiant at the moment since I didn’t accomplish anything. “I don’t think Ramos is going to look at it that way.”
“Probably not.” He raises his eyebrows. “What did he say?”
I shrug, not wanting to think about the consequences when the actions were damn well warranted. “I haven’t spoken directly with him yet.”
“You suspended?” he asks.
“For starters.”
“Your promotion?”
I laugh. “Most likely gone, too. Insubordination and obstruction aren’t exactly looked upon in a favorable light when you’re competing for a promotion.”
“True.”
“Sorry I didn’t live up to the Malone family standards,” I say with sarcasm he doesn’t deserve.
“I don’t give a shit about the promotion, Grant,” he says, irritated by my cheap shot. “I care that you stand by the right principles and make the right choices. I care that, at the end of the day, you can hold your head high. So you tell me, if you had to do it all over again, would you do the same thing?”
“In a heartbeat,” I say without hesitation. “It was the right thing to do.”
I think of Emerson highlighted by red and blue lights. The look on her face solidifying I was doing the right thing. Her presence telling me the time she needed is up.
God, I need to know she’s okay, but instead, I’m locked in this damn room.
My dad continues to stare at me, study me, mull over the thoughts I can see clear as day in his eyes.
“This doesn’t have anything to do Emerson, does it?”
“Christ, yes, it does,” I say with a disbelieving laugh, nervous energy eating me up. Too anxious to sit still, I shove up from my chair and pace the length of the room.
“Is she worth risking your career over?” I fall silent at his question, knowing the answer and not knowing it all at the same time. Certainty versus uncertainty. My routine versus her chaos. Alone versus loved. “Grant?”
“I didn’t save her,” I say, not answering the question, my voice breaking as the one truth that has eaten at me over and over finally has a voice. “I was her best friend, and I knew she hated being at home . . . and I did not save her.” The guilt is real and raw, and I know that every time I’ve seen Em suffer through something, was because I didn’t help her in time. It’s my fault.
If only I had saved her sooner . . .
My dad sighs as he approaches behind me, his hand patting me on the shoulder and then squeezing there. “You were eight, son. There was no way you could have known.”
“But still . . .”
“If anyone is to blame it’s me. She was in our house day in and day out. I was the chief of police for Christ’s sake, and I didn’t see the signs because monsters aren’t supposed to be your son’s friend’s dad.”
I know he speaks the truth, but it’s also hard to let go of the feeling that I still failed. Emmy then and Keely now.
“I saw Emerson when I looked at Keely tonight,” I confess with a shake of my head. His exhale is long and steady and says his assumptions were correct. “I’ve seen Emerson in her all along, but tonight . . . she opened the door and had a bruise on her cheek and blood on her lip, and I lost it. They had the same haunted eyes. The same timidity. All that was different was the hair color.”
“In order for you to draw conclusions, should I assume you opened Emerson’s case file?”
His words stop my feet in place. The fuckers. Gray and Grady told him what I did after promising me they wouldn’t. So much for all for one and one for all. “You gonna ride me for that, too?” I snap.
“Just asked a question,” he says in the calm, probing way of his that tells me he’s nowhere near finished.
And the longer he stares at me, the shorter my fuse becomes, until finally, I give into the pressure to explain.
“No, Dad. I didn’t open the file. At first, I wanted to. I thought if I could just see the things she faced, then it could help me know how to best approach her.”
“And it was your right to do that? Shouldn’t you have waited to see what she did or didn’t tell you? Wasn’t that her choice?”
“Christ, yes.” I shove my hand through my hair, hating the next words and knowing damn well they are truth. “I was afraid I was going to hurt her, Dad. We were sleeping together. How am I to know if there’s something that bastard did to her that is a trigger? Something stupid and simple, but if I did it unknowingly, it would affect her? I’ve seen enough of these cases to know the kids are scarred for life . . . so fucking sue me if my first thought was how to protect her. How not to hurt her. Fuck it,” I say as I sit and then stand again. “I’m so sick of explaining this.”
The intensity in my dad’s eyes matches how I feel inside. “I commend you for caring enough about her to think that far ahead. I can understand where you are coming from . . . but she doesn’t get to look inside your darkest secrets without your consent, so can you blame her for feeling violated that you did hers?”
“But that’s the thing.” I throw my hands up. “I never opened it. I thought better of it, even when she was pulling away from me, I thought better of it. I only saw the picture because it fell out of the folder when I moved it to get it out of the house, but it isn’t like she believes me.”
“Can you blame her?”
I scrub my hands over my face and sigh. “I don’t blame her for anything, Dad. Not a damn thing.”
“But it makes you feel better if you blame yourself?” He gives me the same slow measured nod he’s given me my whole life. It’s the one that tells me he thinks I’m being dense and is waiting for me to see what’s right in front of me.
“Better? Seriously? You think I feel better knowing nothing I did tonight matters because Keely is back in her toxic house where who knows what is happening to her because I can’t get CPS to make time to help her out?” I pace the room. “I have to sit here, knowing I probably threw gasoline on the fire. If something happens to her, you’re damn right the blame is on me. Add to that, there’s all the hard work, the overtime, the everything, I put into getting the promotion, and now my chances are fucked. If those aren’t enough, I hurt Emerson. I violated her trust, and I don’t know how the fuck to make it right again . . .” I push out a deep breath and try to think around the chaos in my heart. “So, yeah, I’ll wear the blame like a goddamn coat, but it doesn’t mean shit because I can’t do anything about anything to make it all right again.”
“The Keely situation. The department will do right by her. It might not be tonight, Grant, but you made a big enough scene—reporters and all—that CPS wouldn’t risk not dealing with the situation because they’d take the blame. It may not feel like it made a difference tonight, but you got the ball rolling and the attention piqued . . . so you did what you had to do.”
“Not soon enough,” I grumble but take a little bit of what he says to heart. Maybe I did make a difference.
“And the promotion.” He shakes his head. “I’m not Chief Ramos, but I have walked in his shoes a time or two. You were technically in the wrong, but if the department is smart, they’ll take the attention and turn it into good PR. With all the bad cop stories surfacing constantly, they’ll have no problem highlighting how they had an officer who went above and beyond to protect and serve.”
“I don’t want the limelight dad. I just want my job.” I sigh.
“You’ll still have it. Take the suspension, enjoy the time off. I wouldn’t be surprised if that promotion is yours within six months to a year. If it isn’t, then it isn’t. You still get to do what you love every day. There will be other chances.”
I murmur in agreement, having a hard time believing him when I’m in the midst of the chaos.
“And then there’s Emerson. She should be hurt by what you did. Intent matters, but it isn’t all that matters. You know that. So, all she knows is your intent, even though she doesn’t know your reasons behind it. You violated her privacy, Grant. It’ll take time, but you’ll redeem yourself.”
The sound of Em’s voice when she called out my name tonight rings in my ears.
Maybe I redeemed myself a bit already. If I did, it wasn’t intentional, but then again, neither was loving her.
“Just remember when you’re building a relationship, you need to hear what the other person isn’t saying. Those are the words that are the most important.”
I remember the look she gave me tonight. The pride and the pain. The will and the want. The apology and the blame. So many unspoken words I heard loud and clear.
“Do you love her?” The sincerity in his question throws me.
But the honesty in my answer does even more so. “Yeah, I do.”
I’m not sure what I expected his reaction to be, but he just nods as if my answer is no surprise to him and gets a soft smile on his lips. “Then these little blips will be worth it. You’ll recover from the fallout. She’ll forgive you.”
“Trust is a hard thing to earn back.”
“Agreed.” He gives a measured nod. “But remember, you don’t need to know the details of her past to love her heart in the present.”
I fall silent as I mull his words over and know they are truer than I care to admit. I think of all I’ve done thus far to prove to her I want her to stay and all the things I haven’t even gotten to show her yet.
“You’ve always loved that girl,” he says softly, as if he’s remembering back, and I wish I could, but so many of my memories are of her not being there. “Have you told her yet?”
“I’m not sure she’s ready to hear it.”
Or maybe I’m afraid that, if she does, she’ll run.
“You don’t give her enough credit. She’s tougher than you think, and maybe that’s where you’ve underestimated her. You have to be all in or get all out. There is no halfway when it comes to love.”
There’s nothing I can say in response so I watch as he walks to the door of the conference room. “And there’s no time like the present since she’s been sitting out in the waiting room for the past several hours.”
“What?”
“Ramos told me you were free to go when I was done with you.”