CHAPTER 7
Dylan
I’m iffy on the legalities of giving a ride to a recent “criminal” — using a squad car, no less. But that didn’t stop me from doing it. This is a small town and sometimes you need to work within or bend the rules. The person you are dealing with today might in a week be the person you are sitting next to at the local high school basketball game or your next-door neighbor’s kid or the man who runs the local pizza joint. Every case in this town is handled as a case-by-case basis. You know most everyone, or you know their friend or a family member of theirs and they likely know you. Helping people is what got me interested in being a police officer and so it made sense to help Zoe. The fact that I wanted to get to know her better was just something extra.
In fact, even if I’d known for certain that it was against the rules, I think I might have done it anyway. And that’s considering that I’d barely driven in a year, not since… but that’s beside the point. I was quickly realizing there was little I wouldn’t do to get to know this girl better.
We got in, and I revved the engine, which was slow going because of the temperature. At last the car started, and I shifted gears. Anxious to break the proverbial ice between Zoe and me, I launched into some friendly conversation.
“So, you been in town long? I saw that your license is from out of state,” Not particularly deep, but I had to start somewhere.
“Just a few months,” she said. “Moved in November.”
“Oh yeah? What for?”
“A man.”
My heart sank. Of course there was a man, there’s always a man. I managed, “You living together now?”
“I moved here to get away from a man,” she said defiantly.
The tightness in my chest loosened, and I was simultaneously shocked to see how quickly the rhythms of my heart had become dependent on this woman.
“How come I haven’t seen you around before?” I asked, prodding her for more information. I wanted to keep those lips talking, if only so I could see her mouth make O’s. “I thought I knew every pretty girl in town.”
She laughed, a hearty guffaw that was much bigger than what I’d expected that petite body to produce.
“You’re a pretty slick operator,” she replied. “You know that?”
My lips curved upwards. “I don’t think I am, but I’ll take the compliment.” I’d also take her, if she’d let me. Jesus, I had a dirty mind. Guess it was just from sex starvation. The hunger was more powerful than my usual good manners.
“Have you lived here long?” she asked. I suspected we were both rusty on casual conversation.
“Depends, does ‘my whole life’ qualify as long?” I retorted.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Okay,” she returned. “That’s pretty long.”
I chortled. “Is thirty old to you?”
“No, not at all. I like my men with a little age and wisdom.”
“Age and wisdom, hmm?” I looked in the mirror and ran a hand over my cheek. “Maybe I’d better grow out my facial hair more. This trimmed beard thing is for the youngins.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” she countered quickly.
Well my my, somebody had certainly come to play ball. You’re still on duty, a voice in my head reminded me. Start acting like it. Stupid head voices, always bringing reason into the equation.
But my inner voice lost out to the mounting arousal in my body. I took the bait, replying, “And why not?”
She flushed, and muttered, “Seems a waste to hide those cheekbones under a full beard.”
I couldn’t help it, my eyebrows shot up to my hairline. In Fallow Springs, women were generally raised to be flirted at, not the ones doing the flirting. But I was quickly learning I didn’t mind a gal with a libido and a big mouth.
“How old are you?” I asked, changing the topic back to more neutral ground. I had noticed her birth year when looking at her license as I had been trained to do, but I didn’t want to come across as creepy, so I tried to keep the conversation going. If talks continued in this flirtatious vein… well, I wasn’t sure what I would do.
“Twenty-seven,” she said.
That warmed me up a bit. I would’ve lost my resolve if she was much younger. Once you have a child, the idea of sleeping with younger women just loses some of its luster. But that being said, in my life, everybody was paired off and having babies by the time they were twenty-five. For her to have run away from home, to a town like this, with no family at all — well, the country boy in me struggled to comprehend it.
“And you’re rebuilding your whole life from the ground up in a backwoods town in the deep heartland of Wisconsin?” I asked, trying to figure her out. “Seems extreme.”
She looked mildly affronted, and I regretted my phrasing.
“I’m sorry,” I tacked on. “I don’t mean to be rude I’m just — it’s very different than what I’m used to, so I suppose I’m curious ‘bout it.” That was the honest to goodness truth.
“I figure,” Zoe said slowly, “it’s never too late to make your life what you want it to be.”
Her words triggered something deep in the folds of my brain. But what if, I thought, your life had already been exactly what you wanted it to be? And what if you had all of that taken away from you in the blink of an eye? My mind grew foggy as I was pulled into the past.
“Hey, you okay?” she asked, and I turned to catch the look on her face. By the mounting concern I read there, I must have appeared pretty distant.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m all hunky-dory.” I raced to say something lighter, in case she realized how deeply her statement had pierced me. “You liking the town?”
She hesitated, carefully weighing her answer before at last saying, “I think so.”
“Oh yeah? You don’t sound so sure about that,” I joked. “I won’t be offended, Fallow Springs ain’t for everyone. If you can hack it in the woods, though, I’d be mighty impressed.”
“I’m not sure about it yet. Haven’t made up my mind,” she clarified. “But I most definitely like the people.”
She turned to face me, and her sparkling eyes invited me to join the innuendo. I was rusty, but for a body like that, I’d make the damn effort. I pictured myself cupping her perfectly shaped breasts, closing my hands around her miniature waist, gripping the soft meat of her dainty calf. The images gave me the pluck to go on.
“You like the people,” I repeated. “What do you like about the people?”
“Well,” she said, “they’re friendly, and helpful, and generally pretty invested in their community, which is great.”
“We sure are,” I nodded, appreciative of her kind insight.
“And, um,” she went on. “Some of them are pretty fucking hot.”
Shit. She was going pedal to the floor with these pickup lines. I wanted to reciprocate vigorously, but something kept me from participating as much as I would have wanted. Damn it, I was a broken man.
“Do you have anything to say to that?” she inquired with a smirk.
I was going to have a hard time keeping my gaze on the road if she kept talking dirty or about as dirty as I’d ever heard a woman talk in Wisconsin. And it felt good to flex these sexual and verbal muscles after so long, to remember the excitement of first flirtations.
I played along as gamely as possible. “Are any in particular catching your eye?”
“Maybe…” she returned, letting the word hang heavy in the air.
“Oh yeah? Does he know that you’re interested?”
Her smirk grew larger. “I think he’s taking the hint.”
“Should he be asking you out?” I asked, my pulse racing. Please say yes, please say yes.
“I don’t think so,” she replied, her eyes off somewhere in the forest, running over the lines of the mountains.
Disappointment seeped through me. “Why not?”
“Because he’s married,” she responded, all playfulness leaving her tone. The sexual tension had been sucked out of the car, as if by a vacuum. Did she mean me? She definitely meant me. Damn it, I thought she had read between the lines by now. Wasn’t that what the flirting had indicated?
I ached to tell her the truth, but it just seemed too soon. And once she knew everything, she wouldn’t see me as a hunky cop with biceps to spare, but as a stray dog with a limp, something to be cared for. I couldn’t bear to watch that change take over her.
“Why do you think he’s married?” I asked her with the little breath I could muster.
“Because he’s wearing a fucking wedding ring.”
No, no, I had to keep quiet, the truth would technically explain everything, but it would also ruin what we had going on, the sparks of sexual attraction and romantic interest. The fire would dim and sputter out before it had a chance to kindle. The tradeoff wasn’t worth it.
“Maybe,” I offered, by way of compromise with my internal demons, “the ring doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“And maybe,” Zoe shot back, “I’m less of a dumb bunny than he thinks I am.”
“Come on now, he doesn’t think you’re dumb.”
“Oh yeah?” she retorted. “How else do you explain the ring, Dylan?”
We had dropped all pretenses of this being a hypothetical man. Her eyes were on me now, waiting for an answer. An answer I couldn’t possibly give.
“Zoe, it’s more complicated than—”
Just at the moment, mercifully or not, my walkie light blinked red — an incoming message. Reluctantly, I switched directions in my sentence.
“I have to answer this.”
She folded her arms over her chest and muttered something under her breath.
The machine buzzed, and a voice came through, saying, “Officer Robertson, do you copy? Over.”
I clicked the talk button on the side of the walkie, and replied, “I copy, over.”
“There’s been a B&E on Main Street.”
“What’s a B&E?” Zoe asked.
“Breaking and entering,” I replied to her. Into the walkie, I said, “Okay, on it. Where on Main?”
The radio crackled with static. “A shop called Zoe’s Cakes and Bakes.”