Page 107 of Rough Hard Fierce (Chicago Underground 1-3)
Maybe Colin or Shelly, maybe. I trusted them, but I barely knew this guy. He seemed nice enough for a cop. And the way he’d been with Shelly, that counted for something. But trust was a rare and precious thing, like a jewel. When I found it, the thing to do was lock it up tight, where it would be safe. The very worst thing was to lose it. It would have been better not to have it at all.
He stood slightly and took off his jacket, then draped it over the back of the chair.
He removed his jacket and pulled out his notepad. Then he came to stand by the bed.
Shelly whimpered in her sleep, and I realized I had tightened my arm around her. I loosened it and moved it close to my body, resting at her side.
“It will be okay,” he said. “I just want to help.”
“That’s right. I can help you.”
I shuddered.
What would happen if I told? It was such a foreign idea.
Almost like thinking, what if I jump off a cliff and try to fly? After all, it might work.
I opened my mouth to tell him nothing happened or, hell, to tell him the truth about his partner, but something else came out. Everything.
I told him how I’d grown up riding in the cab with my dad. While my dad was in the bathroom, one of the other truckers called me a “little lot lizard.” I’d thought it was funny, but when I’d told my dad about it, he’d beat the guy up. I didn’t know then it meant a hooker.
I told him I’d met Andrew in third grade. This one boy had kept picking on me. It even got physical, pulling my hair, pinning me down. Well, I’d always been small. One day at recess Andrew shoved a handful of poison ivy leaves down the boy’s pants. Andrew ended up getting the rash all over his hand, and he got detention too, but the other boy never messed with me after that.
I kept talking, lost in my own world. I said what Andrew had done. What the cop at the hospital had done. And then finding out about Bailey. How I’d raised her, and how Shelly had helped me do it.
I talked about Colin and that first night. I’d have blushed if I’d been thinking, telling this guy about our sex, but I wasn’t thinking, I was talking.
I told him about how Andrew came back and my fear and about Colin and Philip and, finally, about Detective Shaw. All the way up until last night. I told him everything dark and shameful, and probably even incriminating.
It wasn’t really a conscious choice. Something about this place, this cop, my fear for Shelly, had destroyed my barriers. The dam had broken, the one that was supposed to keep me from spilling my soul to people I didn’t know and who didn’t care.
Maybe also it was a kind of therapy. I’d wondered before how people ever talked. How did someone share something dark, something secret, with a stranger? Now I knew. When the time was right, it just came spilling out, unstoppable.
It did help. He hadn’t given me any psychobabble or cop talk. He hadn’t said anything throughout my monologue of a regular girl’s life, but it had helped to let it out. Someone knew now. Someone knew it all. I felt lighter, like I’d given a bit of it away.
When I got the courage to open my eyes, his head was in his hands. I thought he might have fallen asleep. It would be for the best. I almost giggled, that’s how giddy I felt.
He looked up, and his bloodshot eyes looked haunted. My spirits fell. Of course I felt lighter. I’d just dumped it on him. He’d only asked what had happened with his partner, and I’d given him my life story.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” he said. “I just—I think that might be the saddest story I’ve heard.”
Then I did laugh. “I know a better one, but I’ll spare you for now.”
It was quiet. I drifted into a dream state. I’d lost everything, at least for the moment: Bailey, Colin, almost Shelly. I was stuck in a hospital room with a cop—a nightmare if there ever was one. But somehow, strangely, there was peace.
Chapter Seven
/> I woke up to the soft sounds of the nurse fussing over Shelly’s bandage.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Shelly said quietly from beside me.
I rubbed my eyes. I’d fallen asleep in Shelly’s bed and had one hell of a crick in my neck. I glanced around the room. Her detective was gone, his jacket missing from the chair. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I don’t think these beds were made for two.”
“I’m glad you came, though,” she said.
She looked better. Still wan compared to her usual self, but it seemed the indomitable Shelly could bounce back from even a bullet.
