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The first thing she felt were his fingers.
(She loved that she knew what they felt like against her skin now.)
Their slow path over her ribs matched the rhythm of his lips as they traveled across her back to her shoulder.
“Wake up, Lucy,” he whispered into the skin of her neck.
This was one command of his she was all too happy to follow. She rolled over, giving his mouth access to new territory to explore, thinking that this was better than any alarm she’d ever had before…
Which of course, was when the alarm on her phone started to rudely chime from its place on her nightstand, forcing Lucy’s eyes open to reality.
She was in her bedroom. Alone. (Sadly.) Tim was in his bedroom. Alone. (Hopefully.)
But even the harsh morning light filtering through the curtains couldn’t wipe away some truths.
She knew what his hands felt like against her skin now.
She knew what her name sounded like as it fell from his lips like a prayer.
The ends of her hair still faintly smelled like sea salt and his cologne.
The blood pumping through her veins was filled with the hope that was in his smile when she reminded him that today would be her last day as his rookie.
“It’s gonna be a hell of a long day,” he’d said.
It’s gonna be a good day, she thought.
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Lucy had showered at top-speed (sadly saying goodbye to those last traces of his scent on her skin) and was sitting with her peanut butter toast and coffee in her favorite “feel-good” outfit of dark skinny jeans, a gauzy white blouse, and brown wedge booties before Jackson appeared in the kitchen area of their apartment.
“Somebody’s ready early today,” he said with a teasing tone.
“It’s an important day,” she replied, trying to keep her voice neutral and her smile from getting too big.
“Yeah it is,” he said with a dramatic pause. “The day after your first date with Tim Bradford is a very important day.”
Lucy threw her cloth napkin at him as she protested, “It was not a date!”
Jackson caught the napkin in midair, raising his eyebrows at both his own annoyingly good reflexes and her denial. “He took you to dinner. On the beach. And then you almost kissed. Sounds like a date to me. And a romantic as hell one at that.”
Lucy covered her eyes and groaned. “I never should have told you.”
Jackson leaned over, gently pulling her hands away from her face. “We both know you needed to tell somebody. This is a big deal, and I promise, the teasing stops now.”
“Thanks,” Lucy sighed. She finished the last of her coffee before looking back up into his adorably open face and smiling at the way fate can take someone from being a stranger to a classmate to a roommate to a best friend. “This is a big deal, isn’t it?”
Jackson slid into the chair next to her, his eyes no longer playful but soft in their sincerity and support. “Only if you want it to be.” He covered her hand with his reassuringly. “So...Do you want it to be?”
Lucy surprised herself by how immediately the answer came to her. “Yeah—I think I do.”
Jackson squeezed her hand. “Good—because I rode with that man the day you went missing.” Lucy’s breath hitched a little at the mention of her kidnapping and this new view of it that she was about to get. Jackson had sat with her through the aftermath of more nightmares than she was comfortable counting, but they never really talked about that day in detail. So Lucy had never known that he was the one by Tim’s side as everything unfolded.
Jackson continued, “I saw what the idea of losing you did to him. We all did. And—” He took a long beat to search for the right words, a rarity when it came to her loquacious roommate. “Let’s just say I know you’re a big deal to him too.”
Lucy found herself suddenly emotional—the mention of her abduction making her nerves still feel raw, especially after the anxiety of the day before. Jackson seemed to sense the heaviness that had taken up space in her heart because his light, bright smile was back before she knew it, and he nudged her shoulder. “Besides,” he added, “if you two hook up in the next month, I win the pool.”
Lucy felt the blush creeping across her face. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Hell no!” he responded. “Lopez started it the night you two snuck off to that bakery after shift and she found out he’d turned down the sergeant’s position to keep training you. But she’s thinking you’ll hold off until you both get drunk and make out at her wedding.” Lucy rolled her eyes, but he kept going. “Harper put her money on six months, Nolan declined to participate because he’s no fun...”
“And you bet on me having no willpower at all,” Lucy finished for him with a smirk.
“I bet on you both seeing what’s right in front of you and not wasting any more damn time,” he countered. And Lucy could see in his eyes the reflection of Chris’s death and her own brush with it—she wasn’t the only rookie walking out of this year with a little more baggage than she’d had before it began.
It was her turn to try to lighten the mood. “Well don’t count your winnings yet. There’s still a chance I walk in today and he pretends nothing happened.” She knew that she was voicing the one fear that was still keeping its claws in her brain. Tim Bradford usually tried to ignore his feelings—what if that extended to his feelings about her?
Jackson quickly responded, “No way, Luce. Something is happening at your dinner tonight. Mark my words.” He punctuated his statement with a wink that Lucy guessed was supposed to look smooth but just looked like he had something in his eye.
Lucy was so busy laughing at him that it took a second for her to take in what he’d implied. “Dinner? Do you know something I don’t?”
Jackson seemed confused by her confusion. “The ‘Last Chance Dinner’? One of Mid-Wilshire’s most cherished traditions? The one where each T.O. takes their rookie out to dinner after their last shift together? Their ‘last chance’ to give us advice before we move on?” When Lucy still didn’t respond, he laughed. “Of course Tim never tells you any of the fun stuff we get to do.”
“Sounds about right,” Lucy said with a laugh that felt a little forced.
She knew she’d end up alone again with Tim in a place that wasn’t the station or the shop at some point, but she didn’t realize it would be so soon.
Maybe Jackson was right.
Maybe something was going to happen tonight.
Maybe everything was going to happen tonight.
And maybe that’s exactly what she wanted.
With a surge of adrenaline, Lucy got to her feet and headed to the bathroom to finish getting ready. (And if she added a little extra mascara and lip gloss, that was her prerogative.)
“Let’s get going!” she called out afterwards, grabbing her stuff and waiting to walk out with Jackson.
It’s an important day, she thought.
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Lucy knew she had no poker face. So she tried her best not to think about Tim and the possibility of what might happen between them later as she changed in the locker room with Harper. But the other woman was a detective for a reason, and on the way out, she stopped Lucy in her tracks.
“You seem even more chipper than your usual sunshine self, Boot. Excited about your last day?”
Lucy was happy she didn’t have to lie as she responded, “Yes, ma’am.”
Harper held the door open for her as she said, “Well you should be. You’ve had a hell of a year—and not just because you were stuck with that handsome hardass for all of it.”
Lucy followed her eyes to where Tim was approaching. Suddenly, she found herself completely overthinking what to say to him when he got to where they were standing. She wasn’t sure what the standard greeting was after someone almost kissed you on the same day they fused your broken pieces back together after a debilitating panic attack.
She settled on “Hey,” doing her best impression of a woman who wasn’t imagining what those smiling lips had looked like centimeters from hers the night before.
“Hey,” he said in response, and Lucy hoped Harper couldn’t feel the same electricity in the air that she could feel—the charge that was making the hair at the base of her bun tingle with anticipation.
Before they could continue their very eloquent exchange of single-syllable words, Angela snuck up behind Tim and grabbed the cup he was holding right out from under him, stopping to study the order scribbled on the side.
“An iced chai tea latte with almond milk?” Angela wrinkled her nose, while Lucy felt her heart rate speed up at the sound of her favorite drink. “I can’t think of something you’d hate more.”
Tim barked out a laugh—the sound coming from deep in his chest—and Lucy was pretty sure she was going to need to Google ‘Is spontaneous combustion real?’ before their shift was over.
“It’s a good thing this isn’t for me, then,” Tim replied, taking the cup from Angela’s hands and placing it in Lucy’s, which she’d mercifully managed to keep from shaking (so far).
“You earned it, Officer Chen,” he added. Lucy wondered if she was imagining the affection in his eyes as she softly thanked him, but then she saw the looks on Angela and Harper’s faces and knew that maybe she wasn’t the only one with a bad poker face—especially when holding a good hand.
Angela shook her head with a knowing smile that seemed just as fixed on Lucy as it was on Tim. “Tim Bradford bought his Boot coffee...Now I’ve seen everything.”
As she and Harper walked away, Lucy could have sworn she heard Angela whisper, “I can’t believe Jackson is going to win the pool.”
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When it was just the two of them, it felt easier. It always did.
“You remembered my coffee order,” she said with more than a hint of smugness and maybe a little bit of awe mixed in too.
“First of all, that is not a coffee order—that’s a dessert,” he said with a familiar level of annoyance. But there was nothing familiar about the way he leaned in closer as he added, “Second, I remember everything, Boot.”
There it was.
This is going to be fun, she thought.
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They kept their distance for roll call, and Lucy tried not to let her emotions get the best of her as Sergeant Grey reminded them that this would be the last time she, Jackson, and Nolan sat in the front of the room as rookies. He promised to save the sappy words for their big ceremony tomorrow afternoon, but Lucy thought the proud look on their watch commander’s face was more than enough already.
(And maybe Lucy chanced a look back to see if Tim’s face was also proud. And maybe his eyes caught hers with a look that made her feel 100 feet tall. But instead of that being more than enough, it just made Lucy want more.)
Soon enough, she and Tim were walking to the shop, and she was struck with a sudden desire to push his buttons—to watch his eyebrows knit together and his jaw clench and his voice take on the stern tone that had first haunted her nightmares and now also showed up in much better dreams.
If this was her last time riding with Tim, she didn’t want to spend the whole time thinking about kisses that didn’t happen and kisses that might still happen and kisses she wanted to happen right now. She wanted to say goodbye to this part of her life in the only way that felt right for them—by pissing him off one last time.
So she took a deliberate turn and started for the driver’s side door, and she tried not to focus on the way her hand burned when he put his on top of hers over the door handle.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said gruffly, sounding so much like he did on that first day that she wasn’t sure whether to smile or grimace.
She settled for looking up at him with her best attempt at overly dramatic doe eyes. “Not even on my last day as your rookie?”
The knit-together eyebrows finally appeared then, but all she could focus on was the way his fingers curled around hers as he pried her hand from the handle. “Some things don’t change, Boot.”
“Some things do,” she whispered almost involuntarily, her mind unable to process anything else except the feeling of his skin against hers again.
He matched her soft, low tone as he leaned in a fraction closer. “Yeah...”
And with her thoroughly distracted, he managed to slide himself between her and the shop so he could open the door and sneak inside. “But not this,” he said with a laugh before closing the door on her.
As she settled into her seat next to him, she wanted to keep laughing with him, but she suddenly found herself facing down the crest of a wave of sadness. This was the last time she’d be starting her day by getting into his shop—their shop—and bickering with him about something silly just to see the dimples that flashed when he laughed.
(Although some hidden part of her heart was hoping that maybe they’d still be starting their days with shared car rides and flashes of dimples—but that the car they’d be sharing was his truck. It was a dangerous thought, but it felt less dangerous than it did 24 hours ago.)
No matter what was happening between them in that moment or what would happen between them in all the moments still to come, Lucy knew that she would still be saying goodbye to something big—something life-changing—when she walked out of the shop at the end of their shift today. This place was so much more than a car; it was a classroom. She’d learned about the job, but she’d also learned so much more. It was where she’d learned about Isabel. It was where she’d learned about Tim’s past in the military and the guilt he always carried with him—including the guilt about what had happened with Caleb. It was where she learned what his laugh sounded like and where she learned that his jaw clenched tightly when he was worried and where she learned that he believed in her in a way that maybe no one else in her life ever had before.
“You okay?” His voice was searching and soft, gently pulling her out of her memories.
“Yeah,” she responded, slowly meeting his eyes, which were just as warm as his words. She thought back to their first time in the shop together, how cold he’d seemed then—how afraid of his own warmth he’d been. “Just thinking about how much I’m going to miss this. It was kind of our place, you know?”
The smile that crossed his features looked like a promise, and she never wanted to look away.
“Maybe we’ll just have to find a new place.”
Every part of her wanted to reach across the console and hold his hand on the steering wheel. But they had a job to do, and it was a job that left no room for distractions—no matter how good those distractions might be. So she did the one thing she could think of to get herself to stop staring at his stupidly perfect face and remembering what it looked like in the fading light of the ocean sunset as it inched closer to hers.
She started talking.
“Speaking of places...Where are we going for my big Last Chance Dinner tonight?”
His eyes crinkled at the corners even as he kept them on the road while they pulled out of the station. “Maybe that was what last night was.”
“Last night was different.” The added meaning in her words wasn’t lost on her, and from the way his eyes glanced in her direction, it wasn’t lost on him, either.
As the delicious tension between them threatened to fill up the shop again, she pressed on. “You love rules, so there’s no way you’re breaking a tradition that goes back apparently all the way to Jackson’s dad’s day.” When he pursed his lips in silent agreement (and maybe a little bit of silent annoyance), she continued, “So where are you taking me?”
He sighed in mock frustration as he stopped at a red light. “I don’t love rules; I know they exist for a reason, and I follow them when those reasons make sense. And one of those rules is that the location of a rookie’s Last Chance Dinner is supposed to be a surprise.” He turned to look at her. “All I’ll say is that the effort we put into planning the dinner is supposed to match the effort we think you put into your training this year. So let’s just say my rookies don’t exactly have fond memories of this night.”
She wanted to wipe the smug look off of his face—but in a very different way than she might have when she saw it for the first time all those months ago.
“Well it’s a good thing I’m not like your other rookies.”
“A very good thing.” She didn’t miss the heat that flashed in his gaze before he turned away—and the heat that flashed down her body in response.
Lucy knew in that moment that Tim had been right the night before.
It was going to be a hell of a long day.
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It was a long day, but it was a good one.
Lucy had barely had time to think about all the lasts (the last time Tim would quiz her on procedures, the last time he’d open the door for her at a crime scene, the last time she’d look over her shoulder and see him behind her and know it was all going to be okay) and the firsts (the first time she caught him staring at her at a stop sign, the first time his hand on her shoulder lingered long after she’d turned in the direction he needed her to, the first time they’d both blushed when his fingers grazed hers after he stole some of her fries at lunch).
Instead, she thought about how exhilarating it felt to do her job—and to know she was good at it. With every call that day, she watched Tim step back a little more, giving her the space to take the lead and run with it. And with every call that day, she’d found herself growing more sure of her abilities. She didn’t feel like a rookie anymore.
When she made an arrest or talked to a victim or reunited the lost kid in the park with his worried babysitter, she didn’t look back at Tim for approval anymore. She knew she’d done the right thing.
She knew she could handle it.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t still thrill her more than a little to get back in the shop after their last call of the day and hear him say, “You did good today, Officer Chen.”
His words made her feel confident. His smile made her feel strong. “Thanks...I think I’m ready.”
“You are ready, Lucy.”
The sound of her name on his lips was still spine-tingling in its newness, and she felt her heart hammering in response. She focused on her breathing, steadying herself before she said with all the sincerity her tightening chest could hold, “It’s because of you, you know. I know I’m going to be a great cop, and it’s because I had a great teacher.”
He looked out the window then, and Lucy recognized his tell from the night she’d told him that she trusted his opinion—even after everything that had happened with Caleb. He was overwhelmed, and it took all her strength not to stroke his trembling jaw with her equally trembling fingers.
He took a deep breath before he turned back to her. “You’re going to be a great cop because of you. There are a lot of things I can teach, but even more things I can’t. Empathy. Instinct. A drive to help people—to care about them. You were born to be a great cop. I just gave you a little push sometimes.”
The tears in her eyes clouded her vision, but she could imagine the little smirk on his face. So she responded with her own attempt at levity. “A little push? You kicked me out of the car the first day!”
His laughter filled the shop and seemed to sink into her bones. “One of my favorite memories...You’re gonna make me sentimental, Boot.”
The rare sight of a wide smile on his face filled her with a boldness only he could bring out, so she said it: “Admit it—you’re going to miss me.”
The light turned red just in time for him to look at her with eyes that gave the whole game away. She suddenly forgot how to breathe.
“I have a feeling we’ll find a way to stay in touch.” The way he said touch—like he wanted her to feel the word on every inch of her skin—made her head spin.
Her voice seemed to come from somewhere deep behind her diaphragm. Every nerve ending in her body felt like it was firing on all cylinders. “I certainly hope so.”
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Neither of them said much on the rest of the drive back to the precinct, the quiet reminding Lucy of the breath before your car starts to climb the steepest hill of a roller coaster. They both seemed to know that something big and scary and exhilarating was waiting for them after the ascent was finally over, and all Lucy could do was hope that he was as excited about the free-fall as she felt.
Even walking out of the station together, something they’d done hundreds of times before, felt more exciting—like they had magnets on their hips pulling them closer together with each step. By the time they stopped to join Nolan and Harper, her shoulder was just barely grazing his arm—the lightest touch, but more than enough for her to feel its heat spreading throughout her body. (And judging by the way Harper’s eyes widened when she looked over at them, more than enough for her to notice that something new was brewing between them.)
The detective broke the comfortable silence first. “So how does it feel to be done with your rookie year, Officer Chen?”
Lucy tried to keep her smile to a reasonable level as she worked overtime to ignore the feeling of Tim’s jacket brushing against her bare arm. “It feels good, Detective Harper.”
The smile on Harper’s face was beyond telling as she replied, “I bet it does.”
She’s damn good at her job, Lucy thought.
Harper added with a new softness, “Well even though you’re not a rookie anymore, my offer still stands. Sparring, advice, anything—I’ve got your back.”
Lucy knew she meant it, and that meant the world to her. Having earned the respect of a woman like Nyla Harper meant the world to her. This little family she was forming one day at a time meant the world to her.
“Thanks, Nyla,” she said, her voice thick with gratitude for so many things she couldn’t say out loud.
Lucy treasured the fleeting smile that crossed Harper’s features before she said, “I was telling Nolan I’d buy you all a round before we go our separate ways to celebrate, but we’ll have plenty of time for that tomorrow.”
Angela’s voice cut through the evening air from behind them. “So that means Harper’s buying the first round tomorrow night?”
The rest of their banter was lost to Lucy as she caught sight of Jackson and sprinted into his waiting arms, registering for a moment that she probably should have tried to maintain some professionalism in front of her superiors but also immediately throwing that thought away in favor of celebrating this major milestone with her best friend.
Jackson’s carefree laughter brought out their own as he happily sighed, “We did it!” into her hair. She could feel the relief in every bit of his body, and she thought about how different he was from the cocky kid she’d met the first day at the academy.
Before long, Nolan had joined their little celebration, throwing his arm around Lucy so she was placed securely in the middle of her two fellow no-longer-rookies.
Angela rolled her eyes at them, but Lucy could feel the affection in the gesture too. “I hate to break up this little love-fest, but some of us have dinner reservations to get to.”
“And you’ll have plenty of time to hug each other to your heart’s content tomorrow,” Harper added, and Lucy didn’t miss the little shudder when she said hug. “Right now, Nolan and I need to pick up the third member of our dinner party.” The sweet smile on her face left no doubt as to who’d be joining them.
“Lila?” Nolan asked anyway.
Harper nodded in response. “I figured after the last month, you could use some family-friendly fun. I remember a very long tangent you went on one day about hot dogs and mini golf with Henry when he was little, so I thought maybe we’d recreate that.”
Lucy couldn’t miss the shaky inhale coming from the man next to her. “That sounds perfect,” Nolan said.
As the two of them walked off, Jackson slowly approached Angela. “So...where are we going?” He was like an overeager puppy, and Lucy had to wonder how Angela was going to make it through the whole dinner with her sanity intact.
Angela’s sigh was more amused than annoyed, and that made Lucy smile. She knew how much Jackson craved not just his T.O.’s respect, but also her friendship—and maybe that wasn’t as far away as she made it seem.
“You’re finally getting your wish, Boot,” she explained, and Jackson jumped in with an answer immediately.
“A double date!” He pumped his fist in the air, and Lucy heard even Tim huff out a laugh at that.
“We have reservations in an hour at that new steakhouse downtown, so go pick up Sterling and get changed,” she said with the air of someone who knew she was making dreams come true.
Jackson hugged her then, and Lucy laughed at the wide-eyed, panicked expression on Angela’s face. “I put a suit in the car just in case! See you in an hour!”
He ran off in a flourish of unbridled joy, and Angela then turned to Lucy.
“Now listen to me, Officer Chen. If this idiot takes you to McDonald’s like he’s done for all his other rookies, you text me, and I’ll make it up to you. You deserve better than a Big Mac after everything you went through this year.” She paused, growing suddenly serious. “And I’d like to think your T.O. knows that.”
Tim looked at his best friend, feigning innocence. “But what if I sprang for the McFlurry this time?”
Angela’s laugh rang out loud and clear through the California air. “Just promise me you’ll show this girl a good time,” she said with the tone of someone who knew a hell of a lot more than she’d been letting on about 30 seconds before.
“I think I can do that,” Tim responded in a way that made Lucy shiver and made Angela smile slyly at the two of them.
“I bet you can,” she said with a slow nod, and Lucy would have felt embarrassed if it weren’t for the warmth that immediately filled Angela’s face.
(She knew. She was Tim’s best friend and on her way to being a great detective. Of course she knew. But she also approved. She approved in a way that made Lucy think she’d been planning for this scenario long before the two of them had.)
With one last teasing “Have fun kids!” she was gone, leaving Lucy and Tim alone again.
“So McDonald’s, huh?” Lucy said as she shifted in her wedges to face him, putting her hands on her hips.
“They do have the best fries,” he countered as he slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
Trying to ignore how impossibly attractive he looked in that moment, Lucy asked, “Where are you really taking me?”
Instead of answering, he leaned in until his mouth was hovering over her ear. She closed her eyes and let herself feel him instead of seeing him. He felt good.
“Maybe I just like keeping you in suspense, Boot.”
Oh.
She couldn’t stop the whine that escaped her lips as he pulled away to a more respectable—and disappointing—distance.
“Meet me at my house at 8,” he added.
“Okay.” Her voice was steadier than she felt as she turned to walk away.
“And Lucy?” he called out, causing her to turn to look back at him. His eyes were sparkling, and his smirk seemed permanently etched onto his face. “Dress for something a little nicer than a Big Mac.”
This is gonna be a good night, she thought.
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Lucy took Tim’s words to heart, choosing a dark green dress that had been hanging in her closet waiting for the right occasion. Whatever modesty the front of the dress seemed to promise with its high neckline that showed off her shoulders and little else was immediately debunked by its back (which consisted of just a thin layer of lace that reached down to her waist) and its hemline (which barely covered the curves the dress was hugging like a second skin).
Parked in Tim’s driveway, changing from her “driving flats” to her favorite pair of nude pumps, Lucy let herself take a moment to think about what was waiting for her inside that unassuming house. There was a chance that they would just go to a nice dinner, talk about everything and nothing, and she’d come back to drive home and go to bed alone. There was a chance the night might end with the kiss that she’d been waiting for. And there was a chance that she wouldn’t be back in this car until tomorrow’s sunlight was heating its interior.
She knew she wanted it to be the last option. She knew it as surely as she knew the California penal code.
(There was a reason her purse was stuffed with a sundress, a pair of underwear, and a toothbrush.)
Lucy could feel her pulse in her throat as she stepped out of the car and smoothed her dress over the pair of black lace cheekies she’d changed into when she got home from the station. (Because if Tim Bradford was going to see her underwear, he was going to see the good stuff—not the sensible yellow boybriefs she wore to work.) She smiled as she checked her reflection quickly in the side of her car, savoring the nerves a little bit.
(Nerves meant that this was something that mattered. Nerves meant that she cared. Nerves meant that she knew this was different from every time she’d ever knocked on a guy’s door before. Because Tim Bradford wasn’t a guy. Tim Bradford was a man—an all-or-nothing, anything-but-casual man. And that was exactly why she wanted him so badly her hands shook as she rang his doorbell.)
Those nerves steadied themselves as soon as he opened the door and greeted her with the most relaxed smile she’d ever seen on his face. No matter what was changing between them, he was still Tim—her anchor, her rock, the person who’d kept her calm through some of the worst moments of her life. Walking into what felt like a new world, he was the only person she wanted by her side.
“Hey,” he said softly, and Lucy returned the greeting as she let herself take in the sight before her.
He looked like he’d been plucked from her daydreams—white dress shirt tucked into black dress pants, the sleeves rolled up just enough to expose the lines of his forearms. She barely registered the weird accessory of a dish towel thrown over his shoulder because the buttons on his shirt were undone to the point where she could catch a glimpse of the hollow of his throat, and she was only human, after all.
She wondered if she should feel weird, standing in his doorway and blatantly checking him out, until he stepped aside with a quick “Come in,” and she felt his eyes stake their claim down the back of her dress. When she turned around to face him, he looked hungry for a lot more than just the dinner they were supposed to be getting to.
“That’s one hell of a dress, Boot,” he said, his voice deep and drawn-out, like he wanted to make sure she felt every syllable.
Two could play at this game.
“You clean up pretty nicely yourself, Sir,” she responded with a deliberately slow glance down his body.
As she was mentally congratulating herself on leaving Tim Bradford speechless for once, the tension between them was broken by a series of happy barks.
“Kojo!” Lucy cried as he bounded toward her, licking her face as soon as she squatted down to pet him. “I’ve missed you too, big man!” she said through her giggles as he settled down in front of her, letting her scratch behind his ears. She leaned in conspiratorially and stage-whispered, “Maybe you’ll tell me where I’m going for dinner.”
“Actually…” Tim started, and there was something about the hesitant, almost shy tone in his voice that made Lucy stand up slowly. As she did, she noticed the table in front of her that was set for two—with a small centerpiece of sunflowers (her favorite) and a bottle of wine chilling in a bucket.
Suddenly, the towel over his shoulder made sense, and when she turned back to face him, she found herself running her fingers gently over its frayed ends. “You made dinner,” she finished for him, not able to hide the awe in her voice—not wanting to hide the awe in her voice.
It was him. That’s what he was giving her—that’s what he thought she deserved. It was heady. It was overwhelming. It was perfect.
His hand covered hers over the towel then, and she could feel the pounding of his heart. The knowledge that she was doing that to him made her dizzy in the best way—like great champagne or the teacups at Disneyland.
“I wanted to try something different,” he explained quietly.
She smiled at him, bringing her other hand up and relishing in the feeling of his muscles under her palms. She tried her best to sound playful, but it was hard to hear herself over the beating of her own heart. “I mean...It’s no McDonald’s, but I guess it’ll do.”
His laughter pulsed through his chest and into her hands, but it was gone in a moment as his arms wound around her waist, pulling her into his body.
“Thank you,” she breathed into the rapidly closing space between them. It was happening so fast. But somehow it still wasn’t happening fast enough.
“You’re welcome,” he replied as he pressed his forehead against hers.
She knew he was waiting for her—letting her take the lead. The thought made her feel strong in the way only he could, and she slowly raised herself up on her tiptoes to close the gap between their mouths.
But before she could, she felt a wet nose nudging the back of her knee, followed by more enthusiastic barking.
“Your dog wants you,” Tim sighed with no small amount of frustration.
“Oh now he’s my dog again?” Lucy teased, pulling away reluctantly when she realized that Kojo wasn’t going to let up until she played at least one game of fetch with the tennis ball he’d dropped behind her heels.
With the mood sufficiently killed (For now, Lucy hoped.), she played with Kojo while Tim finished getting dinner ready.
After a few minutes, Kojo had been whisked behind the closed door of the spare bedroom (“No matter how much we work on it, he still begs at dinner time,” Tim explained.), and Tim and Lucy were finally settled across from each other with beautiful plates of salmon, roasted carrots, and wild rice in front of them.
Lucy closed her eyes in bliss after her first forkful of fish. “This is incredible,” she sighed, enjoying the way her words made him smile bashfully—like compliments on things other than his police work were a rarity for him. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
She didn’t realize all the ways that question could be taken until he was smirking at her over the sunflowers. “We can revisit that question later,” he teased.
Later.
Trying to think of something other than the fact that there was going to be a later (but still not a now—because the salmon was really good and he’d worked really hard on it, and if she kissed him like she wanted to there was no way they were going back to eating), she took a long sip of her Sauvingon Blanc and steered the conversation to a less loaded topic.
“We had quite the year, didn’t we?”
Tim followed suit, taking a drink before he answered, “I think me getting shot your first week set the tone pretty well.” He was teasing, but he wasn’t wrong. Their partnership started with a new scar for him, and hers would follow soon enough.
He seemed to sense that she was slipping away into her memories because he lowered his glass and looked directly at her, holding her gaze as surely as if his hands were on her face. “I don’t just mean the bad stuff, Boot. I mean the way you handled yourself that day. You had my back—even when you were terrified. And that never stopped.” The pause as he took another drink gave her time to blink back the moisture that was threatening to cling to her eyelashes. “Viruses...the end of the world...Armstrong...Isabel...When the chips were down, I knew I could count on you to have my back through all of it.”
The warmth that was flooding her cheeks had nothing to do with the half glass of wine she’d finished so far and everything to do with the way he was looking at her—like she was his equal, like she was his partner.
“I could say the same thing to you,” she said. “I got stuck with a dirty needle and was buried alive and had basically a nervous breakdown only a day ago.” She suppressed a shudder at the memory of the panic in her chest as she sat with him next to the shop the day before. “And every time I looked up, you were there. And I knew I was gonna be okay.”
Without a shop window to look through, Lucy noticed that he looked over his shoulder into the kitchen to try to conceal the emotions threatening to overwhelm him.
“But it wasn’t always that dramatic,” she added, not wanting to end up in this trap of heavy reminiscing. “We had some fun times too.”
Tim seemed just as eager to relive more pleasant memories instead, and the conversation flowed easily as they balanced periods of companionable silence with moments of uninhibited laughter at a particularly good story.
Eventually, they found themselves pouring the last of the wine into their glasses and finishing their last bites of dinner.
“These carrots were amazing,” Lucy said as she popped the last one into her mouth.
“Thanks,” Tim said, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. “I used my mom’s recipe.”
They were in uncharted territory. Tim sometimes let details slip out about his dad—the one who’d “tune him up on the regular,” the one who gave him a black eye when he stayed out past curfew. But he’d only mentioned his mom once, early in their time together when she’d asked about his parents and he’d reponsed, “Have a dad. Had a mom. And that’s all you need to know.”
Lucy knew to tread carefully. “Was she a good cook?” she asked.
That seemed to make him smile, and Lucy’s heart felt lighter. “Yeah,” he answered with a fondness that made her chest ache. “We used to cook together a lot. She said it was a good way for me to get better at math...And it kept me out of my dad’s way.”
Lucy’s heart broke for the little boy learning to roast carrots because his mom thought it might keep him from getting hit. Her heart broke for his mom too.
“She sounds like a good mom.” It was all she could think to reply. She didn’t want to scare him off—she wanted all of him, even the hard stuff. Especially the hard stuff.
“She did her best,” he replied with more sadness than Lucy ever wanted to hear in his voice again.
She couldn’t let him carry whatever he’d been carrying for so long on his own anymore. She had his back not just at work but here, in the quiet of his house when the demons threatened to close ranks and pull him down with them. He’d given her the gift of a shoulder to lean on when she couldn’t find steady ground. The least she could do was give him a hand to hold.
She reached for him, and he clasped her hand with more force than she was expecting before he continued. “Her recipes were the only thing of hers I really wanted after…” She squeezed his hand, letting him know that she was still there. “After I left—and then she did.”
Lucy thought she understood Tim before. She thought she knew him deep in her bones. But now she knew that she could never really have known him until she knew this.
“It happened when you were overseas,” she filled in the blanks quietly.
“Yeah,” he confirmed with a voice that sounded a hundred years and a million miles away. “It’s not like I could have stopped the drunk who hit her car, but I still wasn’t there.”
“Tim…” She wrapped her fingers around his, anchoring him to her and wishing she could reach back in time and hold the hand of the kid who came home from war with only a father’s anger and a mother’s recipes waiting for him.
He didn’t pull away. He let himself be comforted. He let himself be cared for.
No matter what else happened that night, Lucy knew that she would always look back on this moment as the one when she knew she loved him with a steadiness that settled deep in her ribcage and felt more like home than anything she’d ever thought was love before.
His hoarse voice broke through her thoughts. “She would have liked you.” He smiled then—a real, full smile that made Lucy’s heart flutter. “She was always telling me that I needed to talk about things—that it wasn’t good to keep all my feelings to myself.”
Lucy felt herself smile back at him. “She sounds like a smart lady.”
He exhaled deeply then. “That’s probably the most I’ve ever talked about her.”
Lucy cocked her head, not fully believing him. “Ever? Not even to Isabel?”
Tim shook his head. “Isabel knew the basics, but we were never ones to really talk about how we felt about the shit that happened to us when we were younger.”
He paused, looking like he was psyching himself up for something big—like jumping over a cliff.
“I never made her the carrots.”
Lucy found herself on the verge of tears, but the smile that accompanied the moisture in her eyes was as genuine as she’d ever given anyone.
“Thanks for making me the carrots.”
He turned her palm over, tracing the lines on it the way he had the night before. “Thanks for letting me talk.”
She curled her fingers over his. “I like talking.”
“That’s an understatement,” he teased, their familiar rhythm returning.
“Sorry it’s so annoying that I like learning new things about you,” she shot back, trying for her best approximation of an angry face, which was hard when she was already giggling.
“I suppose it’s only fair,” he conceded as he finished the last of his wine. “Since I know everything about you.”
“You don’t know everything…” She was thinking of one particular secret that she knew she’d have to confess someday but wasn’t sure how he’d handle it when she did. She took the last sips of her own drink, feeling smug.
He leaned back in his chair, studying her face. “Are you talking about the fact that you and Nolan were sleeping together when you started at Mid-Wilshire?”
After briefly choking on her wine, she sputtered out, “Who told you?”
His cocky laugh made her blood boil for many different reasons as he answered, “You did. You’re an open book, Boot. You’d always be sneaking these ridiculous little glances at him—or glares, depending on the day.” He must have sensed the aggravation etched across her features because he added, “But what I don’t know is why you stopped.”
Lucy hadn’t been entirely ready for this conversation to happen tonight, but she knew it was going to have to happen sometime. And the way he was looking at her then—like her answer really mattered, like so much was hinging on it—made her want to give him everything he was looking for.
“Technically he stopped it, but I was ready to. Bishop found out,” she started. “And she told me that if I stayed with Nolan—and other people found out—it would kill my career before it started. She said it would be all anyone thought of when they saw me. And Nolan is a great guy, but he wasn’t worth it.”
Lucy noticed it then—the jaw clench he only did when he was nervous. She wanted to smooth the tense muscles with her fingertips, but she let him ask the question she knew was coming. “Do you still think she was right?”
Lucy smiled, ready to say what she’d spent the last 24 hours realizing. “I think she was right about Nolan. But I also think there are exceptions to every rule.” Slowly, tentatively, she reached for his hand once more and felt like she could finally breathe fully again when it was back in hers.
“I almost died,” she continued, no longer as afraid or ashamed of those words as she once was—in no small way because of the man whose hand she was now holding. “And that changes things. I don’t want to live a life that’s less than it could be just because I’m afraid of what people might think.”
Watching the wrinkles of worry slowly smooth out across his face gave her confidence as she added, “I know I’m going to be a great cop, and the people whose opinions I value most already know that too. So I’m never going to deny myself a chance to be happy—really happy—just because some people might judge me for it.”
His smile was almost blinding. “Excellent answer, Boot.”
“It’s the truth. Like you said, I’m an open book.”
There was nothing but sincerity in his voice when he replied, “It’s one of my favorite things about you.” The matter-of-fact way he let her know that not only did he have one favorite thing about her, but he had enough to mentally rank them, made her feel brave.
She leaned in, resting her chin in her hand and narrowing her eyes playfully. “You’re an open book, too, you know. If you’re paying attention.”
He took the bait, raising his eyebrows challengingly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she responded, annoyed with her own lack of originality but unable to think of any other words under the weight of his heated and heavy gaze.
“If you can read me so well, what am I thinking right now?”
His leg had started to work against hers under the table as he talked, and she found herself suddenly aware of the fact that that she was definitely having sex with Tim Bradford tonight—and it was definitely happening soon.
Her laugh caught on a sigh. “You’re bad.”
That damn smirk again. “Incorrect, Officer Chen. I’m always good.”
She found herself rising up from her seat without even processing what she was doing. “Oh, I’ll be the judge of that.”
Suddenly, she was standing in front of him, and his hands were on her hips, gently kneading the tight green fabric with his thumbs. But before he could bring her onto his lap or bring himself up to meet her waiting mouth or any of the other delicious dirty scenarios she’d just started concocting in her mind, a familiar bark echoed through the house.
“He’ll be fine,” she said as she rested her hands on his shoulders, having absolutely no idea if she was right but wanting to do everything she could to keep his fingers moving over her body.
“He’ll pee on the floor,” Tim groaned as he stood up. “And then I’ll just have to waste time later cleaning it up when there are other things I’d rather be doing.” He took a piece of her hair between his fingers and gave it a gentle tug, leaving no doubt in her mind about exactly what those things would be.
“We wouldn’t want that,” she said with a soft shake of her head.
“Two minutes?” His eyes were full of promise as he looked down at her.
“I’ll start counting now,” she said with a smirk of her own.
As she listened to him coax Kojo out into the backyard to do his business before bed, she looked at the table. She knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t want to leave a mess behind while they did the things his eyes were promising her. And since he made her dinner, she figured the least she could do was take care of the dishes.
So she took off her heels and she started clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. She realized that this was the most comfortable she’d ever felt in a man’s house before—no shoes, doing chores, humming Taylor Swift songs quietly to herself. She was used to feeling like a visitor in the homes of every other guy she’d ever been with—like she was trespassing in their world. But here, in the soft light of Tim’s kitchen, she felt like she belonged. She’d already been a part of his world for so long that there was space here for her that she didn’t have to force her way into. She fit.
The sound of the door closing and Kojo making his way back into the spare bedroom jolted her out of her thoughts.
“Making yourself at home?” Tim asked gently, his eyes on her bare feet.
“Yeah,” she said with no hesitation as she placed the last fork in the dishwasher, closing it behind her.
“Good.” His eyes were smiling as he came to stand in front of her, lacing his fingers through hers. “I hoped you would.”
He hoped.
The idea of Tim Bradford—the poster boy for cynicism—allowing himself to hope that she would feel at home in his house was almost too much. She arched up to look at him, feeling her back press against the countertop and relishing in the fact that she didn’t feel trapped; she felt good.
She was standing as high as she could on her toes as she brought her mouth to his jaw, right next to his ear.
“What else did you hope for?”
He answered by finally lowering his mouth to hers. His lips moved with the same easy confidence he seemed to always possess, taking their time. She let him set the pace, enjoying the slow, deliberate movement of his mouth—the reminder that they had all night (and as many nights and days as they wanted afterwards) to touch and taste and tease.
“That makes two of us,” she breathed into the kiss. And the reality was even better than what she’d let herself hope for.
He cupped her jaw in his strong hand then, and she opened her mouth to him, letting him swallow her sighs as he moved to tangle his fingers in her hair. She responded in kind, looping her arms around his neck and letting her fingernails comb over the nape of his neck.
His moan against her lips urged her on, and she took his bottom lip between her teeth, tugging gently and enjoying the way he pressed his body more firmly into hers in response.
“Does that feel good?” she asked sincerely into the skin of his jaw, pressing open-mouthed kisses against the light stubble that was taking up root there. She was still eager to learn—even if the lessons were going to be very different now.
“Everything about you feels good, Lucy.” He pushed her hair back and began to trace the tattoo on her neck with his mouth while his hands slid up and down her sides.
“Fuck, you’re good,” she said with a laugh into his temple as he moved to suck on the sensitive skin at the junction of her ear and her jaw.
“Already told you that, Boot.” The vibrations of his voice tickled her skin and went straight to her core. He pulled back a little to look at her, and she traced his smile with her fingertips. “Wait...Is that weird?”
She knew exactly what he was asking—if she was comfortable with the sound of that rookie nickname coming from his lips as they were pressed against her skin. And she realized she was more than okay with it. She was his last rookie. He’d never call anyone else “Boot.” That name—like a lot of other things, she was starting to learn—was now hers.
Lucy answered with a shake of her head before capturing his lips with hers once again. He peppered small kisses along her lower lip before his mouth resumed its painstaking exploration of her neck, stopping to dip into the hollow spaces above her collarbones and sending shockwaves through her body in the process.
As his mouth made its way back up to hers, his hands slid to her ass. Their insistent touch made her melt against his body. And when they reached under her dress to find the curves of bare skin there, she moaned long and low into his mouth and patted herself on the back for choosing the right underwear for the occasion.
“You like that?” he asked in an even huskier voice than usual as his fingers worked with firm, unyielding pressure against her skin, teasing against the edges of her underwear.
She pushed her hips into him in response, feeling him growing harder against her body. “Almost as much as you seem to,” she said with a nip at the corner of his mouth.
With a groan, he grabbed more of her in his hands, and she found herself enjoying the feeling of him being greedy—of him taking something for himself for once. And enjoying that the thing he was taking was her.
She laughed lightly against his cheek. “So Tim Bradford is an ass man,” she teased, punctuating her words with a fluid roll of her hips.
“When it’s this good, I am,” he replied before kissing her again and slowly sliding his hands from her waist down to her hamstrings, seemingly tracing over in every inch of her and making her feel grateful for every squat she’d ever done in her entire life.
Suddenly, his hands were under her, hoisting her up in one motion to sit on the countertop as he moved to stand between her open legs.
“Very smooth,” she sighed before she took advantage of this new angle and titled her mouth to capture his upper lip.
“I aim to please.” His hands felt strong and sure as they squeezed the sides of her hips.
“I bet you rarely miss,” she breathed out as his fingernails began to softly stroke the outsides of her thighs from hip to knee and back again while his mouth lingered over her shoulder.
He pulled back then, one hand on her hip and the other tracing her cheekbone with a reverence that made her spine feel like overdone spaghetti.
“Tell me what you want, Lucy.” His voice was gentle, kind—the version of him she’d somehow always known lingered underneath the steel bars of the cage he’d put around his own heart.
She couldn’t find the words for how much she wanted, so she guided his hand from her hip to her inner thigh as she moved to kiss him again.
His chuckle against her chin was adorable and indecent at the same time. “Use your words, Boot,” he said as his fingernails stroked the smooth skin.
Her whimper didn’t seem to appease him because he continued, “Enthusiastic consent is important, Officer Chen.” He kissed her quickly before pulling back again, his eyes dancing between playful and serious, and he was everything she’d never let herself believe was possible.
Slowly, she brought their foreheads together as she played with the collar of his shirt. “I want you to show me what else you hoped for,” she answered before enveloping him in a deep, dirty kiss.
“Is that enthusiastic enough for you?” she added in between kisses to his jaw, his cheekbone, that smirking corner of his mouth.
After they both broke away, their breathing shallow and their cheeks flushed, she placed one hand on his face and pulled back to look him in the eyes, leaving no room for doubt.
“Take me to bed, Tim.”
--------------------------------
The smile breaking across his face was breathtaking. “I think I can do that.”
And just as suddenly as she’d found herself on the countertop, she found herself in his arms, cradled against his chest.
“Oh,” she sighed with no small amount of pleasant surprise.
This was new. This wasn’t fumbling with a guy’s clothes as they stumbled into a bedroom. This wasn’t tripping over each other in a rush of blind desire. This was more. This was slow and steady and sure. This was deliberate and deep and deliciously Tim. He held her like she was something special, something he wanted to savor. And she wanted to savor it too—this feeling of being treated with care, of being worthy of something this ridiculously good.
When he kissed her, she felt it all the way down to the toes that were dangling off the ground. And when he started to move out of the kitchen with her in his arms, she never for a moment felt like he was going to drop her. She was pretty sure she’d never felt this calm on the way to a man’s bedroom before.
That was, at least, until his hand shifted its grip, grazing the sensitive skin under her arm, and she shrieked a little with unexpected laughter.
He froze, mischief playing across his face.
“Are you ticklish?”
“No!” she lied as his fingertips brought the truth out and she was left giggling and squirming in his grasp.
Her laughter seemed to bring on his own, and she loved the carefree sound of it ringing through the house. It sounded like happiness without restraint. It sounded like something this house probably hadn’t heard in a long time.
“You’re still a terrible liar,” he told her as she kicked her feet playfully.
“And you’re still a pain in my ass,” she replied as he lowered her gently onto his bed.
He kissed the bridge of her nose then—quick and easy and disarmingly cute.
“I take my job very seriously.” The playful smile began to fade, though, as he seemed to realize where they were, and Lucy wanted to chase after it like a kite taken by the wind. He looked nervous, and she wasn’t sure whether to find that adorable or unnerving.
“Hey,” she whispered as she stood back up, holding his hands in hers. “It’s just me.”
“You’re not just anything, Lucy Chen.”
He tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear and let his thumb settle on her cheekbone. “This is nuts.” He shook his head with that achingly familiar look of amused affection on his face. “But it’s happening...And I don’t want to walk around tomorrow acting like it didn’t.” His eyes were searching her face, looking for an answer to the question he was doing everything but asking. “I can’t do no-strings-attached, Lucy.”
She could tell talking this much about his own feelings was killing him, so she ended his suffering with a gentle kiss. “Well lucky for you, my strings have been attached for a long time,” she said with a smile, voicing the reality that she’d long tried to deny. “I want everything, Tim...I want to walk into the bar tomorrow night holding your hand and I want to sit on your lap after too many tequila shots and I want to kiss your cheek and annoy the hell out of Harper and Angela with how cute we are.”
The relief that flooded his features made her feel powerful, so she added, “But right now...I want you to take my clothes off.”
His fingertips ran along the straps of her dress as the confident smile returned to its rightful place on his face. “I can arrange that,” he said as he moved behind her.
He pushed her hair to one side, letting his lips linger over the nape of her neck as his index finger traced the line of the zipper.
“Want to know a secret?” His breath was cool against her skin. She felt her whole body shiver in response.
“Always,” she sighed.
“I’ve been thinking about taking this dress off you since the minute you walked in the door.” His lips followed his fingers as they slowly began to pull the zipper down—trailing down her spine and leaving every inch of her tingling.
“That’s not a secret,” she shot back on a sharp exhale when his lips reached the middle of her back.
His laugh was low as he guided the dress over her hips and down her legs, but before she could step out of it fully, his mouth was working over the dimples on the small of her back, and she was pretty sure her legs weren’t stable enough for standing anymore, much less stepping out of a dress.
“Tim…” she whispered, placing her hand over his on her hip.
He followed her cue, standing up fully again and walking around to face her. She delighted in the way his eyes darkened as he took in all of her.
“You’re gorgeous, Lucy,” he said as if it was the most basic fact in the universe, as if hearing it coming from his lips didn’t tilt her entire world on its axis.
She watched as his hand retraced its journey from the night before, reaching out and coming to rest again on the numbers tattooed into her side. It felt like an anchor, tying her to this moment for the rest of her life.
Slowly, she reached up to the first button of his shirt. “My turn,” she explained as her fingers began their descent down, until his shirt had been pushed from his shoulders and he was standing in front of her—unbelievably handsome and unbelievably hers.
She let herself claim what belonged to her, taking her time to ease her lips across his collarbone and the top of his chest while her fingers traced the lines of muscles she didn’t know the human body was capable of developing. She cataloged each scar, every freckle, the way the dim light of the bedroom reflected off of his skin—and she could see and feel him doing the same to her body.
She knew then that they could have spent all night right there, studying each other and memorizing each other and discovering the heady pleasure of being seen. But when he brought his mouth back to hers, she also knew there was still so much left to learn.
She tugged him gently by the belt loops as she parted her lips, letting him know exactly what she wanted. And he read her movements as easily as he did on patrol, his own hands making quick work of his belt before he pulled back slightly to take off his pants.
Lucy eased herself onto the bed as he stripped down to his boxer briefs, smiling to herself at the fact that it was already turned down. The thought that while she was throwing a toothbrush into her purse he’d also been thinking about this possibility made her giddy.
Her happiness must have showed, because soon enough, he was leaning over her and asking, “What is it?”
She gestured around her at the bed, with its sheets pulled down and ready for everything they were about to do in it. “You planned for this,” she teased.
He kissed the laughter from her lips. “Have I taught you nothing, Boot?” Suddenly, his thighs were on either side of her hips, hot and hard. “Always be prepared for anything.”
His mouth moved with renewed purpose from her smile to her jaw as his hands traveled to her breasts. They worked with characteristic confidence over the sensitive skin until she was arching under him. And then, when it felt like her body was a pile of kindling ready to burn, he set the blaze off with his mouth.
“Fuck,” she moaned into the air as he gently worked his tongue over one nipple and then the other.
“Patience,” he murmured into the space between her breasts, and when she laughed, she liked knowing he would feel it.
But her laughter stopped as his mouth reached her side and began to tenderly press against each letter and number. She looked down at him and felt her breath catch at the vision of the lips that had brought her back to life breathing new life into her once again.
She carded her fingers through his hair, and she wondered if he could feel them shaking.
He stopped then, looking up at her with wonder in his eyes.
“You’re here.”
She knew how many things were wrapped up in those two words, because she was feeling them too. She was alive and she was in his bed and she was under his mouth, feeling him turn those letters and numbers into something sacred—something only they would ever understand.
“I’m here.”
“You’re here,” he repeated with his lips over her skin once again. “And you’re perfect.”
Lucy gripped his hair a little harder as that word—perfect—coming from his lips threatened to make her come apart right there.
(It seemed she was going to learn some new things about herself tonight too.)
“I thought Tim Bradford didn’t believe in perfect.” She’d somehow managed to find her voice, but it got harder as his lips continued their path across her stomach and below her navel. “No A-pluses...Always room for improvement.”
“I make exceptions in special circumstances,” he whispered over the line of lace covering the last bits of her body yet to be exposed to him. He brushed his fingers lightly over the fabric between her legs. She could feel his cocky smile against her hip when he felt how wet she already was.
“Am I special circumstances?” she asked, running her hand over the back of his head.
“Very special,” he mouthed over her hip bone.
There it was again, that voice—the one she’d convinced herself would never be heard showering her with compliments—telling her she was special. It did things to her. She wanted it to do more.
“How special?”
He glanced up at her then, and she’d never felt more like an open book. But the smirk on his face told her that he liked where the story was heading.
“You want me to tell you?”
His thumb was against her clit then, circling it through her underwear, and she grasped for the only word she knew in that moment.
“Yes.”
His knowing smile made her heart skip a beat. “You’re more than special, Lucy,” he started, bringing his hands to her hips. She lifted them under him, and he started to ease her underwear down her legs.
“You’re strong…” His lips skimmed over the muscles of her calf. “You’re smart…” He kissed the soft skin behind her knees. “You’re bright and you’re beautiful and you’re good…”
His next words were pressed into her inner thigh, like he was trying to push them into her body. “You’re so good, baby…”
“Tim…” she moaned, her head already thrown back. He was about to make her come with his words alone, but she wanted to know what else his mouth could do. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she hissed, “but please stop saying nice things about me.”
He mercifully brought his mouth to her then, and the vibrations of his laughter against her clit threatened to immediately send her over the edge. She’d never felt that before, like she was being brought to the brink by happiness itself.
She knew Tim Bradford was a man of singular focus, but knowing that and feeling that were two very different things. He took his time, learning what made her roll her hips and grip his hair harder, and using that knowledge to make her toes curl in the sheets.
When his tongue circled her clit with exactly the right amount of pressure, she saw the edges of stardust in her vision. And when he did it again, not messing with perfection, she fell apart completely, blissfully aware of the fact that he would be there to pick up the pieces.
She was still trembling for a long time after, content to ride out the considerable aftershocks as he kissed his way back up her body. When she opened her eyes again, she could see the remnants of her desire on his lips. She reached up to touch it.
“Still haven’t found anything you can’t do,” she said with a satisfied sigh.
“You still haven’t seen me do everything yet.” As soon as the words left his mouth, though, she felt him turn serious. “But we don’t have to do anything else tonight...Unless you want to.” His hand was soft against her hair, pushing it from her face, and in that moment, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than more of him.
She loved knowing that she could make Tim Bradford nervous. But she wasn’t going to torture him. “I’m naked in your bed, and you just gave me the best orgasm of my life.” She brought her hand down to feel him hard against her. “I want to do everything else tonight.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Best of your life, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “I should not have told you that. Your ego does not need any help.”
He was out of bed for just a moment, coming to kneel over her again wearing nothing but a smirk. “Bet I can top it.”
As he leaned down to kiss her, she took advantage of their angle and his distraction to use every trick she’d learned to flip him onto his back.
(Little did Harper know that this would be where her lessons would be tested, Lucy thought to herself.)
She was straddling him now, brushing her nose against his cheekbone. “Maybe I can top it.”
“Excellent form, Officer Chen,” he said with a gruff laugh. His hands came up to cup her breasts, and she was pretty sure she’d never be able to hear him call her that at the station anymore without immediately thinking of his thumbs rolling over her nipples.
She moved her hips purposefully over him. “You finally gonna let me drive?”
As he sat up to capture her mouth in a searing kiss, she felt his fingers between her legs again, checking to make sure she was ready. As if there was any doubt.
Sufficiently aware of her arousal, he pulled back just enough to leave his lips along the shell of her ear.
“As long as you go slow and steady, Boot.”
(If she hadn’t already been more than ready, that would have done it.)
“Slow…” she repeated, easing herself onto him with a little gasp as she adjusted to take him in fully. He titled his head and narrowed his eyes at the sound, checking on her with a squeeze of her hip. She answered him with a gentle nod as her hips tilted to take things from good to great and from great to perfect.
“And steady…” she added as she started to move over him, giving them time to take in the magnitude of what was happening.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed into the heated stillness of the bedroom as his fingers found her tattoo again. “I wish you could see yourself.”
She shook her head gently. “I like my view just fine, thanks.”
When he laughed, she felt it running through both of their bodies. And when she sighed, she knew her pleasure was settling in his veins too.
They were familiar with each other’s body language, making it easy to find a rhythm, and Lucy had never known it could feel this good this fast. She didn’t have to tell him what she wanted, and she didn’t have to guess if she was doing the right thing. He knew when she wanted him to flip their places so she could feel his mouth on her breasts again. And she knew when he wanted her to wrap her arm around his neck, holding him to her as she tugged at his earlobe with her teeth.
When he guided her leg around him, the new angle allowing him deeper into her body, she shattered the silence that had enveloped them with a fierce whisper of his name.
“I know, baby,” he replied as he tenderly kissed the underside of her jaw.
It was so much—the mixture of newness and familiarity, safety and thrill. It was Tim—the one who drove her crazy. The one who made her better. The one who saved her.
The one who reminded her that she could save herself.
“You’re here,” she sighed in desire and disbelief, an echo of his words from earlier.
He nodded, promising certainty and stability and so many things she’d never thought to want before. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Those words seemed to set her free, her body chasing its release and beckoning him to follow her. As their kisses grew messier and their pace grew faster, she marveled at the feel of him—the quiet confidence that underscored every move he made.
“You’re amazing,” she panted, no longer caring about his ego—only caring about the earth-shattering orgasm building deep in her body.
He seemed to know exactly how close she was because his voice was soothing as he kissed whatever parts of her he could find. “You amaze me every fucking day.”
As she felt her eyes close in anticipatory bliss, she heard him whisper, “Let go, Lucy. I’ve got you.”
And for once, she did exactly what he told her to do.
She could feel him follow her over the edge, his own sinfully deep sounds of release mixing with hers.
After what felt like both a breath and an eternity at the same time, she blinked her eyes open to the sight of him playing with the ends of her hair, looking like all that mattered to him was if she was happy.
“I think we both topped it,” she said, sleepy and hopeful and happy. So happy.
With a cross between a groan and a laugh, he eased her against his body, their legs tangling together as she felt the comforting rhythm of his heart against her back.
“You’re staying, right?” She could tell he was almost asleep already, his defenses down.
She placed a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
----------------------------------------------
The first thing she felt were his fingers.
(She loved that she knew what they felt like against her skin now.)
Their slow path over her ribs matched the rhythm of his lips as they traveled across her back to her shoulder.
“Wake up, Lucy,” he whispered into the skin of her neck.
This was one command of his she was all too happy to follow. She rolled over, giving his mouth access to new territory to explore, thinking that this was better than any alarm she’d ever had before…
“Am I dreaming?” she murmured into the pillow as he dropped open-mouthed kisses across her stomach.
His tongue traced over her hip flexor before he answered with his own question. “Do you dream about me doing this to you?”
She brushed her hand over his head as the truth spilled out in her half-asleep state. “Sometimes.”
She could feel his smile. “Do I do this in your dreams?” he asked, nibbling lightly at the skin of her thigh.
She finally opened her eyes, gently pulling him up by the hair to look at her.
“You’re quieter in my dreams.”
He took direction well—a trait that surprised her. There was no more talking as his mouth moved in leisurely strokes against her. She let her hips roll lazily in his grasp, and she brought her hand up to her breasts, taking her time touching herself as his mouth worked its wonders.
The pace and pressure were perfect, and she came with a long, low moan and his sheets twisted in her hands.
“Best wakeup call ever,” she sighed before she could open her eyes again. When she did, she took a moment to appreciate how good he looked—and how good this felt—in the warm morning light.
“Good morning,” he greeted her with a kiss to her forehead, and she knew she could get used to this. “I’ll go make us some coffee, and then I have a little something for you before the ceremony.”
“You just gave me a present,” she said with a slow smile spreading across her face.
His fingertips on her arm looked innocent but felt anything but. “Technically, I gave you three presents if we include last night. But who’s counting?”
She wound her arms around his neck, bringing him down to her. “You’re very generous,” she replied before leading him into a long, languid kiss.
Eventually, they had to come up for air, and as he made their coffee, she threw on his dress shirt from the night before to briefly venture from the bedroom to find her purse and the gift she had for him inside it. She hid the small box next to her under the pillow.
Tim returned with two mugs of coffee—black for him and as close to white as humanly possible for her—and a gift bag.
“Ooooh what is it?” she cooed as he handed her the bag and eased back into his place next to her on the bed.
“Same gift I give all my rookies,” he said with what was almost a straight face. “A fresh copy of the California penal code.”
She giggled...until she pulled a fresh copy of the California penal code out of the bag.
(Maybe he was still really bad at this gift-giving thing, she wondered.)
“Thanks, Tim,” she said with her best attempt at enthusiasm.
“Open it up, Boot,” he said, and she wondered why he sounded amused. “I made a few notes—stuff to remember when I’m not riding with you every day.”
She opened the book to a random page and found it filled with his obnoxiously neat handwriting. But instead of notes on procedures, he’d written down memories.
Next to the sections on speeding, he wrote about the time they got to chase down a Ferrari. Near the stuff about breaking and entering, he added the story about the time she tried to hop a fence and got stuck and then he tore his pants trying to outdo her. The parts about dog ownership featured a photo of her that he took from the day Kojo had destroyed her apartment and then another photo—a selfie she’d taken of the three of them on a hike. (She’d said it was to prove to Jackson that Tim did know how to smile.)
And in the section about theft, she found a receipt for a bar tab signed by Angela. When she raised her eyebrows at him, he explained, “That’s from the night you stole my money clip.”
Page after page were filled with notes about things she’d done that had impressed him and successes she’d had on the job. Curled into his side on the bed, she wanted to do nothing more than spend the whole morning looking through it, with him casually pressing kisses into her hair as she read.
“Your gift-giving skills have vastly improved,” she said, trying to sound playful but her tears giving her away.
“I learned from the master,” he replied. “Flip to the front.”
There, on the inside front cover, he’d written one more note:
To the best rookie I’ve ever trained.
When she kissed him, she hoped he could taste her happiness as surely as she could feel it.
“Thank you,” she breathed against his lips. When she pulled back, she continued, “I have a little something for you too.”
Taking the box out from under the pillow and placing it in his hands, she found herself nervous. She hoped he understood what she was trying to tell him with this gift.
The way his eyes lit up the moment they settled on the opal ring, she knew she didn’t have to worry anymore.
He understood. Of course he understood.
“Lucy…”
She knew she didn’t need to explain, but she still wanted to. “I want you to have it. When you gave it back to me, you were giving me a reminder of my survival—of how strong I was and how I helped save myself.” He nodded, and she pressed on, “But that’s not all you gave me. You gave me the truth—that you found this ring. That you found me.”
She reached up to trace the dimple on his cheek before she continued, “So now I want to give you the truth. When I dropped this ring on the ground, I wasn’t just hoping someone would find it. I was hoping you would find it.” She paused to look up at him, watching the emotions swirl in his beautiful eyes. “You were with me the whole time, Tim. When I was strapped to that chair, it was your voice in my head telling me to look for the way out. When he knocked me down, it was your voice telling me to get back up. When he was marching me to that barrel with a gun at my back, it was your voice telling me to leave evidence behind.” She let her hand rest on the side of his face, holding his gaze steady. “So I hope this reminds you that the things you’ve taught your rookies stick with us—and that we’re better and smarter, and some of us are even alive because of you.”
His “thank you” melted into her mouth as he kissed her with such force she felt breathless.
“I was never going to stop looking, Lucy,” he confessed into her hair as she held him close.
“I know,” she replied. “That’s why I dropped it. I wanted to give you some help.”
When he pulled back, she was surprised to see the wetness under his eyes. “Best gift-giver ever,” he concluded with a soft kiss to her temple as he pulled her closer into his body.
Before they could continue, though, his phone chimed with a reminder that they had a ceremony to get to.
“It’s gonna be a good day,” he said as he kissed the side of her head.
She took in the sight of soft sunlight streaming through his bedroom window, bathing them in its gentle glow, the smell of his skin, and the warmth of his body against hers.
“It already is.”