Butterface(36)

“I’ll be right back,” she told Fallon, figuring the kitchen was the likeliest spot. “I’m gonna go get some more water.”

Mind made up, she walked out of the crowded living room, more than ready to keep looking until she found him. She didn’t have to look far. Ford was in the kitchen with Kyle. They both had their backs to her as they loaded up their plates with more food.

Found ya. She was about to say something when Kyle spoke first.

“I thought the shit assignment you got to shadow the Luca girl for intel on her brothers was over?”

“Shut your mouth, Carlin,” Ford said. “We don’t discuss business outside the squad room.”

Gina froze, trying to make sense of the words.

“And man, I thought Gallo had been exaggerating about how she looked, but he was most def not,” Kyle went on, his back to her as he poured gravy over his mashed potatoes. “Bruh, you have taken one for the entire squad. You should be getting hazard pay.”

The water glass almost slipped from her hand as realization set in. Shadowing her because of her brothers? She’d been an idiot. Again. He hadn’t wanted her. He’d wanted to nail her brothers. All of the little questions about her family he’d peppered her with and the way he’d worked the room at her grandmother’s party, it hadn’t been because he wanted to get to know her, because he was falling for her like she had fallen for him. It had been because he was working a case.

“Yeah, he should be getting hazard pay.” She barely recognizing the ragged voice as her own. “There has to be a regulation for it somewhere, I’m sure.”

Both men turned, but she didn’t bother to look at Kyle. He wasn’t the one who mattered here. Ford was. And he looked as guilty as a kid caught with an empty ice cream container and a mouth smeared with Cookies ’N Cream.

Trust me, he’d said, I see you.

She had.

Now she was done.

Inhaling a deep breath, she turned and walked out of the kitchen. The world may have finally dropped open underneath her, but she hadn’t fallen into the hole and she wasn’t about to act as if she’d been raised without manners—even if she’d been raised by criminals.

“Gina,” Ford called out. “Please, wait.”

Refusing to stop, she kept going into the living room. Kate and Fallon took one look at her and their faces darkened with concern.

“What happened?” Fallon asked, rushing over.

Kate reached out to her. “Honey, are you okay?”

Not in the least. All the time she’d spent with Ford had been a fantasy, a fairy tale. But instead of getting a happy ending, she felt like her entire insides had been scooped out and she was just a hallow shell standing in the Hartigan’s living room.

“I will be just fine,” she said, her voice so much steadier than her legs felt at the moment. “Thank you very much for everything, but I have to go.”

Not waiting for a response, because this empty feeling wouldn’t last forever and that meant her emotions were a ticking time bomb, she turned and started toward the door.

Ford stood in front of the door, all the color washed from his face. “Gina, please hear me out.”

Isn’t that what she did last time after overhearing the badge bunnies in the bathroom? She’d known they were right, that he couldn’t really be that into her, but she hadn’t wanted them to be. So she’d listened to him. And there’d been other times when that itchy feeling at the back of her neck had warned her that this wasn’t going to work out like she wanted. She’d ignored it. Listened to him instead.

After everything she’d been through, all the humiliations and embarrassments, she would have thought she had a super sense about it by now.

“Did Kyle lie about me being a job?” she asked, half-wanting to hear him deny it.

Ford opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Not fast enough on the cover story this time, huh? You probably should have held onto that gem of ‘I see you’ for another girl.” Pain. It was everywhere. Her chest. Her throat. Her eyes. Her stomach. They all ached like she’d been hit by a truck. The need to get out of the Hartigans’ house went from a need to a life-or-death necessity. She pressed through the bone-deep ache and walked to the door, stopping right in front of Ford, and looked him in the eye. “But believe me, now I see you, too. Please move.”

He opened his mouth as if to argue, but he must have seen in her face that she wasn’t going to listen. He stepped aside.

She walked out of the house without looking back, using all of her concentration to put one foot in front of the other until she got to the end of the block, where she called an Uber and wondered just how far away the driver would take her if she begged.

…

All of Ford’s policing skills left him the moment Gina walked out of the house, because he couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag. First, he hesitated in the doorway, the click of her shutting it echoing in his skull, staring at it as if she was going to come back if he just stared at it long enough. When realization finally dawned, he yanked the door open with enough force that it bounced off the wall and shook the family photos lining the entryway and took off down the street. He had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right direction and, of course, went the wrong way, correcting his mistake just in time to see Gina get in the back of a car with an Uber sticker and drive off.

You know where she’s going. You can just go home and—

But the Victorian wasn’t his home. It never had been. It was just the place that had felt like it because she was there. He forced his feet to work, to move one in front of the other, and get him back to his parents’ house so he could figure out his next move—because he had no idea what to do next.

If he could just talk to her…but that wasn’t his way. It never had been.

He didn’t charm. He didn’t emote. He followed rules and standard operating procedures. If there was a guidebook for what to do after fucking up this bad, he hadn’t read it.

Fallon was waiting for him, her hands planted on her hips, when he walked through the front door. Kyle stood just behind her. It took everything Ford had not to punch the douchebag just for the satisfaction of watching him go down. That wasn’t going to happen, though, because his mom was standing right beside the loud-mouthed dick. Faith and Finian stood right behind her, glowering at him.

“What in the hell did you do?” she asked.

Everything wrong, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “What were you thinking by bringing that asshole here?”

Kyle let out an offended squawk. “I’m not an asshole.”

Ford and Fallon turned on him as a unit. “Yes, you are.”

Kyle’s gaze went from Ford to Fallon and back again before he grumbled something that sounded a lot like crazy fucking Hartigans and stormed out of the house. The only thing better than watching Kyle walk out would have been seeing Gina stroll back in—a fact that landed like a punch to the kidneys.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Fallon hollered after him, turning with a smile toward Ford. That moment of agreement at taking out the trash, though, disappeared faster than donuts in the break room.

“What did you do?” she asked.

He looked from his sister’s pissed-off expression to his mom’s concerned one and told them what he could. “My job.”

“How’s that?” Finian asked.

They weren’t this dense. He was a cop, for the love of Mike. They had to understand the conflict here. “You know who her brothers are.”

“So?” Faith asked, putting so much annoyance in that one word that it was like she’d just watched the best person in her life walk out the door. “That doesn’t explain what you did.”

What did he do? He tapped his thumb and finger together in a fast beat, not wanting to fess up because what he’d done was shitty—totally justified, yes—but totally shitty. Letting out a deep breath, he let the truth of just what he’d done into the light so they could all see the ugly of it all.

“I was assigned to watch her and find out if we could learn anything from the family angle.”

His mom gasped and made the sign of the cross. “You mean this whole time you’ve been pretending to date her for a case?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It was never like that—not once we started dating.”

“Then spit it out before the girls throat-punch you,” Finian said, looking like he just might deliver a blow himself.

Their mom cut a death glare at his brother and sisters. “There will be no punching in this house, thank you very much.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he said.

She turned her angry stare to him. “Save your thanks for God, who is obviously looking out for you, since I haven’t boxed your ears yet. Now spit out the whole story.”

So he did—well, as much of it as he could, from the Kiss Cam to the cover story to get into Gina’s house to the suspension to the ice-pick-to-the-balls moment when Gina had walked into the kitchen and overheard Kyle the moron.

“You let that sweet girl believe her grandfather might have been murdered to get into her house?” his mom asked, shaking her head in disbelief.