She would have loved to close the door behind her, bang her head against it and ask herself over and over again.
What did I do?
You broke it.
What did I do?
You broke it.
But her father was sitting on the couch, all the lights out, watching ESPN.
Sports news. The only news her father ever followed.
She stood straight, her chin out a little, and tried to pretend that this wasn’t the first night she’d spent at the apartment in weeks.
He looked up at her.
“Dress guy finally dump you?”
She wanted to hurl something at him. Something that would take his smug look off his face, but there was nothing easily at hand in this apartment. No cute knickknacks. Nothing that turned a space into a home. Because he didn’t care and she didn’t care either, she just realized.
“Fuck you,” she told him.
“Nice mouth.”
“Yeah, well I learned from the best.”
She blew past him into her bedroom and slammed the door shut because it made her feel better to hear that noise. A crack of sound that identified some of the turmoil she was feeling now.
Why had she done it? Why did she have to go and ruin everything?
She fell onto the bed and thought that it smelled weird. Because it didn’t smell like him. It didn’t smell like them. Three weeks and her own bed wasn’t her bed anymore.
Shucking off her clothes, she got under the covers and tried not to think about what had happened. Instead she thought of the future. Tomorrow. Lunch. She would force them back to what they were and she would relish every minute they spent together.
Then when the time came, when he said he had to leave her to go back home, she was going to do the thing she’d never thought she would have the courage to do.
She was going to ask him to take her with him.
Chapter 10
Sinead woke up with a new purpose the next morning. The plan was in place. She was going to spend these days with David sucking the life out of each and every one of them. When the end came, if the end came soon, she was going to ask for it not to end. She was going to ask for a future.
After all, isn’t that what people who were in love got to have?
She was a good person. She tried to do the right things in life. Didn’t she deserve some happiness? Shouldn’t she at least reach for it? If David had taught her nothing else, he had taught her that.
As the day moved on she got more anxious to see him. Eventually she dressed in her uniform. Sometimes she changed at the station, but this way she could spend every minute with David until she had to go to work.
She took her patrol car and drove out to David’s house. She thought as she looked at the clock that she might be a little early but she doubted he would care. She was going to stubbornly ignore the lead weight that was still sitting in the bottom of her stomach.
It was just nerves. Nerves that somehow their dynamic would be different. Nerves that because he’d been open with this feelings he might start retreating because she hadn’t immediately reciprocated.
She would show him without words. She would show him every day and in every way how she was feeling so he wouldn’t have to question it. She wanted to never make him sad again.
As she turned down his street the first thing she saw were the flashing red lights. Every hair on the back of her neck rose as she quickly ascertained the patrol car was parked in David’s driveway. She pulled her car over and immediately jogged up to the front door.
The first officer she saw was Ted. An older cop, good guy, who she got along with fairly well. He spotted her and gave her a nod of his chin.
“O’Hara, what the hell are you doing here? You’re not on shift yet.”
“What is it?”
“B&E. Owner’s pretty pissed.”
Relief flooded her. David was inside and pissed. Which meant unharmed. “I know him,” she said as she pushed her way inside and then stopped when a dark-haired, handsome man with a decidedly non-British accent was shouting at another one of her fellow officers.
“What in the hell is the point of a security system if it can be turned off by the police? Isn’t it your job to arrest the person when you find they have broken into my house?”
“Sir, please calm down. We’re trying to sort this out.” It was Sergeant Neil, Sinead’s superior, and he was clearly trying to dispel the anger radiating off the man.
“Who are you?” Sinead asked the loud man.
“Officer O’Hara, why are you here? You’re not involved this.”
Sinead looked at her sergeant and blinked mentally, not comprehending how she could not be involved in this. She’d practically lived in this house for the last few weeks. She had stuff here.
“I own this house, who are you?” the strange man said.