Blood Moon (6 page)

I loved him—needed him—and he just left.
Over the years, I thought I’d made peace with how things ended
between us, but seeing him again… Well, it brought back memories of
every tender moment we’d shared, and they almost eclipsed the
resentment I harbored for him.

Almost.

My eyes burned, bloodshot and beyond
exhausted, as I stared at the white wall ahead of me. I was still
lying in bed after a long, sleepless night obsessing over Nick’s
return to town and feeling guilty that my thoughts were about him
and not the man sleeping next to me in my bed. With every minute
that ticked by on my bedside clock, I had hoped sleep would find
and hold me, but it was sparse and never lasted more than fifteen
minutes at any given time. David had done what he could to help
take my mind off everything, and I’d given in, momentarily
forgetting my troubles in exchange for the way he made me feel
whenever I was in his arms. But he fell asleep, and I couldn’t shut
my mind off long enough to follow him.

I heard a soft groan behind me, and the
mattress dipped beneath David’s weight as he rolled over. Suddenly,
his heavy arm draped over my waist and hung there for a minute
before his fingers started to dance over my exposed abdomen. “Good
morning,” he greeted gruffly, his warm breath wafting over my neck
and making me shrug against the ticklish sensation. “How did you
sleep?”

“Um, fine?” I really have to work on
speaking with ironclad conviction, because he didn’t buy it.

His fingers stopped moving, and he pushed
himself up. With a sigh, I rolled onto my back and looked up at
him. His hair was a disaster, making me grin like an idiot, but his
eyes instantly sobered me. “Brooke—”

“David…don’t.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Brooke, you
can’t keep doing this.”

Perplexed, I pushed myself up onto my
elbows, the collar of my T-shirt feeling tight against my neck.
“Doing what?”

“Pretending like everything
is…‘
fine
.’” Frustrated, he threw himself off the bed and
yanked his jeans on over his boxers.

“I-I don’t know what you want me to say,” I
whispered, pushing up until I sat cross-legged on the bed,
fidgeting with a loose string on the hem of my shirt.

“Sweetheart, it’s not about what I
want
you to say…” David sighed and planted himself back on
the bed in front of me, taking my hands in his and bringing them to
his lips. “You can’t keep this shit bottled up inside.”

A sad nod from me. “I know.” My eyes met
his, and I gave him a half-smile. “It’s not that I mean to keep you
at a distance… It kills me that you even feel that’s what I’m
doing…” Then I heaved a heavy sigh. “Seeing Nick last night just
opened an old wound—more than usual.” David’s eyes grew sad, like
maybe he thought it brought back more than just the despair I felt
when Nick left after Bobby died, so I tried to explain. “I don’t
love him. N-not anymore. But”—the first of several tears fell down
my cheek—“on my
birthday
? When he knows what that day means
to my family?” I hated crying; it made me feel weak, and it was
something I usually kept others from seeing, but these past
twenty-four hours had been a little more emotional than years
past.

David reached over and took my hand in his,
bringing it to his lips and placing feather-light kisses over my
knuckles. I was grateful to him for being here for me and listening
without judgment, and it was a relief that I could explain this to
him without fear of him misreading how I felt about Nick. To show
him just how much I appreciated his support, I raised my face and
kissed him, closing my eyes and sighing as his lips molded to
mine.

The desire to lose myself in him like I did
last night—to forget about everything—overwhelmed me, and warmth
bloomed throughout my body, starting in my belly and emanating
outward until my skin tingled. In a flash, my hands moved up to
David’s neck, my fingers twisted into his hair and tugged lightly.
He responded in kind by tangling his own hands into my long,
pillow-mussed hair, and I shifted above him, straddling his strong
thighs with the need to be closer when he pulled his lips from
mine.

“Brooke…
wait
,” he rasped. “We
can’t.”

My breath shuddered as I drew it in, my hips
moving against him and relishing the feel of how aroused he was.
“Mmm,” I hummed teasingly, shifting my hips slightly to see if I
could persuade him. “I think your body’s suggesting otherwise.”

David laughed, but I could see that he was
seriously reconsidering his decision. Sadly, he stuck to his guns,
but not without a little torture of his own. He leaned in close,
his lips brushing the shell of my ear, and whispered, “As much as
I’d really love to throw you down on this bed and do”—his hands
moved down under the hem of my shirt and grabbed my ass
firmly—“
ungodly
things to your beautiful body…” I closed my
eyes in rapture when I felt the warm, hard truth of his words
pressing against me. Then he got serious, sighing heavily. “The
simple fact remains that if I stay wrapped up in your arms all
morning—which, again, I would love more than anything—then we’re
going to be late for work.”

I pushed my bottom lip out in a mock-pout.
“Oh, boo.” David nibbled at my protruding lip gently, making me
giggle.

“Come on.” Using both hands, he playfully
tossed me onto the bed before standing up. “Get dressed. I’ll go
start on breakfast.”

David grabbed a T-shirt from his drawer
before leaving me alone, and I took a minute before getting out of
bed, looking out the window at the blue sky of a new day. I could
already feel the arid heat seeping into the air in my room, and I
sensed that it would be a little warmer than yesterday.

But something still felt off.

Even though everything seemed just a little
bit brighter thanks to David’s positivity, I still felt acutely
aware of my troubled past. Usually, the day after my birthday found
me feeling a little less distressed about everything. But not this
year. It could have been Nick’s surprise visit to the city, but it
somehow felt like more than that. I really wished I could put my
finger on it.

Taking a deep breath, I headed to the
bathroom for a quick shower before David finished preparing
breakfast. After showering and dressing in jeans and a T-shirt, I
dried my hair and applied a little makeup to hide the signs of my
sleepless night. Then I headed out to the kitchen to find David
setting two plates of bacon and eggs on the table.

“Smells delicious,” I told him, kissing his
cheek and preparing to take my seat.

Before I could sit, though, David wrapped
his arm around me and pulled me to him, burying his nose in the
crook of my neck and inhaling. “So do you,” he whispered, making me
giggle at how overly corny he could be from time to time.

“You’re so hokey,” I teased, pushing him
back and shaking my head.

“Don’t deny it.” He stepped back and let me
sit down. “It’s why you love me.”

A smile tugged at my lips. “Perhaps that’s
part of it.”

Looking intrigued, David sat next to me and
inquired, “And the rest of it?”

“Isn’t really appropriate talk for the
breakfast table,” I confessed, my voice dropping to a lower, much
sexier, tone.

Smirking, David took a bite of his eggs. An
unexpected silence fell between us as we ate, and when I looked at
him again, he seemed lost in thought. When I finally asked what was
on his mind, he set his fork down and met my gaze. The look in his
eyes was startlingly afraid. “Why did we wait until now to come out
with our relationship?”

“You know why,” I replied quietly, pushing
my eggs around my plate.

“I think I do,” he said. “But it feels like
there’s more to it than that. Is it…” A pause. “Is it because of
him
?”

“Nick?” I questioned, even though I knew
that was exactly who he meant. “A little, yeah.” I shrugged
despondently. “It’s been hard for me to open myself up to anyone
else after he left…maybe because I was afraid of anyone else seeing
me the way he did.” David looked at me, his eyes a combination of
curiosity and sympathy, and I took a deep breath before I
concluded. “Broken.”

Sighing, I dropped my eyes to my
now-fidgeting hands and continued. “After Bobby died, I never
really got over it—how could I? The police couldn’t find anything
that would lead us to who killed him, and his case was eventually
filed away, unsolved.” While David already knew most of this, he’d
never really gotten the full story on Nick and me or how serious
our relationship really was. “I withdrew emotionally from
everything. Bobby was my brother, and one minute he was there with
Nick and me at the club, and the next he was just gone.

“Nick obviously couldn’t handle having a
girlfriend who was in a near-constant state of catatonia. My moods
had become…unpredictable, and I guess he just couldn’t deal.”
Because I’d already cried for the loss of my first love, I was able
to tell David all of this with little to no inflection in my voice,
even though talking about it was slowly reopening the hole that
Nick left in my heart. “He stopped coming around as much, and when
I was lucid enough to ask him what was going on, he just told me
that he was going through some changes. It was pretty obvious that
he didn’t want to be with me, really.”

“I’m sorry,” David said softly, reaching
across the table and taking my hand. “I knew he hurt you, but I
never realized just how badly.”

I purposely left out the part where Nick and
I were engaged. Not because I thought it would hurt him, but
because I didn’t think it was really relevant to the story. It
wasn’t like we were actually married and I had a divorce under my
belt. We were young and impulsive, and then he broke it off. What’s
to tell?

I laughed dryly because David’s apology
seemed a little out of place. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not yours either. He should have been
sympathetic to what you were going through, and he wasn’t. He was
thinking only of himself.” David’s words resonated deep within me,
and I felt a little bit better having gotten all of this off my
chest. He was right; Nick was being entirely selfish when he
decided to leave.

“Well, his loss was your gain,” I told
David, standing up with my plate and taking it to the sink. “And I,
for one, couldn’t be happier about that.”

Flashing me that Colgate smile, David pushed
his chair from the table and crossed the room, pulling me into his
arms. “Me either,” he declared. He looked at the clock on the stove
and sighed. “I suppose I should go hop in the shower so we can hit
the road, huh?”

I groaned when David released me, but agreed
to do the dishes while he got ready. It was only fair, after all. I
was just putting the last plate away in the cupboard when David’s
arms circled my waist and his chin rested upon my shoulder.

“I’ll meet you at the precinct?” he said,
kissing my shoulder softly.

Smiling, I turned in his arms and looked him
in the eye. “Why? That seems like a waste of gas.” He looked
confused, which made me strangely giddy. “How about we take my car
today?”

David looked…well, he looked absolutely
shocked and delighted, and I promised to make him look like that as
often as possible for as long as possible. “Really?” I nodded once.
“And if people start asking questions?”

Bringing my hands up and resting them on his
shoulders, I stepped up on my toes and kissed him once. “Then we
tell them.” I arched an eyebrow. “Besides, maybe this will get
Keaton to stop asking me out.”

“I don’t know,” David said with a laugh. “I
don’t think Keaton is so easily dissuaded.” He leaned in and his
lips brushed mine, sending a welcome shiver straight down my spine.
“A little PDA might be in order.” Then his lips captured mine
tenderly, almost as though he was thanking me, and my fingers
curled into the fabric of his dress shirt, tugging him closer.

“Come on,” I whispered after pulling my head
back. “We should go before we’re late. Now that he knows, we can’t
let my dad think the reason we’re running behind is anything more
than car trouble.”

Nodding, David released me, and I headed to
the bathroom to pull my hair up before grabbing my jacket, keys,
gun, and badge. “Ready?” he asked, holding the front door open for
me, and I walked through, my stomach flipping with excited
butterflies.

“Let’s do this.”

W
hen we arrived at
the District 1 precinct, there were several officers outside who
instantly noticed us. They watched as we walked from the lot toward
the precinct side by side, but they didn’t say anything other than
a quick “good morning” to us both before snuffing out their
cigarettes and following us inside.

The minute we stepped off the elevator and
made our way for our desks, Dad noticed too. “Leighton, can I see
you in my office, please?”

I glanced warily at David across our desks
before addressing our captain. “Yes, sir. Right away.”

Once inside his office, Dad sat at his desk,
and I closed his door behind me. “Have a seat,” he offered, and I
obeyed, sitting directly across from him with perfect posture
brought on by a bout of sudden nervousness.

Now that we were alone, though, he went back
to being my dad, and offered me a smile. “How are you today?” he
asked, concern lacing his even tone.

For a brief moment, I considered omitting
some of the truth, but he’d always been able to see through
me—which was why I shouldn’t have been so surprised to find out
that he knew about David and me prior to last night. I took a deep
breath and shrugged. “Better, but still a little rattled.”

“I suspected as much,” he said
empathetically, folding his hands atop his desk. “Samuels told me
that Nick showed up and confronted you.”