Off Duty (Off #7) (3 page)

“I’m not
exactly sure what to say,” I tell her truthfully. “It’s
a little surreal running into you here… in New Orleans of all
places.”

“I’ve
been here for nine years,” she says. “Transferred my
sophomore year from Columbia to Tulane. Did both my undergrad and
medical school here.”

I blink at her in
surprise because Holly had her life all mapped out when we were in
high school. She was going to go to Columbia and then follow in her
father’s footsteps to be a cardiovascular surgeon. She was
going to join his practice where they’d work side by side to
save people together.

“Your plans
changed a little,” I comment.

“Just a
little,” she says with a wry smile. “But what about you?
What are you doing here?”

“Just visiting
my sister for my vacation. I work for the New York City Fire
Department in Brooklyn.”

“Denise,”
Holly says with delight at the mention of my sister. “How is
she? She was always so nice to me.”

“She’s
good. Fantastic actually,” I say, and it starts to feel like
old times again in the way we are lapsing into easy talk.

“And Sam,”
Holly gushes. “God, he’s adorable. What’s your wife
do?”

“We’re
divorced,” I tell her, not feeling an ounce of awkwardness that
Holly is asking about my ex. It didn’t seem solicitous, just
curious in a friendly way. “Just about a year after Sam was
born. But we’ve maintained a good friendship. She’s a
teacher.”

Holly doesn’t
say anything for a moment, cutting her gaze down to the floor and
back. When she looks back up at me, her eyes are apologetic. “I’m
really sorry, Tim. For everything. Just… I feel terrible and
my father was just horrid… is horrid… and if I could go
back—”

I cut her off.
“Holly… it’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t
it?” she says bitterly. “I didn’t fight for us. I
didn’t stand up for you. At least… not until it was too
late.”

The melancholy tone
of her voice causes the hair to stand up on my arms. “What do
you mean, ‘not until it was too late’?” I ask her,
my hand automatically coming out to grasp onto hers.

She squeezes my
fingers. “My father and I—”

The door to the
office opens abruptly and Holly drops my hand, leaning sideways to
look past me. Amy has Sam by the hand, his other arm in a sling.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I have Sam all ready to go.”

I smile at Amy, who
hands me the discharge paperwork and turns to leave. I squat down in
front of Sam. “How you feeling, buddy?”

“Fine,”
he says with a coy smile, his eyes cutting back and forth between
Holly and me.

“Good,”
I say as I stand up. “Let’s get you home.”

Sam turns toward the
door, but I hold him back with a hand on his shoulder. My head turns
back to Holly. “When is your next night off?”

Her eyebrows rise in
surprise. “Um… I have the next two days off, and then I
pull a double.”

“Dinner
tomorrow night?” I ask her. “We can catch up and you can
tell me about your father.”

“Okay,”
she says with a smile, her eyes round and warm as they rest upon me.

“Okay,”
I tell her and return the smile.

Holly

My doorbell chimes,
and my nerves fire up hard. Giving a last fluff of my hair in the
mirror, I look at myself sternly and mutter, “Tim is just a
friend. This is going to be a nice, friendly dinner where we catch up
and nothing more.”

My reflection sneers
back at me. “Yeah, right. You’re just as attracted to him
as you were in high school. You’re still in love with him for
that matter. Just give in, baby. Your fate is sealed.”

I stick my tongue
out at myself and turn off the bathroom light. The doorbell chimes
again so I hurry my pace to my front door, take a deep breath, and
open it.

And holy hell…
men shouldn’t be allowed to be that gorgeous. Tim shouldn’t
be allowed to be that gorgeous, because it makes me squirm and itch.
He’s six feet of solid muscle, something I didn’t
appreciate the other day in the hospital. He’s wearing a dark
gray t-shirt that’s molded to his chest and abdomen with
well-fit, dark jeans. His arms and shoulders are ripped, and he
clearly has continued his stringent workouts that he followed in high
school. His right arm is covered in a sleeve of tattoos, the detail
of which I can’t see easily because of his dark skin.

It’s not lost
on me, or Tim, that I’m perusing his body and when my eyes
finally drag up to meet his, those amber irises are looking at me
intently with just a slight quirk to his lips in amusement. Then Tim
gives it back to me, slowly raking his gaze down my body. I’m
pleased with my choice to go with a peach-colored blouse that hangs
off one shoulder and a white denim skirt that showcases my legs. I
left my hair long and loose, because I could never forget the way Tim
constantly used to run his fingers through it.

“You look
beautiful,” Tim says, his voice husky.

“You do too,”
I whisper, and with that mutual acknowledgment that our attraction
for each other still exists, an electric current seems to sizzle
between us.

“Our dinner
reservations are in fifteen minutes,” he murmurs while his eyes
do another pass down my body. “You ready?”

I swallow hard and,
before I can talk myself out of it, I say, “Or… we could
just stay here… I’m sure I can whip something up or we
can order a pizza.”

Tim reaches both
arms up and grasps the edges of the door casing. He leans his upper
body in closer to me and murmurs, “If I step foot in this
house—right now—you know dinner is the last thing either
of us are going to be thinking about.”

“And we need
to talk,” I finish his thought.

“We need to
talk,” he agrees. When he holds his hand out to me, I place
mine in his, immediately reconnecting to his warmth and security.

***

Tim takes me to a
creole restaurant I suggested that’s not too far from my house.
We decide to just order several appetizers and over charbroiled
oysters, fried green tomatoes, and crab cakes, I ask Tim to update me
on his life since we graduated high school.

I was surprised over
his career path. The Tim Davis I knew and loved had his heart set on
college so he could pursue a law degree. I was stunned that he
dropped out after his sophomore year at Syracuse and chose to become
a firefighter instead. It becomes quickly apparent to me that this is
what he was supposed to do with his life, because the joy and passion
when he talks about his job is deeply touching to me.

“So, what
happened to Columbia?” he asks as he cuts a fried green tomato
in half, putting a piece on my plate and take the other for himself.
“You said you transferred to Tulane the other day.”

I nod, using a knife
and fork to cut my slice into equal bites. This gives me the excuse
to look at my food instead of at him. “Yeah… um, my
father and I sort of had a falling out over what he did.”

I take a peek at
Tim. He’s gone still, his eyes dark with interest. He sets his
silverware down and rests his elbows on the table, steepling his
hands before his face. “What happened?”

Setting my own
silverware down, I clear my throat. “I could never reconcile
what he did to you. The terrible things he said to you. I tried to
argue with him and for the first time in my life, my father hit me.
It was more like an open-handed slap across my face, but he called me
a dirty whore for being with a black man.”

“Jesus fucking
Christ,” Tim growls.

I hold up a hand to
stop him. “He tried to make me feel dirty for loving you, but I
just couldn’t. There was nothing wrong with it. It was so
right. I was so sure of my feelings for you.”

“Yet you broke
up with me,” he says quietly, and I don’t miss the tiny
bit of bitterness in his voice.

I nod, lowering my
eyes in shame. “He made me. Threatened to kick me out of the
house after graduation with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

“Fuck me,”
Tim mutters, but I don’t dare look back up at him.

“I was scared,
Tim. I had my whole life mapped out… college, medical school,
a career helping people. And here I was, on the verge of being
homeless and penniless.”

“Holly,”
Tim whispers, but I still won’t look at him.

“I don’t
know if he meant good on his threat, but I was too afraid to stand up
to him. I was too weak. I chose to let you go instead.”

Tim is utterly
silent. Although those were some really hard words to get out, I feel
a weight lifting from my shoulders now that he knows the whole truth.
I finally dare a glance at him, and I’m stunned to see sympathy
swimming in his beautiful eyes.

“Oh, baby,”
he murmurs, reaching a hand across the table to take mine.

“I’m so
sorry,” I tell him, my voice quavering with emotion. “I’m
so sorry that I couldn’t be stronger.”

Tim’s fingers
squeeze hard against mine. “No,” he says harshly. “It’s
not your fault. You were fucking eighteen years old and scared out of
your mind. You did what you had to do, and if that meant cutting me
loose, then you had to do that to keep yourself secure.”

“I don’t
deserve that from you,” I choke out.

“Don’t,
Holly,” he tells me firmly. “You need to let it go. You
did nothing wrong. You hear me? You. Did. Nothing. Wrong.”

I nod, not really
accepting what he’s saying, but no longer having the strength
to argue against his forgiveness.

“How did you
end up in New Orleans?” Tim asks as he gives me a final squeeze
and releases my hand. He then nods to my plate and adds on, “Eat.”

I take the small
reprieve he gives me in the heavy conversation and pick at a crab
cake. “My relationship with my father was broken. I took his
roof that summer and then his tuition money, but the day he kicked
you out of our house… I broke emotional ties with him. I spent
my freshman year at Columbia applying for scholarships to other
universities so I could get out from his hold completely. I got
several offers, but Tulane was the furthest away from New York. I
left after my freshman year and never looked back.”

“You cut ties
with your father?” Tim asks incredulously.

“He was my
hero, Tim,” I defend my actions. “And then he completely
violated my trust in him. And I’m sorry… but I just
can’t accept his views. They aren’t me. He made me feel
bad for having feelings for you, and I just couldn’t forgive
it.”

“I don’t
know what to say,” he murmurs, taking a sip of the wine we had
ordered.

“I still talk
to my parents, but it’s stilted… impersonal. I think
I’ve been back home maybe three times in the past nine years.
My mother still pretends like we’re a family, but we’re
not. Haven’t been for ten years.”

“I’m
sorry,” Tim says.

I give him a wry
smile. “Nothing for you to be sorry about.”

“There is,”
he says quietly. “I’m sorry for thinking the worst about
you for so long. I just assumed that you prescribed to your father’s
way of thinking. That maybe I was just a novelty to you… rich,
white chick dating the ruggedly handsome, black football player.”

I snicker over the
imagery, but then I turn serious. I hope he understands when I say,
“I loved you, Tim. You were my first love. It was true. My
father never changed that. He just made it impossible for me to see
it through.”

The muscles in Tim’s
throat work as he swallows hard. His eyes are deep pools of sadness
and lost time. “What am I going to do with you?” he
murmurs.

I cut my gaze over
to our waiter, who is hovering nearby. With a motion of my wrist, I
silently ask for our check. Picking up my napkin from my lap, I dab
at my mouth and then lay it across my plate. “How about taking
me home? I’m sure you can figure out something after that.”

Tim’s eyes
flash hot… sparking with intensity as he stares at me across
the table. His lips curve up in a wicked grin. “I think I can
come up with something.”

Tim

The short drive back
to Holly’s house is noticeably quiet. I expect it’s
because both of our minds are preoccupied with what’s to come.

I can’t deny
it… from the moment I laid eyes on Holly in the emergency room
the other day, I was reminded of how deeply attracted I am to this
woman on a physical level. Despite the pain she had caused me, my
cock was still very much interested in her.

After our
conversation tonight… and the things I’ve learned?

My mind is on
absolute overdrive trying to make sense of it all. Because now, I
have been cleared to act on that attraction, and clearly, Holly wants
the same thing. Before too long, I’m going to be sunk into that
beauty.

But this is now more
than just physical attraction, something Holly and I never ran short
of when we were together in high school. Now old feelings have been
revived, and every bit of pain and anger is gone. All I feel now is
warmth and care toward her as well as tremendous sympathy for what
she went through. I admire her bravery in standing up to her old man
and for holding true to her values. This all presses down upon me,
and I have to wonder what that bitch fate has in mind for us going
forward.

For the immediate
future, the one thing I do know is that I’m going to fuck Holly
like she’s never had it before. I was a boy then… but
I’m a man now. I’ve learned a thing or two since we lost
our virginity to each other in the back seat of my mom’s old
Buick Skylark.

I park the car in
Holly’s driveway and follow her silently up to her front porch.
Her house is modest for a doctor, but Holly never struck me as one
that wanted wasted extravagance. Even though she grew up in wealth,
she was never the type of girl that was stuck on trends or
possessions, which is something that made me more comfortable with
her, because I absolutely didn’t come from wealth.