To Love a Cop (21 page)

Jake was listening.

“A handgun is a deadly weapon. Your dad carried a Glock that didn’t even have a safety. It didn’t allow for an ‘oh, oops,’ for you to learn a lesson. He didn’t mean anything bad to happen, either, but he was the adult. A law enforcement officer, no less. He screwed up. It doesn’t mean you can’t love him, that he wasn’t a good man. But that one terrible thing was his fault.”

Tears filled those brown eyes. “I never meant...”

“I know you didn’t.” Ethan pulled him into an embrace. As the boy sobbed against him, he knew he was crying, too.

“If I hadn’t done that, he’d be alive!” Jake wailed.

Damn you, Matt, wherever you are.

“Jake.” Ethan gave him a small shake. “Stop. Listen.”

The shudders and sobs slowed, and finally Jake pulled back and swiped furiously at his cheeks.

“Two things. Let’s change what you just said. If your dad had kept his gun locked up so you never got your hands on it, he’d still be alive.
He
made the mistake, not you.” Man, he hoped this was sinking in.

Jake stared at him, seemingly mesmerized, eyes red, wet and swollen.

“The other possibility is, it happened, and your dad lived with the consequences. They would have been bad. Probably he’d have lost his job. From what your mom says, he was pretty devastated by the way his parents and brothers and sisters turned their backs on him. But he still had you and your mom. Again,
he
made a choice. You didn’t make it for him. If you could have, if he’d asked you, you would have begged him to stay around, wouldn’t you?”

Jake’s teeth chattered, but he nodded.

“You are not to blame, Jake. Not for any of it. I know it’s hard to convince yourself, but I’m also sure your mother has told you the same thing.”

He kept nodding, as if he couldn’t stop.

“That’s because it’s true. Not because she wants to protect you from the knowledge that you did something bad. You didn’t. The mistake was your father’s. Only his. Do you hear me?”

Tears ran freely down Jake’s lean face, so like his father’s. “I wish—” he licked away tears “—he hadn’t.”

“Yeah.” Damn. Ethan grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and wiped his own eyes and face. “I wish he hadn’t, too.”

Except then he’d never have met Laura and Jake, or, if he had, the circumstances would have been completely different. If he’d felt that jolt of attraction, of recognition, the first time Laura smiled at him, he’d have had to pretend to himself he hadn’t. He would never have had the hope of making these two his family.

But seeing the depth of misery on this boy’s face, he knew if he could wipe out that one horrifically stupid thing Matt Vennetti had done, he would. Of course he would. He’d give Jake back his father, Laura back her husband, Matt the life and job he’d loved.

He knew something else: if Matt had truly loved his wife and son, he’d want them to get past this. He’d want someone to take care of them, love them. He’d be pissed as hell at his family, not to mention at himself.

Ethan blinked, realizing suddenly that some of the moisture he was feeling wasn’t tears. He looked up, and his face was bathed with cool drizzle.

He wrapped a long arm around Jake’s neck, gave him a quick, hard hug, and said, “I think we just ran out of luck. What say we go in? I’ll run interference with your mom if you want to go take a shower and change into dry clothes.”

“Oh.” Exposing a skinny, pale torso, the kid imitated him and used his shirt to scrub his face. “Yeah. Okay. I don’t want Mom to see me.”

“I figured.” Ethan smiled ruefully as they started for the front door. “I didn’t mean this to get so heavy. But I want you to think about what I said, okay? I’m telling you the truth. None of it was your fault.”

“Except for sneaking out and unlocking your glove compartment so I could see your gun,” Jake said as if by rote.

“
Hold
my gun.
Seeing
implies no touching.”

Jake made a face at him. “Yeah, yeah.”

Ethan laughed and lightly cuffed him at the exact moment he heard the sliding door open. “Uh-oh. Better run.”

Looking alarmed, Jake fled.

* * *

L
AURA GOT ONE
good glimpse of her son’s distraught, tearstained face before he rushed past her and into his bedroom. That look was enough to rouse the mama bear in her.

She advanced toward Ethan, not caring that her hair was probably hanging in wet strings and she’d splattered paint on her face. “What did you say to him?” she hissed, in a voice she hoped Jake wouldn’t hear through his bedroom door.

The lingering laughter on Ethan’s face vanished; his expression shut down faster than she’d known to be possible. After a minute, he said, “Nice assumption.”

“You were laughing at him.”

He stared at her for the longest time, something moving through his eyes she didn’t understand.

And then he shook his head, his lip curling. “I’m outta here.” Just like that, he turned and headed toward the front door.

“What do you mean, you’re
out
of here?” On a burst of alarm—
oh, no, what did I do?
—Laura chased after him.

“You heard me.” He paused with the door opened and looked at her one more time. “Tell Jake he can call me anytime. Assuming you wouldn’t rather he not see me or talk to me.” His laugh felt as if it was stripping skin from her flesh. “And to think I wondered why Matt’s friends in the department weren’t there for you.”

And then he was gone, the door closing sharply in her face.

Frozen in shock, Laura gaped at it.

“What did you
do
?” her son cried, behind her.

Her teeth wanted to chatter. She clenched them, hearing the deep-throated engine start out on the street, the sound receding a moment later. Not fast—Ethan was too safety-conscious, too self-controlled, to speed no matter how angry he was.

Jake barreled into her, knocking her aside. “Get out of my way! I have to talk to him!” His voice was thick with tears.

“He’s gone,” Laura heard herself say in a stunned voice.

He wrenched open the door nonetheless to look out at the street, then spun to fix her with an agitated, accusing stare. “Why would you do that?”

She felt remote, as if she were dying but still had a need to understand what was happening.

“I saw your face. You’ve been sobbing. He had to have said something.”

“He said none of it was my fault!” Jake yelled. “That it was Dad’s! And I cried, okay? Because I always think it was
me
, that I killed Marco and Dad, too. Only I could tell Ethan meant what he said, that he really thinks it wasn’t me.”

A sound escaped her throat. It might have been a whimper.

“And now he’s gone and he won’t come back and it’s
your
fault!” Anger and bewilderment apparent, he turned and ran for his room again. When the door slammed, she flinched.

She retreated a step, and when she felt the wall at her back, she slid down it until she was sitting, knees drawn up, arms wrapping them. As small as she could become. As small as she felt inside.

Despair poured through her, and she didn’t even try to block it. Her mind stayed blank for a very long time.

When thoughts finally started edging into it, she could only catch sidelong peeks at them before they whisked out of sight.

Even as she fell in love with him, a gentle, patient, strong man, she had also held him responsible for everything she associated with guns: hideous violence, terror, gut-wrenching grief she hadn’t thought she’d survive.

Her stunned self thought,
I
knew
he wouldn’t say anything hurtful to Jake. I did. So why—?

Because even as he’d become her refuge, even though she had no reason to think he’d ever actually shot anyone, he also represented everything she had rejected. Men who carried guns. Who might
someday
use them. Who tempted Jake to become something she feared.

He’d found Jake at the gun show and cared enough to bring him home and talk to her. But he’d been at the gun show in the first place.

I never asked him why.

Out of consideration for her, he never again carried a weapon into her house—but she knew it was there just outside in his vehicle, available for him to put it back on his hip the minute he left her house. She was always conscious of its existence.

He’s like Matt.

But her conscious self knew he wasn’t. They did the same job. That’s where the resemblance ended.

You
think
that’s where it ends
, whispered the voice in her head that represented all her fears.

She saw that last expression on his face, shock, disbelief, hurt and bone-deep anger, and knew how bad she’d blown it. And she couldn’t even lie to herself and believe she’d said one hateful thing in a burst of fear for Jake. No. She’d spent the week working herself up to being convinced Ethan wasn’t good for Jake.

Or me.

When the truth was, despite all Jake was going through right now, Ethan might be his salvation. No one but Laura had ever been as good to him, and there were things she, a woman and his mother, couldn’t be to a boy on the cusp of adolescence. Ethan had been exactly what Jake needed, at a time he needed him most.

And I just drove him away.

The most pathetic part of all was the knowledge that followed: she was curled in a fetal position on the floor not because she’d driven away the man who could be her son’s salvation, but because she’d driven away the man
she
needed.
The man I’m falling in love with.

Except...he scared her, too, and she’d spent too long attuned to the frightened part of her who could not survive the same kind of agony again. Who thought it was better to hide than to open herself up to life and the risk and possibility of loss that implied.

She listened to the silence in the house and thought drearily,
I ought to go talk to Jake
, but didn’t have it in herself, not yet.

And then she thought,
It’s not Jake I need to talk to
, but wondered if Ethan would even open his door to her.

* * *

E
THAN DID, BUT
only because she’d called and begged.

Goddammit, he didn’t want to see her right now. Not yet, if ever again. He was too raw, more devastated than he’d been by the time he and Erin split up.

He snorted at the thought, pacing the limited confines of his living room. It wasn’t like what Laura said should have come as a shock. He’d known she was pulling back, seen accusation in her eyes.
He
was synonymous with all the evil guns represented to her, and, goddamn it, he would never apologize to anyone for what he did for a living.

“Shit,” he said aloud, knowing she’d be there any minute and wishing he hadn’t answered when she called and asked timidly if she could come over to talk to him.

He’d succumbed because he so hated hearing that timidity, the diminishment of a voice that was usually confident. He’d have felt like an asshole if he’d said, “Sorry, don’t want to talk to you.” So he’d reluctantly given her his address and said he’d be there. Now he was on edge, his nerves sensitized as he waited.

The knock, when it came, was timid, too.

Ethan groaned, scrubbed a hand through his hair and went to let her in.

She’d showered and changed clothes since he saw her, although at the sight of flecks of paint in her hair he felt a flicker of something that would have been amusement and tenderness if he hadn’t been so mad and hurt.

She’d missed a spot of white paint just below her ear, too.

Jaw tight, he stepped back. Her gaze skated over his face, and then she sidled past him.

Ethan closed the door and faced her, arms crossed and, he suspected, expression hard.

Laura rushed into her speech. “‘I’m sorry’ may not be good enough, but I have to say it anyway.”

He shook his head. “It’s not even the point. The truth is you’ve painted me with the same brush as your husband. I get it. I hoped we could get past that, but we can’t. I’m especially sorry for Jake’s sake—”

“Please!” she cried, her eyes huge and luminous. “Please listen.”

Ethan huffed out a breath. Why was she putting them through this?

Wringing her hands, she took whatever sound had come out for assent. “I was getting past it. I was.” She swallowed. “Until...I got scared. That’s all. Do you know what it was like, hearing that gunshot and running into the house thinking it’s got to be okay because nobody screamed or is crying or anything, only that was because Marco was dead and
couldn’t
scream and Jake was catatonic?”

Oh, hell. Yes. He’d seen enough trauma in his years on the job to be able to imagine that scene all too vividly. The dead little boy, and the shocked one standing over him, his hands sagging as he held on to a huge heavy weapon that he hadn’t understood.

Ethan took a step closer to her.

“And then—” She faltered, bit her lip. “And then Matt.”

In her brief pause, all Ethan’s anger evaporated.

“I was so angry, so hurt, so lost.” All the pain she’d felt was in a voice that was too soft, as if she had rolled over to expose her underbelly. “How could I do it all by myself? Only I did.” She let out something like a sob, although her eyes remained dry. “I thought we were all right, except that day you showed up with Jake, I had to face the fact that we weren’t. That I’d failed.”

“Laura.” Her name was all he could force through a throat that had closed.

“You gave me hope. Not just for Jake’s sake. For mine. I have trusted you. I have. Except...getting past my fears is
hard
.” Tears that still hadn’t fallen filled her voice. “You can’t know what it’s like. I need you...I need you to understand that sometimes my doubts get to me. I haven’t seen Jake’s face look like that since he was a little boy, and everything rushed over me. And...and...”

“Damn it, Laura.” He took the last step needed to close the distance between them, and gathered her into his arms. For a long moment, she stayed stiff. “You don’t have to do this,” he said hoarsely. “I do understand. You don’t have to grovel. I got my feelings hurt, and I lashed out.
I
was the jackass.”