“What?”
“Being a cop.”
I pursed my lips and shrugged. “It’s a lot like other jobs, in some ways,” I said. “But in others…”
He cocked his head, really listening. He had his hands folded across his chest. With the lightning illuminating him from behind, he looked like a superhero.
“Get into bed and I’ll tell you.”
BOOM!
Thunder ripped the air between us, driving us both under the sheets of the big bed. Whether it was for warmth, or comfort, or security fr
om the storm… our hands and bodies somehow found one another.
“Fuck,” I swore. “That was loud.”
“Sure was.”
We propped our elbows on our pillows, facing each other in the darkness. It felt like a sexy sleepover. The rain was so loud now, our faces were drifting closer in order to hear.
“You have a king-sized bed,” I noted. “You all do.”
“All of us, eh?” he replied. “And how do you know that?”
Fuck.
“I’ve seen the other guys’ doors open,” I lied.
“Uh huh.”
“I have.”
“We’re big guys,” he shrugged. “These are big rooms.”
“Maybe,” I allowed.
“We like to stretch out. We have long bodies. We work hard.”
Another streak of lightning illuminated two penetrating hazel irises. I got the sense they were burning into me, stripping away the nonsense.
“Seriously, how did you know I was a police officer?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Well for one, you don’t take anyone’s shit,” he said. “You’re tough. Authoritative. You get things done. Plus you curse like a truck driver,” Roderick smirked. “Sometimes, anyway.”
I still couldn’t believe it. I lay there staring at him, my mouth slightly open.
“Up north somewhere, am I right?”
I tried to keep cool, to not stiffen. Again I nodded.
“Whereabouts?”
My silence was drowned out by the alarms going off inside my head. I didn’t know what to do, what to say.
“Listen, your secret’s safe with me,” he said. “But looking at it from the right angle, it was pretty obvious. You were either a cop or a contractor. And judging by how much we had to teach you in the beginning—”
The flash of lightning was so bright it stopped everything. It was followed by three or four more flashes, all happening in the same instant, lighting up the old bedroom as bright as broad daylight.