“I’m not going anywhere anyway! We’re locked in a room!”
If this was what being worked over in an interrogation room felt like, Julia wasn’t surprised it was so effective. Just the way Max was glaring at her, all dead-eyed and stern, made her want to confess.
“Julia, talk.”
God just do it. Anything to end the unbearable silence.Julia put a finger on her chin. “The night we met, the night we met…I have vague memories of giving you a blowjob, although I’ll be honest, I thought I was hallucinating how big your dick was.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. “What else?”
“You offered to take me home but it didn’t work out, so I got a ride with my friends.”
Who kindly didn’t make fun of me for saying I was leaving with a handsome stranger only to reappear an hour later weeping profusely.
“Anything else?”
“I went home, put on my pajamas and then…” She gasped dramatically. “I went to sleep. Enough details? Or should I turn in a written statement?”
Max scowled. “Didn’t you wonder why I left without saying anything?”
Of course I wondered. I thought about it all the time. I had dreams about you showing up to my house saying you’d been abducted by aliens.
“We only spent a few hours together. It didn’t really bother me.”
Max’s jaw tightened. “Really?”
“No. I went home and wept into a man-shaped pillow, is that what you want to hear?”
Max laid a long finger on her sketchbook and Julia sat bolt upright in her chair. “Don’t do that,” she said, yanking it out of his reach.
Max smirked, the threat implicit.“Talk or I start asking questions about the book.”
“Do you remember when we first saw each other again? At Brenthill, I mean?”
About as well as she remembered sticking a butter knife in the toaster. It was basically the same sensation, after all.
It was her first day on the job and Henrietta was showing her around the building. She thought her name was Julie and kept scowling at her nose stud. They were in the lunchroom inspecting the staff fridge when a guy strode in, grabbing a slice of pizza from the family-sized box on the dining table.
“Yeah, help yourself, Connor,” one of the older cops said.
“Piss off,” he’d replied.
Every fiber of Julia’s body had tensed. The man’s voice was low and deep.Familiar. She’d turned from the expired dairy products and seen black hair, black stubble and shoulders as wide as a yoke. She’d had to bite down to stop herself from hurling onto the linoleum.
Max had stared back at her, pizza frozen halfway to his mouth.“Are you the girl from Brett’s party?”his eyes had seemed to say.
“I am. Are you the guy who rode off on his dumb motorbike and left me there?
“I am. What should we do about that?”
“On three, let’s pretend we don’t know each other. One, two, three…Pretend.”
The unspoken conversation couldn’t have been clearer if they’d hired a stenographer to read it back to them. Julia refocused her attention on the fridge and tried not to visibly shake. She’d been waiting for this moment for years, but when it arrived she was completely unprepared. Max. The guy with the leather jacket. The one she’d sincerely hoped had fallen into a time rift and vanished was at Brenthill. He was a cop and he worked at Brenthill.
Henrietta began introducing her to the men sitting around the dining table. Julia nodded politely, trying to pretend they were all potted plants.
“…and this is Senior Constable Max Connor,” Henrietta concluded with a wide smile.
Senior Constable Max Connor leaned back in his plastic chair.