“What are you doing here, Rosie?” he sighed, crossing his arms. He looked me up and down, and that time really looked. He couldn’t really look in public. Or that’s what I told myself. Not that he wouldn’t. Or didn’t want to. That truth would make me all the more pathetic.
I entertained the idea that now that it was just us, with no one to hide from, real hunger danced in his gaze.
But then it was gone.
Maybe with just us, there was so much more to hide from.
“How’d you get in?”
I smirked, a good ploy to distract from my hurt. “The front door was open.”
Luke frowned. “It was not.”
I shrugged. “It is now.”
“Jesus, Rosie, you broke in?”
I looked around. “You keep mentioning this guy. Can I just not see him or something?”
“This isn’t a joke, Rosie,” he clipped. “You broke into a police station.” He looked at me again, but it wasn’t the Luke look. This was the Deputy Luke look. “You’re drunk.”
I eyed him. “It’s the middle of the night and I broke into a police station. You think I’d do that sober?”
He looked at me for a long time. “How did you get here?”
That was not the question I expected him to ask. I expected a lecture about the laws I’d broken, not to do it again, yada yada yada.
Knowing that telling him I drove would not be a good idea, I shrugged. “Flew in on my broomstick.”
Luke’s glare deepened to the point that one could possibly call it pure fury. “You fucking drove?” he roared, not buying the broomstick thing.
That time he forgot the shield between us and rounded the desk.
His hands were biting into my shoulders and he shook me a little.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” he shouted. Right in my face. No more Mister Nice Deputy. No more Mister Deputy at all.
This was Luke, pure and simple.
But not simple.
Because this was the rage of that night he’d wrenched the guy out of my car. The rage that didn’t make sense. Because rage like that was only roused when you cared about someone. A lot.
“Most of the time!” I yelled back, deciding that I was a little raging too.
Luke didn’t let go of my shoulders with my returning shout. Instead he shook me again, just on the edge of violently. “Driving fucking drunk is stupid and dangerous, Rosie. Fuck. Don’t you have people to drive you home? The one thing your brother does that I agree with is that he doesn’t let you drive drunk, and he even failed at that,” he seethed.
I narrowed my eyes. “Let’s get one thing clear, buddy. No one lets me do anything, I do what I want.”
“Including wrapping your car around a fucking pole and then making me come and find your dead fucking body?” he hissed.
“My car is in the parking lot, unharmed. And I’m very much alive, as you can tell,” I snapped.
My gaze was pointed at his hands which were bordering on painful. His eyes followed but his grip didn’t loosen.
“Yeah, you’re alive,” he said. “For now. You keep pushing it, Rosie. The boundaries. The rules. One day, they’re gonna push back. And I don’t want to ever fucking see that day.”
I blinked at him. “And why is that, Luke?” I whispered. “Why is it that you’re so passionate about my well-being when I’m just another dirty outlaw?”
He flinched at my words, the quiet tone that screamed loud, too loud, with my emotions. Alcohol made me honest. Too honest.
He stayed silent and still for a moment until he stepped back, erected the shield between us once more. “You’re not dirty,” he murmured. “I never have and never will think that.”
I eyed him. “You sure about that?”
He eyed me right back. “Never been more sure about anything in my life.”
I swallowed whatever that sentence did to my emotions. “Apart from your determination to ruin my family, right? You’re pretty sure about that.”
Luke’s face darkened. “Rosie,” he warned. “We can’t get into this. You shouldn’t be here.”
I stepped forward, backing him into his desk. “But I am here,” I said, confidence or stupidity fueling me. “I’m here, and no one else is, and I’m not going anywhere until—”
“Until what, Rosie?” His voice was ice.
I stuttered on his response, on his demand of an explanation, an uttering of what had been, for years, unmentioned.
On my side, at least.
Maybe it was all on my side.
I lost all my bravado, my confidence, sobering in the worst way, shrinking down into a vulnerable girl who didn’t want anything more than him, the guy, to love her.
“You know what,” I whispered, unable to say anything else. Anything else would be too risky, to real to reveal, even without my few inhibitions.
Luke looked at me for a long while, as if reading the unsaid words, like I’d written them in the air. “You want me because I’m the one thing you can’t have, Rosie. It’s not real,” he said, not unkindly.