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“It sucks,” I said She tilted her head to look atwent doith your sister, that sucks But you tried to help her, tried to save her, and that’s what you should focus on”

She made a noise low in her throat and shoved up off the couch She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at h What time do you want to head out tomorrow?”

The quick change in conversation forced , so when I get back”

“Are you actually going to come back after your shift tomorrow?”

So one unnoticed “Yes I’ll try and be here before five You really do need sos up after we had been cahtly better, but no girl alive sees or the sa with up top Brysen’s stuff covered her up h that I didn’t get an eyeful every time I looked at her

She linked her fingers together and lifted her arms up over her head in a way that pulled the hem of her tank top up over the indent of her belly button and lifted the edge of her tiny shorts so high I didn’t have to use ination to envision what all the secret, soft parts of her looked like Like I needed anyabout her and sex when my mind and attention should be anywhere else

“I can cover it all up, it’s not going to change the fact that you want ry about it”

She twirled on her foot and flounced back up the stairs If there had been a single door in the loft I knew she would have slammed it to make her point

She was right I did want her I had wanted her from the second she came into my precinct and admitted to me that she had solicited Novak for murder I wanted her when she tearfully told me about her part in Dovie’s abduction I wanted her when the ht I would see her again And yes, I wanted her now in the middle of this charade that had life and death woven into the fabric of it I wasn’t angry that I wanted her, lusted after her She was beautiful, slick, and all kinds of street-smart She looked at me like she understood what ainst the entire city le day and that essentially made me a loser, but she didn’t seem to see that There were a lot of reasons to want her, to find her attractive and ultimately irresistible

There was more than one major reason that every tiuilt and shame roared to life inside of me Of course I had an issue with the fact that she was an ad to protect the city fro to use one bad guy to get rid of another bad guy, she hadn’t done it by legal means But there was also the fact that the monsters of my past, my burden of beasts that I kept buried so deep and dark inside of et they were there, woke up and started to screa theainst the skin of the man I tried so hard to be

Being infatuated with a wo the law into her own hands would be s in a box there was going to be nothing left of ainst my inner animal, and it would chew me alive from the inside out and I would be just like the rest of the people lost and alone, just waiting for the city to claim them I couldn’t let that happen