Dom and I had been inseparable since we were five years old. There had never been a time when he didn’t want me around. There had never been a single moment in our friendship where I was ever in his way, and his entire family thought of me as one of their own. I think that made what had happened weigh even more heavily on my shoulders.

I heard Dom sigh and then he swore. His deep voice sounded strained as he gently scolded me. “Get your cute ass here, Royal. I’ve let you sulk for two goddamn weeks. Get over it. Shit happens and it’s gonna keep happening because that’s what being a cop is about. I’m in a fucking cast from my ankle to my junk. I have a broken shoulder and I can’t breathe without it feeling like I’m drinking acid. I look and feel like hammered dog shit, and my best friend hasn’t been around for any of it. Can you maybe knock it off now?” I couldn’t stop the tears that were starting to leak out of my eyes. I used a knuckle to swipe at them as I climbed to my feet. His next words stabbed through me like I was sure he intended for them to do. “I need you here, girly.”

We had always needed each other, both in our day-to-day lives and on the job. That was why I felt so bad. It was why I couldn’t get my head around how badly I had let him down. I was supposed to have his back like he had always had mine, and instead I had almost gotten him killed.

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up the phone after he barked at me that it was about time, and rushed around my apartment trying to make myself look presentable. After a hard night of drinking I never exactly looked great, but throw in a sleepless night and yet another rejection from an outrageously sexy, southern bartender and I probably could match Dom in the looking-like-crap department. I had dark shadows under each eye, I was way paler than normal, fine red veins threaded through the white in each eye, and I had really ugly bruises surrounding each of my wrists, which made shame and regret battle the guilt for the top spot in the flood of emotions I was choking on.

I knew better, I really did. I wasn’t the type to go out and lose control. I rarely drank, and when I did I always acted responsibly because I had a big picture to think about. Only lately that big picture had narrowed to tunnel vision and all I could see was Dom getting hit by bullet after bullet and falling over the edge of the fire escape on the side of the building. When I wasn’t seeing that, I was seeing the wife of the officer that hadn’t survived the shootout collapsing in the hall of the ER as another officer told her that her husband hadn’t made it. If that wasn’t enough to eat at my soul, the memory of my lieutenant telling me I had to turn in my gun and badge and go on administrative leave while the department conducted an investigation danced around in my head every second of every day.

In order to shake some of those awful thoughts loose, I was determined to do things I never did, things that made me feel free, so that’s why I was hanging out at the Bar. That’s why I was drinking like a fish, and really that was why I was unabashedly throwing myself at Asa Cross. I had never had to chase a guy. I had never been interested in the kind of guy that oozed charm and trouble the way Asa did. And I most definitely had never been one to mix business and pleasure. I knew Asa was bad news, barely tiptoeing on the right side of the law, and it was a firm rule that I never got involved with anyone that had been in the back of a police cruiser. Well, Asa had not only been in the back of my cruiser, but he had also been in and out of jail since before he was old enough to drive. The guy liked to make up his own rules and he didn’t have a very pretty past. Cops shouldn’t be romantically interested in criminals, even reformed criminals. But I was. In fact I was more than interested, but every time I made a move on him and he turned me down, it made me wonder if he could see the failure that was haunting me. I wondered if that was why he kept saying no.

I mean, I knew what I looked like. I knew that when we stared at each other there was interest and attraction glinting dark in his bronze eyes, and I knew he was the kind of guy that liked a sure thing. I was a sure thing. I needed something that felt good. I was searching desperately for something that would help me forget, even if it was for only a second, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I wanted him. I made it so easy for him to say yes and yet he kept turning the other way. I didn’t understand it, so it only made me feel even more lost and adrift than I already did.

If he really wanted me to find another bar, I would. I only went to the dive he worked at because I wanted him to take me home. I wanted him to pull me across the bar and kiss away all the hurt and ugliness that was filling me up. I knew I was going about it the wrong way, knew that a guy like Asa had no use for someone that enforced the law and tried to keep the peace. Plus it was a long shot considering I had been forced by circumstance to arrest him for assault not too long ago. Asa might think I was pretty, and he might be trying to save me from myself since we had mutual friends, but I seriously doubted he was ever going to be able to look at me the same way I looked at him after I had snapped cuffs around his wrists and dragged him to the police station.

I pulled my hair into a messy ponytail, shoved my feet into a pair of battered motorcycle boots, and hit the front door. I was about to slam it closed behind me when I remembered to grab my keys. I was forever locking myself out of places—my car, my apartment, and even my patrol car on several occasions. It was a bad habit that was a pain in the ass for more than just me, but I couldn’t seem to shake it even after a mishap had almost led to the breakup of my neighbor and his lovely girlfriend.

I dashed back inside, frazzled and frustrated. I scooped the keys up off the spot they lived in by the door and rushed back out. This time the hallway wasn’t empty, and the neighbor’s girlfriend, who also happened to be my one and only female friend on the planet, was exiting their apartment across the hall. Saint was a sweetheart. Soft-spoken and serene, she just had something about her that had instantly called out to me. It was like the chaotic pace and often dangerous parts of my day-to-day died down and mellowed out when I was around her. I had forced her to be my friend even though she had fought me and the friendship at first. Now she was almost as close to me as Dom was, and just as concerned about my recent behavior.

She was dressed in scrubs under her heavy winter coat, so obviously she was on her way to work at the hospital where she was an ER nurse. Her coppery hair, which was several shades more orange in color than mine, was piled on her head in a messy bun and her face was scrubbed clean. Saint was a doll and could work the whole fresh-faced-girl-next-door thing. Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to rock the less-is-more look successfully, so the darkness under my eyes told the entire story of my wild night without me uttering a single word.