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“Let us worry about that, P.” Beam told him.
“Why do you call everyone that?” Darby asked.
“You’re older than me, are you not?” Beam paused his typing to look at Darby. “I’m in my late twenties. It seems to me you’re in your mid to late thirties or life has been extremely hard on you.”
Darby frowned. “Thirty-eight.”
“Then the proper way to address you is, P.” Beam went back to what he was doing.
“What would I call you?” Darby asked.
“Nong.” Beam seemed bored with the conversation.
I lounged in the chair and stretched my arms along the back of the sofa. In that moment, I played over what we needed to do in my head.
It didn’t take long to affirm we needed to go to the crime scene.
“P’Taz, have you gone to the crime scene yet?” I called.
She winced, cleared her throat then shook her head. “Haven’t gotten around to it.”
“Okay.” I stood. “No time like the present. Beam, stay here with him. P’Taz, you’re with me.”
Taz said nothing.
Even after I stopped to give Beam instructions and send off an email to Tex.
Even while I put the address into the GPS.
When we were finally in my rental, she shifted in her seat. I could feel the heat of her stare at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You haven’t called me P’Taz in a while.”
“I’ve been rude.” I explained. “I allowed myself to become too familiar. I’m rectifying that. You know? Kinda like hitting reset.”
“Was I complaining about you being familiar with me?”
“No—but this has nothing to do with you.” I explained. “It’s for my own peace of mind.”
She faced front again.
I could hear the deepness of the frustrated breath she inhaled then exhaled.
“Look, I was an ass.” Taz told me. “I should have told you I was leaving—even if not where I was leaving to. But this was my battle. I didn’t want to drag anyone else into it. Darby is a moron. He leaps before he thinks, and I’ve spent almost my entire life bailing him out of situations like this.”
“You’ve known him a while then, P?”
“Would you stop with the whole P?” Taz snapped. “Now, you’re just being a wanker and I—”
Maybe—but I had to start pulling back. I wasn’t paying attention and during that time I’d fallen for her.
There was no planet, no dimension, no world where I be her type, where she’d want me.
She wouldn’t, especially when she found out the things I’d wanted to do to her.
They were the kind of things a good woman would run from.