Page 26 of Foxed Up

Wallace didn't look at me, but his hands tightened slightly on his lap. He nodded, the skin around his eyes crinkling in pain. He accepted the fact of my backup without liking it in the least. "I'll need all the files, so I can read up about the case."

Of course he did. I suppressed a sigh. There was no going back if he was already mentally diving intofiles... I resigned myself to it the best I could, and struggled to commit as many details to my memory as I could, while the captain talked us through the scant case details to date.

Normally, drinking and watching hot dancers in a gay club with shifters would not be any sort of hardship, undercover or not. But my life was anything but normal with Wallace in it now. I'd come out, I'd fallen in love, I'd given my heart to a fox to stomp on. It was all downhill from here, wasn't it?

Now I had to watch him apply for a sex-related job, probably flirting right and left, and endanger his very life with his poor acting skills out of his misplaced attempt at heroism.

Great. This was going to be a real barrel of laughs.

Wallace Avery

I read through the files several times. They held surprisingly few details. A mishmash of shifters coming and going — suspicious things happening, but never quite any evidence of illegal activities. It was the sort of dodgy business where almost certainly something was going on. It was an "entertainment club" involving exotic dancers and expensive drinks, a cover charge, bouncers, and regrettable news articles about stabbings in the parking lot and drunken brawling.

The owner, Dave McCann, was the kind of businessman who always seemed to be on the edges of something shady, but never got caught. The shifters who worked there, legitimately or not, were young, poor, skittish, and very wary of cops. They'd no doubt been coached not to speak to authorities, if there was anything illegal to speak about.

There almost certainly was.

I remembered my experience with Willow. The young fox shifter had been kidnapped while attending a party after school and was a trafficking victim when our precinct found and freed her. It made me sick to my stomach, people snatching a teenager for sex. And I knew it didn't always happen that way or just to shifters. There were other forms of coercion and trafficking and abuse. But it was happening in the shadows all the time, and if I could help stop some of it...well, I had to.

I didn't sleep well that night, which was a good thing. It would be much harder to appear even remotely in character if I looked well-fed and well-rested.

We were supposed to move fast on the operation — in and out, so there was no warning and no complication. The captain didn't outright say so, but it was clear to me he was uneasy about the intradepartmental nature of the plan. He didn't trust others easily, our captain, and I was inclined not to blame him.

Still, if he had no real insights or hints about there being a sieve in the other department (that's cop-speak for a leak; I'm very much up on the lingo these days), then he had no real excuse to question their involvement. But he could and did make the excuse to them that my time was very pressed and it had to happen right away or not at all. So we were going in fresh and hot.

It was clear to me that Jon didn't like it, but he'd given up having much of a say, if he ever had, in my professional life. I couldn't feel the same about what he wanted now that we were no longer boyfriends and almost-mates.

Not that I was doing it in any way to spite him. I didn't have to prove he had no say over what I did; I didn't even feel warm enough for such a defiant gesture. No, this was something I needed to do because it needed to be done, and I was the one who could most easily do it at this point in time.

Inside, about Jon, I felt nothing but cold. I just couldn't seem tofeelright now. If I tried to think about him, about us, I got a cold, sick, dizzy, dread-like feeling, and it never seemed to go anywhere good. I felt ashamed and like a fool for trusting him as much as I had. Not with my body; I'd never been wrong to trust him sexually. It had been good even to be overpowered by him, to let him tie me up and fuck me. It had been something I'd wanted more than once, and sex hadalwaysbeen good with him. No, that trust was always there; physically, we matched just fine.

But I'd gone too far. I'd trusted him with my heart. Jon was not a man I should have trusted with my heart. I'd known how he was. How he said rude and cruel things to keep people from seeing his vulnerable side.

I should be able to accept him as he was. But apparently I couldn't, because I still couldn't feel any differently towards him now that I was back and working with him (trusting him that way, at least). There was nothing to salvage here, nothing to do but try to piece my heart back together and not give it away so quickly next time.

I'd always known I was a bit sensitive, and for as long as I'd known Jon, he'd been adept at getting under my skin with his unpleasant remarks about shifters, and gay people, and basically everything that I was. I should have known it could never work.

Instead, I'd ignored all my experience and settled on my instincts — that the sex was good, that we had a connection, that I could probably trust him, since we fit together so well in so many ways. But that had been the hormones talking, I suppose. Ithadbeen very good sex, no denying that.

There was no point pining about it, just because I'd thought it was going to be like we were...mates. Married. Something serious and permanent and sweet, to be cherished...and even if it was hidden, never mocked or made light of.

I was foolish to take so seriously the overheard words belittling what we had. But...I was me, and he was him. Words mattered. To me, words made the world and held it together, like thread sewn through the fabric of life. To Jon, words could be a smokescreen, a weapon, a way to keep people away and from guessing, from hurting him.

He had hurt me, and I couldn't see him the same way anymore. I wasn't sure I wanted to try.

Going undercover would be a good distraction from my heartache. I hoped I would get over it quickly and completely. I'd never really had my heart broken before. Not like this. I'd had a few crushes, I'd been in love before, and I'd had experiences of being the one not picked, not wanted; but I'd never lost someone that I'd given so much of my trust and heart to. It had been foolish of me to trust so much, to give too much of myself to him.

Perhaps the next time I was in love, I'd look back and scoff at my naiveté. Perhaps looking back what I'd felt for Jon would be just another infatuation. I felt shaken and sick at the thought that I might not even know my own heart, that hormones and feelings could distort so much, so well.

It didn't matter. It didn't. I told myself that again and again as I got ready for the big day. We just weren't suited for one another after all, and the sooner I accepted that and got over this curious blank cold feeling, the better.

If I could have shut off the part of me that felt like his words were a betrayal...if I could have convinced myself that it didn't matter, then I would have done so. I would have been happy to roll my eyes and laugh about it awkwardly, or shed a few tears, perhaps make him grovel a little before taking him back.

But there was nothing left in me. I was hollowed out, cried out, numbed out. Nothing of the love remained, just a sad dull hurt. I'd been wrong to trust him. And I knew very well the sex would still be as amazing as before. Except that to me, it would be completely different.

Maybe nothing had really changed for him, but the next time we fucked, if we did it again, that's all it would be. There would be nothing deeper, nothing more: no feelings involved. At least, not good ones. Perhaps a painful lingering memory of the sweetness of feeling loved, back when I'd been able to believe what I'd wanted to believe. Back when I'd been so foolish as to trust him with my heart.

The sooner I got him out of my system, the better.