Page 9 of Save Me (The Midnight Cove #2)

GUNNER

“ C ’mon, Corabelle.” I grab my niece out of her booster seat, setting her down from my truck.

One day she’ll be able to get down by herself, and that will probably break my heart.

I love the way she stretches her arms out to me, letting me know she trusts me to make sure she gets down safely.

Quickly locking it, I scan the parking lot for Amy, but when I don’t see her, I grab Cora’s hand with one and my cell with another.

“I’m so excited!” Cora hops up and down at my side.

Glancing down at her, I grin. “Really? I couldn’t tell.” Even at her age, she gets my humor.

Her eyebrow goes up and she smirks slightly. “Stop, Gunny.”

In actuality, I can’t stand the nickname she’s given me, but when she was learning how to talk, she couldn’t say my name, and it got shortened to what she calls me now. I’m contemplating whether I should text Amy as we approach the entrance of the boardwalk, and it’s then I see her.

“Damn…”

Luckily the word is whispered under my breath.

If it hadn’t been, Cora would have called me on it.

She’s become the bad-word police and has taken to making people put money in a jar if she catches them.

What she fails to tell everyone at first is the little entrepreneur is going to use that money to buy herself a bike.

While I’m proud of her ingenuity, I’m pissed she’s gotten me on more than one occasion.

Amy is a ten if anyone were to ask me. Everything about her ticks each box I have when it comes to women who attract me.

Strong legs, hips I can hang onto, a waist that’s not so small I can fit my hands completely around it, hair that comes down, hanging slightly lower than her breasts, and fuck—speaking of her tits.

She’s wearing a shirt that hugs them, not obscenely, but there they are.

Coupled with the pair of jean shorts molded to her thighs—I’m going to be discreetly adjusting my package today, bet.

“Hey.” She waves, almost shyly, toward me.

Rosa stands next to her, waving the exact same way her mom does. I wave back at them before scooping up Cora in my arms and jogging over to where they stand.

“We would have waited for you.” Amy raises an eyebrow at me, a smirk on her lips. “Not like we were going to make you chase us down the boardwalk.”

“I would,” I grin.

“You’ve already got me on a date; you don’t have to impress me still,” she grins back.

“Oh, you have no idea, Amy. I plan on impressing you for years to come.”

There’s a flash in her eyes, and I wonder what it is, but it’s gone before I can ask her. “Who is this?” She bends over at the waist, looking down at Cora.

“This is Cora.” She buries her face in my thigh. “Or Corabelle.” I grab at her pigtail, causing her to giggle.

“Corabelle isn’t my name,” she protests.

“Gunny isn’t mine,” I fire back at her.

“Nice to meet you, Cora.” Amy gives me a look as she holds out her hand for Cora. “This is my daughter, Rosa.”

The two girls wave shyly at one another.

“Want to walk all the way down to the end, then work back?” I ask the group of ladies I’m with for the day.

When everyone agrees, we all take off together at a walk. Not even halfway down, the two girls are in front of us, talking away, running a little ahead of us. “I’m glad they seem to like each other. Cora’s usually pretty reserved. She’s had a tough year and a half.”

“What happened?”

“My sister and her husband got divorced, and he’s completely disappeared from Cora’s life.

I don’t even know all the details, but it wasn’t a pretty situation.

I’ve been doing my best to help my sister out, but I worry about Cora, how she’s adapting.

She hasn’t seen him since he left, and she’s finally stopped asking. ”

“Rosa stopped asking after a while too,” Amy says quietly. “And she’s very well adjusted now.”

“I haven’t wanted to pry…”

She looks at me, a sad smile on her face. “It’s normal to be curious, and I haven’t volunteered much about my life.”

“Gunny, can we get cotton candy?”

Cora picks that moment to interrupt us, and I do my best not to show her how irritated I am. “Sure.” I reach into my pocket for my wallet.

After getting two bags of cotton candy—one for us, one for them—we continue our walk down.

The boardwalk extends for roughly two miles; not all of it is on land, a good portion extends out into the ocean.

I know because in training, we have to run it with full gear on.

Then during swift-water rescue drills, we have to run all the way down before jumping in the water and swimming back.

It’s going to take us at least a couple hours with the leisurely pace we’re taking.

Amy reaches over into our bag, grabbing a piece of the sugary treat out. “He died,” she says softly. “My husband.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Truthfully, I am. That’s got to be incredibly difficult to come back from.

She doesn’t meet my eyes this time, but she speaks low so that the girls giggling in front of us can’t hear.

“He was a police officer,” she continues.

“There was a case,” she pauses, pushing her hair behind her ears, careful to avoid the stickiness.

“A child was severely injured by a kidnapper, and he felt like he could have prevented it. He never got over it.”

I ask this next question carefully, because I think I understand what she’s getting at, but I don’t want to make assumptions. “Did he die in the line of duty?”

She doesn’t respond for a long breath, and I think maybe I’ve gone too far, or maybe that she isn’t going to answer me.

“They found him shot in his police car, wearing his dress uniform,” she whispers.

“He wasn’t dead when they found him, and they fought to save him—fought so hard,” she clears her throat.

“In the end, they determined he shot himself. They think he was aiming for his head, something startled him, and his shot was slightly off. We could have kept him on life support, but he was brain dead,” she finishes.

“I’m so sorry.” I grab her hand in mine, offering her what little amount of comfort I can.

“It happened,” she shrugs. “Rosa and I have had to move on from it. Because his death was ruled suicide, we weren’t able to collect his life insurance, which is why we’re living with my sister.

I go back and forth between being sad and angry,” she admits.

“It kills me to be angry with him, because I know he was hurting. I begged him”—she takes another bite of the cotton candy—“begged him to get help. For both Rosa and I.”

“Being a public servant is sometimes a thankless job,” I admit. “We see things that others don’t, and we have to learn quickly how to deal with that on the job. Mental health is just as important as physical health in what we do.”

“I know,” she sighs, her eyes cutting over to mine. “And it’s why I told myself I would never involve myself with someone who does that kind of job again.” She raises our hands, still holding onto each other. “But here we are.”

“I’m not him.”

“And I’m not the same woman I was back then.”

“You’re stronger,” I remind her, pulling our hands up, kissing hers.

“Yeah,” she smiles. “I am.”