Page 97 of Things We Hide from the Light

I wasn’t optimistic. Not with him and not with rehab. Too many disappointments over the years. I’d learned that having expectations where he was concerned only guaranteed my own disappointment. So I made it a point to always meet him where he was, not where I wanted him to be. Not where he’d once been.

It helped me in my job too. Treating victims and suspects with respect, not judgment. Despite the fact that he’d turnedinto a toxic father figure, Duke Morgan had made me a better cop. And for that, I was grateful.

“You need anything before you go?”

He shook his head slowly. “Nope. I’m all set. Got my bus ticket here,” he said, patting his front pocket. “I leave this afternoon.”

“I hope it’s a good experience for you,” I said and meant it.

“It will be.” He reached into the same pocket and pulled out a business card. “Here’s the number and address of the place. They’ll limit phone calls to emergencies for the first few weeks, but you can send letters…if you want.”

He put the card faceup on my desk and slid it toward me.

I picked up the card, looked at it, then pocketed it. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Well, I’d best be gettin’ on,” he said, getting to his feet. “Gotta see your brother before I hit the road.”

I rose. “I’ll walk you out.”

“Not necessary. I don’t wanna embarrass you in front of your department.”

“You’re not an embarrassment, Dad.”

“Maybe in a few months I won’t be.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. So I clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed.

“You healing up okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s gonna take more than a couple of bullets to keep me down,” I said with feigned confidence.

“Some things are tougher than others to get over,” he insisted, those blue eyes locking on to mine.

“Some things are,” I agreed.

Bullet holes and broken hearts.

“I didn’t do right by you and your brother.”

“Dad, we don’t have to get into this. I understand why things happened the way they did.”

“I just wish I woulda kept trying to look to the light instead of sinking into the dark,” he said. “A man can learn to live in that dark, but it’s no life.”

I spentthe next hour reviewing case reports, time-off requests, and budgets with my father’s words echoing around in my head.

Maybe the dark was an empty, meaningless existence, but it was the light that could burn you. I needed something from Lina that she didn’t seem willing to give. Something that was as essential to me as oxygen.Honesty.

Sure, she’d shared bits and pieces. But what she did share was shaded and spun to tell the kind of story she wanted. She’d made it seem like she’d run into Lucian and had a benign conversation with him. She hadn’t told me that my oldest friend had hunted her down and threatened her over the time she’d been spending with me.

I was almost as pissed off about the fact that she’d decided to handle it on her own as I was over Lucian’s overprotective, asinine actions.

But despite the fact that I knew for sure that Lina wasn’t telling me the whole truth, I felt something I couldn’t identify, something a hell of a lot like need. And the scales wouldn’t be balanced unless she needed me back.

Something Lina Solavita wasn’t programmed to do.

Something I wasn’t prepared to deliver on. Who would need me in this state? I was a fucking mess.

Hell, I’d just spelled my name wrong signing a PTO request.