Protective Behavior Page 2

And I’m not sure this pitcher of water is going to be enough.

  Chapter 2

  Ryan

  I was abruptly glad, really glad, that I’d agreed to a date in a restaurant with Mark. Restaurants weren’t really my scene when it came to dating—and “dating” was a generous way to say hooking up, to be honest. In a club or a bar, you could meet up for a drink and say hi, get to know each other well enough to feel comfortable going home together or casually end things after your glass was empty, and that was that. You couldn’t get away with that in a place with three different forks at each place setting.

  After everything I’d heard about Mark, which wasn’t much, I hadn’t expected him to be so… funny. Erin liked him, but Erin liked almost everybody—except for Jason from Radiology, which was fair, because nobody liked that dick. But so far, I’d enjoyed what I heard—and saw. Thick, dark hair with almost no grey in it, the faintest hint of a five o’ clock shadow, and a resting bitchface that made me want to hand him a ruler and bend over the nearest flat surface.

  Jesus Christ, I was not a kid anymore, and Mark wasn’t a booty call. You’re on a real date and it doesn’t suck. Congratulations—try not to screw it up.

  It was a good time for the waiter to show up. “What can I get you tonight, sir?” he asked me.

  “The grilled red snapper, please.”

  “A very good choice. Would you like any wine with dinner?”

  “Just the water is fine for me.” Technically I was on call right now, so it was better that I didn’t indulge. I probably wouldn’t be called in—I’d already worked four shifts this week, so I was due a few consecutive days off—but stranger things had happened.

  Mark got a complicated-sounding dish that amounted to roast chicken, and the waiter vanished again. He took another drink from his water glass, and I reminded myself that I wasn’t the only nervous person here. Maybe meeting a person he’d never met before at a restaurant was just as weird for him as it was for me.

  When in doubt, get your date to talk about themselves. I could get an entire medical history out of an eighty-year old woman who fell down a flight of stairs in under five minutes—small talk was a cinch compared to that. “So, what do you do when you’re not keeping your coworkers on their toes, Detective Thibedeau?”

  Mark smiled, but it seemed kind of wry. “Nothing exceptional. I read a lot, I act as a pillow for my cat. Sometimes I—” He cut himself off, but I wasn’t having it. The gracious thing would be to let it lie, but I wasn’t feeling gracious—I was interested by this guy, and that made me inquisitive.

  “Sometimes you what?” I pressed. “Whatever it is, I promise you, it’s not embarrassing, and I won’t laugh.”

  “You say that now.”

  “I mean it. As long as you don’t turn people into skinsuits, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Mark’s smile turned easier, and it took him from moderately attractive to completely arresting. Arresting, ha. “That’s a very specific line not to cross.”

  “Consider it a testament to my open-mindedness.” I smiled back, but didn’t let him off the hook. “Come on. What do you like to do?”

  “I… repair old books.” He looked like he was bracing himself for me to laugh.

  I was happy to disappoint him. “Like bookbinding?” He nodded. “That’s very cool. It’s pretty detail-oriented work, isn’t it?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  He shrugged. “It’s hardly brain surgery.”

  “I wouldn’t know, I’m not a brain surgeon.” There was a smile again. Win. “I rarely do any sort of complex operation, actually. We let the trauma surgeons handle that. I’m fantastic at judging people, though.” God, the dad jokes, it was like they wrote themselves after I hit forty.

  Mark got a little furrow between his eyebrows. “You mean, stabilizing them?”

  “That, but.” Now it was my turn to shrug. “Emergency medicine usually isn’t like what they show on TV. Trauma victims are relatively rare. I see way more people with persistent chest pain in a normal shift than I do people who’ve been shot or stabbed.” Or homeless people suffering from frostbite or hypothermia during the winter, or kids who overheated or inhaled too much pool water in the summer.

  Mark looked thoughtful. “Every shift is a surprise, then.”

  “Exactly.” I beamed. “And I love surprises.”

  He shook his head. “I bet you didn’t even shake your Christmas presents as a child.”

  “Of course I did,” I scoffed. “I like surprises, but I’m not made of stone. Whereas you…” I sat back and looked him over. He cleared his throat and reached for his glass of water again. It was nice to know I was having an effect. “I bet you were the type to steam open the tape and see what was under the wrapping paper before closing it up again and putting it back under the tree.”

  “More like onto the top shelf of the closet, or in the shoebox under the bed,” he said. “I usually knew every gift my parents had bought me by October. My mother liked to get the shopping done early. My dad would try to hide them, but it never worked.”

  I laughed. “Even as a kid, you were a detective! It was meant to be.”

  He smiled again, but it seemed kind of subdued. “Something like that. I knew I wanted to go into law enforcement from a young age, at least.” He set his glass down and turned his incisive gaze on me. “What made you choose to go into medicine?”

  I thought about trotting out the line people usually expected from me—that I wanted to help people. It was a part of the reasoning, but not the bulk of it—at least, not back when I’d made the choice to go to medical school. Looking at Mark, I decided honesty was the best policy. “I wanted a career that would make reliably good money and let me find work anywhere. My folks… They didn’t have very secure jobs. We lived in some pretty rundown places when I was a kid, and we never had the money for more than the bare essentials. We stayed on and off with my grandparents for years while my dad tried one small business idea after another…” And living with my mother’s parents, who’d been so openly opinionated about the man their beautiful daughter had married, had never been fun. “But I was a good student, and I got into college with scholarships and grants. I eventually became an EMT, and I loved that, so med school felt like a natural progression.”

  “Very logical.” The way he said it didn’t sound like he was finding the morality of my choice wanting. It was more like he… appreciated it, maybe. That was absolutely a first. I felt my shoulders relax a little.

  “Thanks, I thought so.” But enough talk about me. “You said you wanted to be a cop from a young age. Any particular reason?”

  I was good at reading people—I had to be, in my line of work. Plenty of folks lied when they came into the ED, especially if the cause for their visit was something embarrassing or shameful. I could spot a domestic abuse situation at ten paces and knew way more than I ever wanted to about the bizarre things some people tried to do with vacuum cleaners. The way Mark froze, staring somewhere past my head for just a second before refocusing on me, was a tell I hadn’t anticipated. I was afraid I’d accidentally wandered into a minefield.

  “My father was a cop.” I half expected him to do air quotes, he’d said “cop” so sarcastically. “I wanted to be just like him. Then it came out that he was dirty, and after that I wanted to be the exact opposite of him.”

  Damn. He’d taken my offering of honesty and elevated it to the level of painfully honest. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, feeling more than a little awkward. “About your dad.”

  Mark made a face. “I’m sorry I brought it up. It’s not really first date material.”

  Shit, the last thing I wanted was him getting uncomfortable and coming up with reasons not to do this again. We’d only just met, and I already knew that one date wasn’t going to be enough. “I don’t mind. It’s better that I know now, so I can think of other things to talk about.”

  “Like what
?” Mark asked. “Work? I don’t think you’re ready for the stupefying brilliance that is inter-precinct data sharing policy.”

  I grinned. “Hmm, no. And because I like you, I won’t bore you with how much time I spend on electronic recordkeeping. Seriously, by the time I’m done entering data at the end of a shift, I’m on the verge of breaking my own fingers just to get out of doing it the next day.” He chuckled, and I mentally awarded myself a point. “What’s your cat’s name?”

  “Harley.”

  “As in the motorcycle?” I asked. “Or no, wait—the Batman character.”

  Mark shook his head. “Actually she came with the name.”

  “Damn. I thought I’d unearthed a secret love for DC.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “I’m a Marvel fan all the way. Also, Batman should be thrown in jail for reckless child endangerment, among other things.”

  Our food came just as I finished laughing. It was really good—nicer than what I usually made for myself, or what I could get in the hospital cafeteria. Mark was great company, now that we’d moved on to lighter subjects. He told me a few sanitized stories from his investigations, including one about a dog-fighting ring that rang a bell. “Wait, the Animal Control officer—was that Parker?”

  “Bulldog Parker, yeah.”

  “I know her!” Bulldog Parker—or Liz, to her friends—was five foot nothing and a hundred pounds with her huge purse on, and she was also a dog whisperer extraordinaire. She kept five pit bulls on her property, all rescues, and they were some of the best-behaved dogs I’d ever met. “She came in with someone who’d been bitten by a raccoon last year. The bite wasn’t bad, but they were worried about rabies.”

  “You and I work in somewhat adjacent fields,” Mark commented. “We probably know a lot of the same people.” For a moment he looked a bit like he had indigestion.

  “What?” In my mind, it was a bonus if some of our social circle overlapped—having mutual acquaintances would give us more to talk about. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Mark sighed, pushing a potato around his plate with his fork. “I’ve never had a relationship with anyone I’ve worked with. I’ve seen how messy they can be, and the slightest hint of inappropriateness on my part could do serious damage to my ability as an investigator.”

  “Good thing I’m not a cop, then,” I said firmly. “We might interact with some of the same people from time to time, but the hospital is the beginning and end of my authority. Almost everything I do there is bound by confidentiality, too, so you don’t have to worry about hearing something you shouldn’t. I am a professional, after all.”

  “Of course you are,” he said before I could even begin to take umbrage at the idea that he might not think I could keep a confidence. “It’s just… The prospect is a little…” He exhaled heavily. “I’d like to do this again, Ryan,” he said with refreshing bluntness. “I’d like to get to know you better. But you should know that I haven’t been in a relationship since college, and I wasn’t especially good at it back then. I doubt I’ve gotten any better since.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a conversation like this, such a wild mixture of serious and tentative and fun. I’d eschewed seriousness from my personal life for decades, and now I had a big, empty house with no pictures in it that weren’t of my immediate family to show for it. I went on vacations alone, I went running alone, I went to bed alone—I never brought my hookups home with me. I echoed with my own emptiness outside of work, and being out to dinner with Mark was the first time in a long time I felt full. It was just a date, and it might never be much more than that, but I wanted to find out either way.

  “You won’t know unless you try,” I pointed out. “And I’d like to get to know you better too. Besides, I believe that you also know a couple that works together and is still happily married, so clearly nothing is impossible.”

  “Andreas and Darren don’t count, since they’ve clearly made a deal with the devil,” Mark said flatly, but he looked like he was trying to tamp down on a smile.

  “Probably, yeah.” Our plates were taken away, the dessert menu was offered and refused, and as we waited for the check to arrive, I debated whether or not to invite him home for more. It wasn’t all that late, and maybe we could—

  Beepbeepbeep. Beepbeepbeep. Beepbeepbeep. I grimaced as I reached for my phone and checked to see who was calling. “Sorry, it’s work,” I muttered to Mark before picking up. “Yeah, Ronnie?”

  Our front desk nurse didn’t keep me in suspense. “Sorry for the late notice, Ryan, but Camille’s daughter went into labor five minutes ago, so she’s not going to be making it in tonight.”

  “I figured.” Camille Kleinman was twenty years older than me but had started working for All Saints ED the same month I did. Her daughter Jenna was put on bed rest for the last month of her pregnancy, and Camille had made it crystal clear that as soon as the baby was on the way, she was off the clock. “Okay, I’m just fifteen minutes out.”

  “Thanks, Ryan.” Ronnie ended the call, and I stared balefully at my phone for a second before looking up at Mark.

  “I’m really, really sorry about this, but I got called in to work.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Honestly, I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have scheduled this for tonight if I thought there was a real chance this would happen, but—”

  “Ryan,” Mark interjected, reaching out and putting a hand on top of mine. I couldn’t help noticing how warm his skin was, how long his fingers were. It was a personal touch, brightening my impersonal world, and I wanted to keep his hand on mine for as long as possible. “I get it. It’s truly fine.”

  He did get it, because he was a cop, and if anyone could understand working strange hours it was a cop. “Thank you.” I reached for my wallet, but he shook his head.

  “It’s my treat. You can get the next one.”

  He wanted there to be a next one. I was simultaneously relieved and thrilled. “It’s a deal,” I said. I got up from the table and then, before my courage deserted me, I leaned in and, making sure to telegraph it, kissed Mark on the lips. It wasn’t a long kiss but it wasn’t a peck either—it was a promise of a kiss, the promise of more, and if the way Mark’s hand reached up and settled against the back of my neck was any indication, he was pleased by the prospect too.

  “I had a great time tonight,” I said once we parted. Pulling away wasn’t easy, but at least I had something to look forward to now. “I’ll call you tomorrow after I wake up. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he replied, sounding a little breathless.

  “Yeah, okay.” I left before I could make a bigger spectacle out of myself, a huge grin on my face.

  Best. Blind. Date. Ever.

  Chapter 3

  Mark

  Seriously, I am so sorry about last night.

  Ryan had already texted me twice to that effect, and I hadn’t even gone to lunch yet. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t that I wanted him to grovel—the way things had gone had hardly been his fault—but I appreciated that he didn’t want me thinking he’d blown me off.

  Of course I didn’t think he had blown me off. I’d been a cop long enough to understand when off-time was at the mercy of the job. I was, after all, sitting in my office on the Twenty-first Precinct’s mostly deserted fourth floor on a Saturday.

  Don’t worry about it, I texted back. Just let me know when you want to try again.

  I put my phone aside and stared at the file I was working through. It was a case I’d been dealing with for weeks, and I knew it inside and out, but suddenly I couldn’t remember any of the details. Prior to last night, I could have recited every document in this folder—in the entire banker’s box full of folders—and quoted chapter and verse of every offense the two officers had committed.

  Now it was all fuzzy in that way I remembered cases from my pre-IAB days. There were flashes of memories like tiny fragments of movies I’d seen years ago, and bits and p
ieces from conversations that had somehow stuck with me all this time, but I couldn’t have spelled out what had happened or why without skimming over the summaries and courtroom transcripts. It made sense, forgetting the intricacies of long-closed cases.

  One I’d been working on up until I’d left the office yesterday? One I’d been living and breathing less than twenty-four hours ago? I should’ve had a goddamned handle on it.

  Except every time I tried to focus on the words or the photos, my mind wandered, and it kept wandering back to the same place. A moment frozen so sharply that I could still feel the condensation from my water glass on my fingertips and hear the background noise of chatter and dishes in the restaurant.

  “It’s a deal,” he’d said, and then he’d kissed me right there in public. “I had a great time tonight,” he’d added before my world had righted itself. “I’ll call you tomorrow after I wake up. Okay?”

  And then he’d been gone, and I’d been on autopilot ever since.

  Yes, please do call me, I’d thought more than once, and let’s do this again. Ideally ASAP.

  I hadn’t been interested in dating in a long time. Hookups, fine. But dating? Meh. One meal with Ryan—interruption notwithstanding—and I was warming up to the idea pretty fast. With him, though. Fuck everyone else.

  My phone vibrated on my desk, and the words on the page in front of me scrambled again. I shook myself and picked up my phone.

  Are weeknights out for you?

  Damn. I was hoping I’d see him tonight or tomorrow.

  I can usually leave the office by 5 or 6. Weeknights are good.

  Ok, let me see how my schedule looks. w/colleague out, things are a bit up in the air.

  No problem. My schedule after work is easy unless a case drops in my lap.

  I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you don’t get a case, then. ;)

  I kind of thought emojis were something for Erin’s generation. Shorthand that the kids used while the rest of us slowly typed out entire words. But there was something suggestive and intriguing about the winking smiley face in Ryan’s text that sure as hell didn’t have me thinking about why guys our ages shouldn’t be using them. He could use whatever emojis he wanted if it meant lines for me to read between until I finally saw him again.