More often than not, though, when he sunk his dick into a woman who was not his ex-wife, Mia filled his head. Drunk or sober, it happened. It made him feel like an asshole. But he kept doing it.

With Cher, it did not.

With Cher, he was with Cher.

On a night when he was trashed and that shit was sure to happen, it didn’t.

On a night where he never expected he could do it, he’d laughed. Not a little, a lot. His gut clenching with it. His eyes watering with it.

And he did that with Cher.

No, he didn’t just do it with her, she gave him that.

You came here to get me to go to Frank’s so you could tell me what went down with us was just a drunken fuck, no more. We don’t change. Am I right?

She’d been right.

Garrett looked to the clock on his microwave.

It was just before nine thirty. Her shift that day was noon to eight thirty.

She’d be home.

He engaged his phone, opened his texts, and shot her one.

Ethan got a sleepover this weekend?

He took another pull from his beer, thinking Cher’s early shift was noon to eight thirty and her late shift was eight to three thirty. He knew that because he was a cop and he paid attention to everything, an occupational hazard, so he’d noted it just from being a regular at her place of business.

Those shifts meant, either way, on school days, she didn’t have to rush Ethan to get ready. Even if she’d only had a few hours of sleep, she could make him breakfast, take him to school, not have to be anywhere but with him. Late shift, she could also go get him, get him home, make sure his schoolwork got done, make him dinner.

But even if they had time together, either way, that time was still fucked.

People did that kind of thing all the time, shift work that meant they had to get creative about who looked after their kids.

But those people didn’t have Cher’s history and a kid with a stick-up-their-ass stepmom who decided the way of the world and that her way was the only way. Garrett knew that was the way Peggy whoever-she-was was the minute he saw the bitch. Cher didn’t need to lay that out. He knew she was trouble of one variety or the other before she opened her mouth.

Before he knew she was bringing Cher trouble.

Fuck, he hoped the junkie ex was dirty.

He pushed away from the counter, took his beer to the couch, and grabbed the remote.

He found a show right when his phone sounded.

He grabbed it off his coffee table and his mouth curled up when he read, Kiss my ass, Merry.

Using his thumb, he returned, You want that, brown eyes, I’ll work it in.

She didn’t make him wait and shot back, Go fuck yourself.

Now, sweetheart, you know that’s not the way it works.

Then came, We’re done.

He ignored that and sent, Sleep tight. See you tomorrow.

Tomorrow? she returned.

Have good dreams.

Tomorrow?

Garrett didn’t reply.

Merry? Tomorrow?

Garrett again didn’t reply.

Don’t fuck with me, Merry. I don’t need your shit.

Garrett grinned, but he didn’t reply, and at that, Cher let it go.

He trained his eyes to the TV, not watching it.

He was thinking that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

The only thing he knew was that he was going to do it. And right then, as much of a dick as it made him, it was because Cher Rivers was the best fuck he’d ever had, bar none, including Mia.

After their showdown, where Cher showed him a different kind of fire than her normal—a fire he liked—and a vulnerability she’d never shown before—the kind as a cop and as a Merrick he couldn’t ignore—he wanted more.

It was also because, when he was low, she took his back.

So now that she had the possibility of trouble, he was going to take hers.

If she wanted him to or not.

Chapter Four

Plotting My Murder

Cher

The next day, after I’d dropped Ethan at school, I was about to go out to the garage to get the storm windows when my phone rang.

I moved to my purse in the bucket chair, pulled the phone out, and saw a number I did not know.

I’d learned a long time ago never to answer those kinds of calls. I was careful to program in any numbers that I would need to know, including doctors, dentists, Ethan’s school. I’d learned to do this, because if it didn’t come up as programmed, they were either someone trying to sell me something or someone I absolutely did not want to talk to.

This being someone I didn’t want to talk to, I dropped the phone on top of my purse and headed to the garage.

I had the windows out of the garage, stacked against the side of the house, the screen switched out in the front door, and was moving to the first window when I heard shrieked, “You think I won’t fuck with you?”

I looked left and went still.

My next-door neighbor was cool—Tilly, an old lady. She was quiet. She was also private but friendly and happy to look after Ethan on the rare occasion I needed her. She did this because she was a good woman and she liked us, not because Ethan or I mowed her lawn and shoveled her snow whenever we did ours (which we did).

And she acted like the light of God shone down on her when her asshole son or her bitch-face daughter deigned to pay her a visit, bringing her grandchildren. I was not in my house 24/7, but I didn’t miss the fact that these pilgrimages back home to momma happened rarely. Ethan and I had lived there for over two years and those bastards had shown twice, collectively.

But the house next to Tilly’s was a rental. Not one like mine, where my landlord gave a shit. One where the landlord didn’t, so it was in visible disrepair, which meant the rent was lower and the renters were of the same level.

I’d seen the new tenants. They’d been around a few months. In that time, they’d had one party that was loud, which I’d had closed down.

But they were around a lot, in and out a lot, and had a slew of visitors, so I had a variety of opportunities to see them.

Being a person who was quickly judged, I was not judgmental.

Still, the man had dickhead written all over him, and the woman was a sister in the way she’d convinced herself she couldn’t do much better, so she didn’t try.

Now she was on the stoop, red in the face, still in her shapeless nightshirt, hair wild, clearly, even from a distance, pissed way the fuck off.

He was in jeans and a jeans jacket, a few feet down the walk from her, his back to me, but his body language was easily read and he shared his woman’s mood.

Since they were a house away, I didn’t hear what he said. I just knew he replied when she kept screeching.

“Fuck you! You don’t change your mind, motherfucker. Carlito will learn all your shit!”

At that, I knew it was time to go inside and do it quiet so neither of them would know I was outside and I’d heard what I’d heard.

This was what I did.

When I soundlessly closed my door behind me, I looked into my living room and hissed, “Shit.”

I didn’t know Carlito.

But I worked in a bar that served booze to cops, bikers, and bankers. Hairdressers and lady doctors. Farmers, plumbers, and lawyers.

And at a bar, customers considered waitresses deaf to anything but drink orders.

Also at a bar, customers considered bartenders their own personal shrinks.

So I knew that the least of what a man called Carlito was was a low-life loan shark.

But considering I’d heard his name murmured on more than one occasion by Colt, Sully, Mike, Drew, Sean, Merry, and a number of other cops in that ’burg, I suspected he was more.

I did not need that shit on my block, but it was more.