I slam it shut behind me and drop my purse on a chair. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“You bein’ here!” he yells. “What the fuck, Noelle? You couldn’t say no the mayor, huh? You just as gutless as everyone else he tramples on?”

“Gutless? I have more balls of eggs in my ovaries than you have sperm in your balls. Why don’t you give me a little credit for once, huh? He hired me because I have a track record—”

“Because you solved one murder?”

“Because I’m good at my fucking job!” I shout, jabbing my finger at myself. “You think I wanna work with you? With all of y’all in this fucking building? No. I’d rather drive my car into a tree. I don’t want to be working another damn murder case, but here I am, working with you, the very last person I wanna work with!”

“You think I wanna work with you?” Drake slams his fists onto the desk before straightening. “Like fuck do I, Noelle. I don’t want your ass anywhere near my fuckin’ case.”

“Then tough shit, cupcake, because you’re stuck with me.”

He swipes his hands against his desk, knocking off several sheets and his pen holder. Every step toward me is angry but calculated, the anger etched into his features obvious and more than a little hot in its determined frustration.

Drake’s body collides with mine, his hands cupping the sides of my face, his lips melding onto mine.

The door stops me from moving back another step, but he doesn’t stop pushing. He moves against me until I’m flush with the door and every part of his body is connected with mine. He doesn’t move a goddamn muscle except for his mouth as it explores mine with a hard-hitting intensity that has my knees weak and my skin tingling and my lungs constricting.

“We can’t work together,” he breathes, still holding my face. “It’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Me, you, together nine hours a day? No, Noelle. Just no.”

“Like I said,” I reply as breathily as he was, “tough shit. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here either. I’d be holed up in my office with my cupcakes and cutesy little lost-dog files and not-so-cutesy cheating-bastard files.”

“Jesus.” His thumbs brush across my cheekbones. “This—fuck. Do you not see how dangerous this is? Me and you, working together? I’d let a serial killer run for his freedom as long it meant you would be safe.”

I lick my lips, refusing to look away from his eyes. “Our working together is no more dangerous than our being together, and you’re all for that, aren’t you?”

“That’s different. If you were mine, you’d have to let me protect you. I know for a fuckin’ fact that you’d pull your gun before I pulled mine in any other situation.”

“You told me you didn’t want a damsel in distress.” I move his hands from my face. “So, surprise, Drake—I’m not. I never will be. If I ever need savin’, it’s on my terms, and you should know that. Working with me ain’t gonna kill you or anyone else, so suck it up and get the hell on with it, because like Sheriff said, her dead body is bigger than us.”

He stands in front of me, not touching me but somehow caressing every inch of my skin. “But that’s the problem, ain’t it? Nothing is bigger than us, Noelle. Especially when ‘us’ is barely even defined.”

I take a deep breath, so deep that my breasts brush his chest. “It doesn’t need definition. We’re not a word in the dictionary. We’re just…whatever we are.”

“Whatever we are.” He snorts, backing away. “Sounds about right.”

I shake my head as he moves toward his desk, turning from me. He reaches up and loosens his tie, throwing the released strip of satin on top of his keyboard when he’s freed it.

“You know what? No. The mayor can kiss my freshly waxed vagina. I’m not putting myself through his shit because you’ve got your cock up your own ass.”

I tug the door open, but Drake is quicker than I thought, and the force he shuts it with jars me into letting the handle go. He leans forward, our eyes colliding and connecting in a way so intense and irresistible that looking away simply isn’t an option.

“Sit your ass the fuck down. We have a job to do. Regardless of the shambles that is us,” he mutters, but each word is still somehow perfectly pronounced and filled with anger.

I reach into my purse, which I’m still holding, and slap Natalie’s file against his chest. “Here. Read this. I’m going to explain to my team why I’m suddenly the mayor’s bitch. When you’re done with that, call me, yeah?”

This time, when I open the door, he doesn’t stop me.

Cupcakes are waiting on the meeting room table.

Gigi’s cupcakes.

And the gas receipt next to the box has the total scribbled out.

I guess they’ve heard… About everything.

“Cupcakes are on me, Miss Noelle,” Dean says when I sit down.

I smile at him. Brawny and built, buzz-cut hair, yet sporting a new beard, Dean is made of marshmallow inside.

“Thank you, Dean. I appreciate it, especially today.”

“We heard.” Bek meets my eyes. “For real, Noelle? You’re working with the HWPD?”

“In theory,” I begin.

“In reality, you and Nash have already fought,” Mike smirks.

“You know,” I say to him, “if you didn’t have, like, a hundred and fifty pounds on me and I hated cupcakes, you’d so be licking this frosting off your face right now.”

“God.” Bek leans forward. “Seriously? It’s barely been an hour.”

“Are we here to discuss our cases or my private life?”

“He is your case.”

“No. He’s an unfortunate partner. Now, get on with it and tell me what you’ve got.” I pull a cupcake from the box and remove the wrapper, grabbing a fork from the holder in the middle of the table. Everyone lays out the basic info as they usually do, and I nod my way through it, shoveling a forkful of cake into my mouth every other sentence.

I’m not even ashamed when I reach for the second cupcake.

Bek, however, looks at me with the kind of concern only moms and best friends can muster.

“Okay. Y’all get on now,” I tell everyone, scrunching up my second cake wrapper and throwing it toward the trash can in the corner. Ultimately, I miss it, but Mike bends down and tosses it in before he walks out.

“Noelle,” Bek says quietly.

“I’m fine.” It’s unconvincing, I know, but maybe saying the words out loud will help.

There’s been an odd kind of empty ache since I stormed out of the police station earlier.

“Right. Two cupcakes immediately and you’re as fine as the new guy who served me coffee at Rosie’s this morning.” She snorts. “And don’t even go there trying to get me to talk about him!”

“Wasn’t gonna,” I lie.

“What did Drake do?”

“Nothing. Not really.” I rest my head on my hand. “He reacted…too much. Does that even make sense? Like, Trent going crazy? Okay. But Drake? There are levels of emotion, and that was not on the first-date kinda level.”

“Maybe because you two never have been. You’ve always been all or nothing, and hell, y’all passed nothing a while ago. I don’t know why you keep fighting him.”

“Because of this. We fight. We are a fight.” Drake and I…we’re a bomb and a lit match. But when that match touches the fuse, it’s sure to explode right before us.

“And your grandparents?”

“Shut up.” Just because they fought every day for decades doesn’t mean that’s the key to a successful or even healthy relationship.

“I don’t know why you fight it. It’s okay to get your heart broken, you know?”

“At twenty-eight? Bek, I don’t know. I don’t want to give him my heart. I don’t want to give him me.”

“Then why are you so bothered? Why do you let him affect you this way?”

I meet her eyes, picking at the corner of the cupcake box. “Because I don’t know how to not to.”

“Well, you’ve gotta figure it out soon.” She stands up. “Seriously, Noelle.”