Don't Call Me Hero (33 page)

I did miss living in a bigger city where there were more activities, and I missed my friends from my old job, but life in Embarrass honestly hadn’t been so bad. I’d made a few friends, had a few laughs, and I’d genuinely liked my job. Being a cop was emotionally taxing, but when you could see the good you’d personally been responsible for, it nearly made up for the headache of a bad shift. I had once thought the same thing about my military service until the fighting had turned into a war of attrition.

I tried to be as honest with Grace without revealing too much. “I need to go back to my life in Minneapolis. The past few months were like a vacation from my old life, but it’s time I go back and finally confront my fears.”

“What about Julia?”

I wasn’t expecting the question, and my normally schooled features probably showed as much. “What about her?”

“Isn’t she one of your fears? Shouldn’t you face her?”

“I never said I’d face them all at once,” I smiled sadly.

+++

Rich was still at work when I arrived in Minneapolis, but I had a key to his apartment from the few times he’d needed someone to feed his cat. Jack—named after the hard liquor—was as ornery as they came. I wasn’t a cat person, and Jack seemed to sense that. He eyeballed me with a look of clear disinterest and distain when I let myself into Rich’s apartment and dropped my duffle bag on the floor in the entryway.

“Hey cat,” I greeted.

Jack sniffed at my bag, but apparently after deciding I wasn’t worth his attention, he lifted his tail, turned, and walked away.

Not bothering to change my clothes after the long bike ride or to start unpacking my bag, I inspected the contents of my friend’s refrigerator.

“Jackpot,” I said to myself as I grabbed a six-pack of St. Pauli’s Girl out of the fridge. I cracked open the first victim and kicked my feet up on a coffee table that was in dire need of glass cleaner. If the water rings on the table’s surface were any indication, Rich had never heard of coasters. I fished the remote control out from between the couch cushions and flipped through the channels in search of something mindless.

A few hours later I woke up to the jangle of a heavy key ring and the belligerent swearing of my friend. On the neglected television, an infomercial tried to convince me that their product could remove stubborn stains. 

“Fucking Christ, Miller!” I heard Rich complain from the entryway. “Think you could have put your bag someplace where I wouldn’t trip over it?”

Rich’s steps were punctuated by the creak of leather and the metallic jangle of his gear. It sounded more like the swagger of a gunfighter’s spurs in the Wild West than a Minnesotan police officer. He plopped down next to me on the couch, took off his gun belt, and tossed it onto the coffee table next to the six empty beers. The green empties were lined up like they were meeting the firing squad later.

“I see you made yourself comfortable.”

“I was thirsty,” I said in self-defense.

“Could have at least saved one for me,” he complained.

I stood and started to clear off the coffee table. “Sorry,” I grumbled. “I’ll buy more in the morning.”

“Take a load off, Mama Cass.” Rich patted the cushion beside him. “You’re not here to clean.”

“Then why
am
I here?” I openly lamented. I dreaded this part—the moment when I stopped running and started realizing I had no idea what to do with my life.

“How about we start with a simpler question?” Rich sagely posed.

“Like what?”

“Like what do you want on your pizza? I’m starving, dude.”

+ + +

Rich was already awake and rummaging around the apartment when I woke up on the couch the next morning. The remnants of last night’s pizza were still on the coffee table along with a few more empty beer cans we’d discovered not doing a very good job of hiding in the refrigerator.

I inhaled through my nose and ran my hand over my face. “Shit. What time is it?”

I felt disoriented by the change of location. I hated that feeling when your brain believed you were someplace, but upon opening your eyes, you discovered you were someplace entirely different. It used to happen to me all the time when I first got back to the States. I’d wake up thinking I was still on base in Afghanistan only to open my eyes to the posters on my childhood bedroom.

“It’s almost 11:00 a.m.,” Rich informed me. “You can crash in my bedroom if I’m being too loud out here. The sheets shouldn’t be too gross.”

I sat up, groggy, and re-secured my ponytail, which had loosened itself throughout the night’s sleep. “No, I’m good.”

“You look like death warmed over.” Rich shook his head. “Are you sure you wanna drop by the station this afternoon? The Captain can wait, you know.”

I couldn’t stay on Rich’s couch forever, but I’d gotten back to town less than twenty-four hours ago.

“I need to keep my brain occupied,” I said. “And the sooner I let Cap know I’m back and I’m serious about wanting my old job back, the sooner I can get back to active service.”

I knew getting rehired wouldn’t be easy. There was a mountain of paperwork to fill out and meetings with the police department’s shrink to re-evaluate me. And even if I could convince the appropriate people I was ready to patrol again, there would be a significant probationary period with more psychological evaluations and supervised shifts. I’d probably have to go back to my old PTSD meetings and do things like keep a journal.

I hadn’t ever considered what it would take to get my head right; I simply kept running away, hoping I could continue to avoid my problems. Grace’s words haunted me. Had I made the right decision in leaving Embarrass? Or should I have stuck it out? There were better resources in the Twin Cities to help me deal with the worst of the nightmares and flashbacks, but coming back to this place had meant running away from something—
someone
—again.

I glanced at my cell phone on the coffee table. It had remained silent and unused since I’d left Embarrass. I hadn’t heard from Julia after I’d left her at her family cabin, but I hadn’t reached out to her either.

Rich sat down beside me on the couch. “It’s up to you, I guess.” He shrugged helplessly. “I just don’t want you to push yourself too hard too soon, you know?”

“I know,” I nodded. “And I appreciate that, buddy. I really do. But it’s time Cassidy Miller got back to her life.”

“Great. Now you’re referring to yourself in the third person,” Rich teased.

I gave him a playful shove. “Shut up.”

+ + +

I pulled at a loose thread on the couch. The more I tugged, the more it unraveled. I tried to yank it free, or at least snap the thread off, but it continued to lengthen despite my efforts.

“Why don’t we talk about why you’re here instead of destroying my couch.”

I abruptly dropped the string as though it had burned me and sat on my hands to keep from picking at more loose threads.

“I’d like to return to active duty,” I said. “And the Captain says I need your okay before I can do that.”

The police department’s psychiatrist was a long-limbed man with thinning red hair. He wore his glasses down low on his nose, which made me want to push them up the bridge of his nose. He flipped through papers that were stapled together at one corner. “According to your file, you requested to be taken off active duty back in May. Why?”

I was glad my hands were pinned beneath my thighs so they couldn’t shake when I spoke. “That’s when the nightmares got worse.”

The papers in his hands rustled again. “You’re referring to your PTSD, correct?”

I swallowed. “Yeah.”

He continued to look at my file. “Cassidy Miller, active service in the Marines since 2004, awarded the Navy Cross in 2012.” He flashed me a quick smile. “Congratulations.”

It felt like a strange thing to be patted on the back for. I’d dragged a gravely-wounded buddy over sand dunes and rock piles for days until we’d been picked up by another convoy. “Thanks.”

“Have the flashbacks and nightmares stopped?” he asked.

“No. Not entirely.” I could have lied, but that wouldn’t have done either of us any good.

He set down the file on the coffee table between us. I itched to scoop up the documents and read what had been written about me. “So why now?” He clasped his hands over one knee and crossed his legs. “If the nightmares are why you voluntarily removed yourself from active duty and they persist, why do you want to come back now?”

“Back in May I was scared—terrified, actually. I didn’t know what was happening or how to control the flashbacks.”

“But now you can?”

“I’m getting there.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I know what my triggers are, and I work to avoid them. And recently I’ve been able to sleep for entire stretches without the reoccurring nightmares.”

He made a thoughtful noise and picked up a yellow legal pad. He scribbled some notes on the paper. I wondered if he was writing about me, or if he’d simply remembered something he wanted to pick up from the grocery store later.

He looked over the pad of paper at me. “What do you think changed?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t wanted to talk about her. This meeting was supposed to be about police work, not my private life.

“After I left MPD, I was working in a little town up north. There was … a girl. A woman. The nightmares got worse for a short time, but then they got better.”

“And you think this woman had something to do with that,” he conjectured.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “It could have been a coincidence.”

“Is that what you really think?”

“No.”

“Then what do you think explains it?”

“I really don’t know,” I said, my frustration at his pointless questions mounting. “Maybe I was too tired from all the sex to have any dreams.”

The psychiatrist frowned and he tapped his pen loudly against his pad of paper. “Miss Miller, I’m here on your behalf. You requested this evaluation in order to be reinstated to active duty. I would strongly suggest you take this meeting seriously.”

“I’m sorry,” I quickly apologized. “I’m just not comfortable talking about her.”

“Why not?”

Fuck. I bit on my lower lip. I could feel the sting at the corner of my eyes. “She betrayed me.”

He looked unmoved or unimpressed by my admission. “Is she the real reason you’ve come back?”

I cleared my throat and collected myself. “Part of the reason.”

“And the other?”

“It wasn’t real up there, you know? That wasn’t my life.”

“But being in the Twin Cities is?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

A quiet bell chimed and the psychiatrist smiled. “That’s all of our time today.” He shifted in his chair. “This was very productive, Miss Miller.”

“So you’re going to reinstate me?” I asked hopefully.

He gave me a measured smile. “Not after only one session. But today was a good start.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I teased the delicate underwear down her thighs. The material stuck to her skin, already damp with arousal. Her thighs pressed around my ears, muffling out the explosions I heard elsewhere. I brought my hand up to her concave stomach and her fingers joined mine. Touches that had once been greedy and forceful had now become languid and gentle. There was nothing rushed or desperate in this exchange.

I lathed my tongue the length of her slit and felt her shudder around me. She arched off the bed, words of praise and encouragement falling in my direction. My tongue divided her slick heat, eager to taste more and make unchecked noises tumble from her slightly parted mouth.

I held her lips open and suckled softly on her exposed clit. Her heels thrummed against my bare back, and I squeezed out the imagery of her digging the stilettoed heel of her shoes into me.

“Right there,” she sighed. Her hips bucked into my mouth. “Stay right there.”

“Never leaving,” I murmured against her skin.

Her movements stilled beneath me, and I looked up at her achingly beautiful face. Her raven-black hair had fallen across her forehead.

“But you did, Cassidy.” Her voice sounded rough. “You left.”