Officially Over It - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,3

over in pain.

I guess I kind of expected that would incapacitate him.

But, apparently, it wasn’t enough.

Despite his agonizing pain, the man was able to reach out and strike me across the cheek.

But before he could get another lick in, Nathan was there, saving me from a bullet straight to the face.

“Easy there, killer,” Nathan said after he’d kicked the guy in the jaw. “Don’t want you to break a fingernail. Why don’t you leave this to the big boys?”

I would’ve punched him in the jaw had my face not been throbbing so badly that I could barely think straight.

And, to add insult to injury, Nathan got offered a freakin’ job of all things.

Just fucking perfect.

***

“How do you feel about planning a Police Officer’s Ball?” Flo asked. “Normally I do it but…” She looked at her little girl that’d just been born. “I think that I’m going to be spending a lot of time somewhere else for the time being.”

Chapter 2

Beer, because apparently crack is bad for you.

-Beer mug

Reggie

Six weeks later

“What do you mean I have to attend?” I asked in alarm.

Dracon grinned at me.

“It’ll be fine,” he said as he gestured to everyone around him. “Everyone will be on their best behavior.”

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s not that I’m worried about everyone and their behavior at an event like this.” I rolled my eyes. “My uncle is a cop. I know that everything will be fine. I’m more…” I licked my lips. “Listen, me and crowds don’t do well together.”

Just the idea of having to deal with a crowd of this magnitude was giving me hives already.

This was honestly why I worked with little people in the NICU. There weren’t a ton of people traipsing through the doors of the NICU. There were only limited people allowed. Parents of the babies, siblings of the babies, and sometimes a grandparent or two.

And there were only so many allowed in at a single time.

And if they asked me something, it wouldn’t be about something random. It would be about their sick child.

Dracon sighed. “You’ll be fine. I want you to be there. You’ll be there, right?”

It sounded more like ‘you will be there or else.’

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

In all honestly, I would’ve loved to go to it had he not been going.

He being Nathan Cox. Nathan Cox, the star outfielder for the Shreveport Sparks for three years before retiring and becoming a stupid police officer.

A police officer in my town.

I’d moved away from my hometown because of him and wasn’t it just my luck that he followed me to Kilgore. Not that I believed he actively chose to follow me.

When he’d agreed to work for the Kilgore Police Department, I knew that me being here had nothing to do with his decision. After the incident last year, the mayor had offered him a job on the spot.

Nathan had turned it down, of course, but not for long. He’d come back a few months later and asked if that job was still available, and now look where that left me.

I’d been doing a bang-up job at avoiding Nathan, and I wished to continue to do it, too.

Why did I wish to do it?

Because every time I saw him, it got harder and harder to keep my feelings hidden from the man.

He wasn’t the clueless little boy, or the perceptive—perceptive when it came to anybody but me—young teenager anymore.

Nathan Cox was all man. He had a head on his shoulders that was filled with smarts, and he knew me better than anyone. At least, that was until it came to my feelings about him.

And sooner or later, he was going to find out that I fucking loved him.

That I would do absolutely anything for him, even take out my heart and hand it to him if he asked.

Nathan didn’t understand the depth of my feelings, and I seriously wanted to keep it that way.

“The area police departments will be here in about three hours or so,” I found myself saying. “If you want me to attend, I have to go home and change.”

I had nothing to wear.

I’d honestly thought when Dracon brought up attending it’d been a joke.

Now I see that I should’ve been more observant.

“Go. I’ll hold down the fort. And you hired enough people that should be able to handle it in your absence for an hour,” he said.

And I had.

Thanks to a rather large fund from the ten majoring counties for this