Blacklisted (Loveless, Texas #3) - Jay Crownover Page 0,85

loudly in my ear. “Didn’t peg you as the type to worry about how you looked, Palmer. Makes me dislike you a little bit less. The good thing about Presley is that she’s far more reasonable than Kody. When she knows the truth, and the reasons why you were alone with the woman who tried to ruin her, she’ll come around. She cares about you. She’s not going to abandon you that easily.”

“I hope you’re right.” If he wasn’t, I’d risked it all for nothing and Ashby Grant would get exactly what she wanted, even if she ended up behind bars. “If this goes bad, it’s gonna go bad for both of us.”

And I knew neither one of us wanted to lose the ground we’d gained when it came to proving to Presley we weren’t going to let her down.

Chapter 18

Presley

Are you sure you’re okay here by yourself if I head home?”

I looked up from the paperwork I was double-checking, knowing full well I was going to triple-check it before sending the findings over to the detective in charge of the case. After all the work Ashby put into tainting my spotless track record, I was hyperaware and extra vigilant, determined that nothing less than perfection would fly in my new position. Until she confessed and admitted that none of the mistakes that had endangered the cases I worked on were made by me, and that she had caused them purposely to cost me the promotion, I was going to feel the unseen shadow of doubt about my abilities hanging over my head. I didn’t care that it meant I needed to put in longer hours and be even more diligent than I’d been before. No mistakes were going to slip through the cracks as long as I had anything to say about it.

I looked up at the young intern who appeared to be ready to fall asleep on her feet. She was going to go far in this field. She was detail oriented, calm under pressure, and hadn’t bailed when we’d gotten back-to-back cases that were enough to turn even the seasoned professional’s stomach. Not wanting her to burn out before she even got started, I nodded and replied, “I’m fine. I won’t be much longer.”

It was a lie. I was nitpicking the details of the autopsy findings in front of me. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I didn’t want to scare the young woman off unnecessarily. Not everyone who got into this line of work let it take over their entire life the way I had. I was just now learning about balance in all aspects. Mostly because I had people worrying about me and wondering where I was if I disappeared into my work for too long. If Shot didn’t call or text to remind me to eat during the day, and if I didn’t know he was waiting for me to get off work, there was a solid chance I would have slipped right back into being a severe workaholic, especially with my mother being gone.

And even if I didn’t hear from Shot I had Kody checking up on me, reminding me there were people outside the morgue and my office walls who needed me and wanted me around. She’d finally told Hill about the baby and, as expected, he was over the moon. Kody was right in thinking he was going to overreact to the news to the extreme. Hill told her he didn’t want to be on the road all the time with the Rangers if they were going to start a family. He wanted to quit his job, but she wanted him to keep it. It was an argument they couldn’t seem to find middle ground on, and as a result Kody had ended up spending more and more time searching me out to be a sympathetic ear. We grew closer and closer every day, and I could no longer deny she really felt like the little sister I’d never even known I wanted. Now I couldn’t picture my life without her, and my brothers, in it.

I still worked a lot, buried my head in reports and results. Pored over findings and court cases. Read up on all the new technology and advancements in my beloved field, but now, I also made time to take care of myself throughout the day. Thanks to Shot, I was getting better and better at leaving the dead behind when it was time to go