Things We Hide from the Light (Knockemout, #2)

by Lucy Score

I wanted to work my way up to pissed off. Wanted to feel something other than the great, sucking void that rolled over me, inevitable as the tide. But there was nothing. Just me and the void.

Everyone was alive and breathing. Everyone but me. I was just pretending.

I should have a personal agenda. Should be out there hunting down the man myself. If not for me, then for Naomi and Waylay. He’d victimized my brother’s fiancée and her niece in another way, by abducting them and terrorizing them over the list that had earned me two bullet holes.

She leaned in an inch closer, and a single spark of something warm stirred in my belly. I wanted to cling to it, to cup it in my hands until it thawed my icy blood.

That spark multiplied into a dozen tiny little embers, almost enough for me to remember what it was like to feel something.

But I wanted her to stay close. Needed her to fan those weak sparks to see if there was anything inside me worth burning.

If I was going to be a walking corpse for the rest of my life, I should at least be one who could handle a conversation on a flight of stairs.

But I had more urgent things to do than flirting away the sadness that Nash wore like a cloak.

I preferred the enjoy ’em and leave ’em lifestyle, there was nothing I loved more than a challenge. And getting under that facade, digging

into what put those shadows in his sad hero eyes would be exactly that.

But Nash struck me as the settling-down type, and I was allerg...

I laughed. My parents had one of those relationships that no matter how different they were from each other, no matter how long they’d been married, they were still the other’s biggest cheerleaders…and biggest annoyances.

“Small towns are where busy professional women get seduced by a rough-around-the-edges local business owner. Ooh! Or a sheriff. Have you met the sheriff yet?”

I wanted to be buried inside her so deep that when she let go, she’d take me with her, wrapped up in all that heat.

This was more than a crush, a run-of-the-mill attraction. What I felt teetered on the line of uncontrolled craving.

Those sparks in my gut had flared to life and spread, warming me from the inside out. I wanted to touch her again. Needed to. But just as I raised my hand to reach for her, a shrill beeping cut through my awareness.

“You’re gonna ruin your clothes,” I warned her, looking up at the blue sky and not down at her as she crawled forward on all fours. “That’s what laundry and shopping are for,” she said, ducking her head into the opening.

She was talking—crooning—to the dog. I knew that. But something stupid and desperate inside me responded to her soothing, throaty tone.

😹😹😹😹

I stared down at her ass again. I was going to have to be real careful how I wrote up this incident report or Grave would have a fucking field day with it.

“Jesus, Nash, I’m giving you consent to haul me out of this drainage pipe by my ass. Get to it!”

“Well, I’ll just be on my way to tell everyone I see how Chief Morgan starts his Saturday morning.”

“Don’t worry. I cropped it at the waist so no one will see what kind of weaponry you’re packing,” she teased, coming to stand before me and taking a selfie of the three of us. I scowled for it and she laughed.

If you concede that there are worse things than making me feel physically attractive even when I’m sweaty and covered in mud. Deal?”

That wasn’t supposed to be there. I didn’t like spontaneous physical touch. I was always hyperaware of it. But with Nash it felt…different.

I was now one million percent positive that those wounds of his went deeper than he was letting on.

He still looked a little dazed. There was something about the wounded Nash Morgan that tugged at me. And the temptation to tug back was nearly overwhelming.

He looked so lost I had to fight the urge to tackle him and kiss it better.

“Figured I’d get her in the tub to make sure she wasn’t gonna go all gremlin on us,” Nash said.

The man’s life might be gathering dust, but that heroism went bone-deep. The splinter of guilt grew into something bigger, sharper, and I counted my lucky stars that he hadn’t actually caught me snooping.

Every time Nash’s bare arm brushed mine, goose bumps exploded across my skin. Every time I felt the urge to move closer instead of putting some distance between us, I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. I was close enough to see every wince he made when he moved his shoulder in a way that didn’t agree with the damaged muscles. But he never once complained.

I was here to do a job, not complicate things by getting cozy with an unfairly hot neighbor.

I felt…something. Like the space between us was charged with energy that kept intensifying.

The High Net Assets department meant more travel, longer jobs, deeper cover, and bigger bonuses. It also meant more solo assignments. It was my big, scary goal and now here it was.

Part of me wanted to say yes. To get on a plane, dig into the intel, and find a way in. But the bigger, louder part of me knew I wasn’t prepared to lead a team. I’d proven that resoundingly. And there was another smaller, barely audible part that was getting tired of shitty motels and endless hours of surveillance. The one that carried the mantle of guilt and frustration for an op gone wrong. The one that might be losing her edge.

“Fuck me,” I muttered. “You think I’m capable of protecting you from anything? I can’t even protect myself.”

“Okay, weirdo. Let’s go. I’ll save you from the big bad broom.”

I hadn’t touched the pain pills. But the others, ones for depression, ones for anxiety, had helped in the beginning. Until I’d decided to just embrace that cold, dark emptiness. To wallow in it. To see how long I could survive in its murky depths.

And I hadn’t let anyone see the yawning chasm of emptiness that lived in my chest.

Careful not to wake her, I tucked the lamb next to her to ward off the bad and then headed into the bathroom.

My body was healing, at least on the outside. But it was my mind I worried about.

It was a depraved kind of longing. One I almost relished because feeling something, anything was better than nothing. And because that fucked-up need had given me something I was afraid I’d lost.

After all, what kind of an asshole prioritized the function of his dick over his mental health? So I’d buried the worry and pretended everything below the belt was just tired or bored or whatever the hell dicks got.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how you made a relationship last. No burdens. No emotional baggage. Keep your needs few and your quality time fun.

I wasn’t prepared to make small talk with the chief of police mere hours after hearing him bringing himself to climax in the shower one not-so-soundproofed wall away.

“Miss Lina, if you don’t mind my saying, you put the autumn leaves to shame with your beauty.”

“Knockemout sure grows them charming,” I observed.

Small-town romance hot enough to make you blush?”

Note to self: Avoid men who make you stupid.

Nolan was a cocky pain in the ass. But he was good at his job, not a misogynistic idiot, and if memory served, he was also a great dancer.

He smoothed his finger and thumb over it. “Wanna take it for a spin later?”