After playing busybody, I walked to the kitchen. I had two cold ones popped open by the time Brock got back and I was taking a huge freaking swallow from mine.

Brock walked right to me and I had to jerk my arms to the side because when he walked to me, he didn’t stop. He folded his arms around me and pulled me in deep.

Then, against the top of my hair, he asked, “You good?”

“I think that was cathartic,” I said to his chest, my arms snaking around him.

“Good,” he muttered into my hair.

“I still feel the need to get drunk,” I went on and he chuckled. “Blotto.” I changed my mind as to the state of drunkenness I aimed to achieve and Brock kept chuckling. Then I changed my mind again, “No, shitfaced. Totally.”

His arms gave me a squeeze before one of them released me and my head went back just as his hand wrapped around my neck, his thumb stroking my jaw.

“Have at it, sweetness,” he said quietly.

I sucked in a breath.

Then I asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he answered immediately.

“Brock—” I started warningly but stopped when he shook his head, his thumb stopped stroking, and his fingers grew tight.

“I could be wrong, babe, but you got through. I don’t know if he was behind the shit that went down in front of your house tonight but if he was, it won’t happen again. You wounded him. No, you crushed him. Whatever fucked-up shit that’s in his head that makes him tick, it unscrambled and he focused long enough for your message to get through. Even if I miss my guess and he still intends to dick with you, I suspect his father will move mountains to try and make him stop.”

“Well, that’s good news”—and it was—“but I was talking about your getting shot at.”

At that, I felt and saw his casual shrug before, “Not my favorite pastime, baby, not even in the top hundred and fifty, but it’s happened and you deal.”

Okay, well…

Yikes!

I’d pulled my shit together but frankly I’d dealt with enough that night and enough the last however many years. I would deal with the fact that my man was a man who got shot at later.

Like, in my next life.

Moving on.

“You said if that was Damian, do you not think it is?”

“He’d be my prime suspect. Or he was until I saw him with you. Probably not his brightest move to admit to calling a hit on a cop ever but definitely not right in front of the cop he called the hit on. But when you were shoutin’ at him, he seemed genuinely surprised and started to deny it, though he didn’t get to finish considering you were still shoutin’.”