Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(81)

Walking out of the hospital had seemed like a good idea at the time. I wanted to leave my pain—body and heart—behind me. The cold night air only served to remind me that I was not exactly in top form. Still, I wanted to keep my mind off things.

Ryder.

The way I saw it, I had three important things to deal with: Heim’s murder, Dan shooting me, and finding someone to take on the god power. First things first. I nursed the soda while scanning through files on my phone—notes about Heim’s murder I had pulled together what felt like weeks ago, but was only days ago. I scrolled through the list of suspects.

It was still a small list: Dan Perkin, Chris, Margot Lapointe, and Lila Carson. Herri, Walt the deck hand.

Jean and I had already talked to everyone on that list except for Heim’s missing deck hand, Walt. I didn’t know if Myra had gotten any hits on his location and I wasn’t going to go into the station to check up on that now.

I read through Myra’s report. She had searched the boat, talked to the harbor master. There was nothing there to indicate if anyone unusual had been aboard. No murder weapon, not even a drop of blood to mark the crime.

Coroner was convinced someone had hit Heim on the back of the head. Pushed him overboard. He could narrow the time of death down by a variety of factors, including the state of the corpse and the turn of the tides. Heim had been murdered Sunday evening and everyone we’d spoken with had an alibi.

Someone was lying.

“Where’s your boyfriend, Delaney?”

I glanced up. Cooper looked like he’d had plenty to drink. He stood with his feet wide, a beer in one hand. He had on a tight white T-shirt that was thin and snug across his lean muscles and showed just how trim he was at the waist and hips, faded jeans, and boots. His brown eyes were storm-dark as he stared at my lips then snapped up to my eyes.

My stomach flipped and blood rushed hard across my chest and face, and the song, the noise, the clamoring of the power in my head rose like someone had just cranked the volume to one hundred.

Cooper looked like sex. Even shot and bruised and tired and on meds, I could remember what sex with him had been like.

Ryder didn’t want me. Cooper did. But did I want Cooper?

No. I knew the answer to that a year ago. Cooper and I were done.

I shook my head at myself and tried to lean back in my chair in a way that didn’t make half my body throb.

“You’re drunk, Cooper.”

“I’m in a bar, Del,” he said a little too loudly, drawing the attention of the people nearest us. “Why the hell else would I be here?”

I stared at him, trying to decide how to defuse this situation. “You done yelling? Or do I have to sit through the whole show?”

“You think you’re fooling me? Acting calm. Acting…” He waved his beer at me like it was a brush he could paint me with.

“All right. Get it out.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. You think you can just tell everyone what to do in this town? I know you, Delaney. Standing in your daddy’s shoes and acting like you know something. You’re just a scared little girl who wants someone to hold her hand, and when someone comes back to offer you that, you slap it away. You got a badge, you got a reputation, but you don’t have anything under control.”

“Done?” I asked, low, calm.

He scowled. Pretty much everyone in the place was watching. These sorts of shows were big news on the gossip circuit in a small town.

I didn’t care. I’d known Cooper for a long time. I knew he struck out at other people when he was in pain, even if they had nothing to do with his pain. He was hurting and drunk and I was a handy target.

“You want to know why I came back to this piss hole, Delaney?” he shouted. “I came back for you!”

And there it was, right on cue: our unfinished business.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Herri walking our way.

“Did you hear me?” he cried. “I stopped everything and came back here. To this…to this place! For you. I need you, Delaney. I need you to need me too.”

About half the bar was silent, staring our way. The other half was too drunk to care. Someone shouted at him to shut up.

I kept my expression calm. I’d seen Cooper like this before. He was feeling lost and flailing for something to hold on to. He’d been lost for most of his life, eyes on a horizon that never led to home. He had told me he had come back to town looking for something. Hoping to find something here.

The easiest thing to think he was looking for was the one thing he knew he couldn’t have. Me.

He’d been the one to push us away, to push me away. And in our time apart I’d done a lot of honest and painful looking around in my own heart.

I liked Cooper. Could even love him as a friend who had once been more than a friend when he wasn’t being an ass.

But I knew with all my heart that we weren’t the horizon the other was searching for. We’d been a safe port for a time, but even if Cooper had stayed in town, even if he’d wanted to stay with me, it never would have lasted.

He deserved something real. He deserved what he was looking for, not some ghost of the past he was willing to settle on having.

“We should talk about this later,” I said gently. “When you’re sober.”

He made a sound low in his throat and lunged forward. Maybe it was the medicine, or the fact that I was still in pain, but I didn’t think fast enough to move away. He grabbed my arm and jerked, forcing me onto my feet.