Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(66)
“Doctor Novak, why aren’t you answering your pager? What happened?” She urged me along. I think my legs moved though I wasn’t sure. “We have a pediatric trauma coming in via Lifeflight. A four-year-old was struck by a car. ETA is seven minutes.”
I LEANED BACK in my chair and dug into my front jeans pocket for my money. I had a hundred on me tonight, which, knowing my luck at playing Poker every other Friday night, I’d probably just end up handing over to the grinning prick sitting on my right, but that was a risk I was willing to take for the love of the game.
“Hey, Adam, good to see ya. Oh, and congrats. Heard you got the Medal of Valor,” Jack Gillis said, patting me on the shoulder. “Good job, dude.”
Officer Jack Gillis was one of the good guys, funny as shit, too, but looked scruffy and unkempt like a street punk I’d normally haul away in cuffs. His look came with the job. He was undercover narcotics, part of Philly DEA, just like my oldest brother, Michael, though Mike was smart enough to move to south Florida and away from the harsh winter weather of the north to wage his personal war on drugs.
“Thanks, man.” I peeled a twenty off the folded stack and tossed it across the table at my partner, Marcus. “My ante.”
“Sucks you had to get stabbed to get a f*cking award but hey, that’s just part of the job,” Jack continued.
I nodded and bit another hunk off my slice of pizza, washing it down with a swig of iced tea. Sometimes the smell of beer was tempting; sometimes it turned my stomach. Tonight, even the beads of condensation dripping down the brown bottles setting all around Marcus’s poker table were enticing.
I took another long swig of my tea, catching a chip of ice between my teeth, doing my best to tamp down the dry burn that was rolling up my throat.
I’d been clean for almost ten months, something that the men surrounding me at this table were well aware of; still I couldn’t be a pansy * and ask them not to enjoy themselves just because I had a hard time stopping at one or two. That was all on me to manage.
We’d given up rotating houses; Marcus had recently refurbished his basement and bought a beautiful poker table inlaid with green felt. It was the shit, though the familiar surroundings and faces did little to ease my mind tonight.
The smell of homemade cookies wafting through the air was also making me slightly insane. Chocolate chip with extra chocolate—my favorite. But then again, Marcus’s wife, Cherise, knew that. She also knew that I was in a funk the moment I stepped foot inside her kitchen and seeing as I didn’t drink anymore, offered to drown my sorrows with her special cookies. Sometimes I wondered if the woman knew me better than I knew myself.
Well, maybe that’s not completely accurate. I knew exactly why I was in a shitty-ass mood. Had been that way for the last week, ever since I left Erin standing alone in her living room, looking at me with confusion, as if she’d been the one to do something wrong.
Visions of her lovely face, of those amazing blue eyes that held me captive like a prisoner in my own mind, haunted my every waking moment. I kept doubting my reactions and intentions around her, knowing that all it would take would be one taste of her mouth and I’d drink her in and drown my sorrows. That alone made her hazardous to my health, but categorizing a treasure like that was totally unfair.
I stared at the cards in my hand, seeing a Jack of spades with its one eye glaring at me, telling me what an * I was being.
Erin deserved an explanation. No, she deserved the truth as to why I reacted the way I did, but no matter how many times I reached for my cell or thought about contacting her to explain things, I couldn’t make myself do it. What would I say? Yeah, about your dead family member… well you see, my team caused that. We f*cked up and well, shit happens. Sorry. Hope you can get over it.
Some stand-up guy I was being. I couldn’t even man-up enough to be honest with her. Instead I skipped out on her like a big freaking coward and worked on her house while she was sleeping. Avoiding her seemed to be the easiest option.
Marcus studied his cards as if they were a tech manual, while his friend, a guy we secretly called Booger, dug his hand into the chip bowl. Todd Shifley was a pretty decent dude, our age, and on one of the local fire departments, but after seeing him pick at his nose and then spend time swirling his hand in the chip bowl, avoiding the unhealthy snack Booger touched became an easy fete. Fellow ATTF officers Nate Westfield and Mark “The Gribs” Gribble were sitting on either side of him, both just as disgusted. Some people had no class.
Who am I to judge? I have no class. I left a classy woman like Erin high and dry.
I’m a classless train wreck.
“’Bout time you bring us some cookies, woman.”
My head popped up.
Cherise had a tray in one hand, her other hand now on her hip, and a death scowl pointing directly at her husband. “You’ll be lucky to get a crumb with that kind of attitude.”
Marcus glared back, questioning her sass. “That so?”
She waved him off like only a black woman is capable of and brought the tray over to me.
“God, I love you,” I said, eyeing the pile of cookies instead of her pretty face. Sometimes I wondered if Marcus realized how lucky he was. Not only was his wife sexy, she was smart as a whip, using her gifts to run one of the local Penn National Bank branches.
She pointed a long red fingernail at me. “And that’s why you get cookies. Take a bunch. Not like Marcus will get any, not after that.”