Leveled (Saints of Denver #0.5)(32)
He ran a finger over the tablecloth and then turned and ran the same finger down the buttons on the front of my shirt. The light touch made my breath hitch and my pulse skip.
“You dressed up your place and yourself. Must be something pretty special we’re celebrating.” I cleared my throat and actually did the gentlemanly thing and pulled his chair out for him. I don’t think I’d ever pulled a chair out for anyone before.
“Very special.” I walked around the table and sat down across from him. I asked him if he wanted a glass of the red wine Mom had brought to go with dinner and I could see humor dancing in his eyes as he nodded. Luckily my mom was a smart woman because I didn’t have anything close to a wine opener in my place and the bottle she left had a cap that screwed off. After sloshing the deep red liquid into a couple of glasses, I sat back and we stared at each other for a long moment. Eventually, Lando lifted the glass to his lips and took a swig. When he put it back down on the table he leaned forward a little and asked,
“You went to your physician today, didn’t you?”
I balked a little and reached up to tug at the collar of my shirt. “I did. How did you know that?”
He waved a hand over the table and all the trappings. “This is all a pretty big hint. He cleared you to go back to work, didn’t he?” I wanted there to be some kind of excitement, some kind of enthusiasm in his tone but there wasn’t. He sounded resigned and fatalistic instead.
“He did. But it’s not like I just get to walk back in and ask for my gun and my shield and demand to be put back on a beat. I have to get cleared by the department shrink, and then I have to pass the department PT test and get requalified with my weapon. None of that is a cakewalk or a guaranteed pass. But this is a big step in the right direction. It’s what we’ve been working towards from the start.”
He picked up the wine and swirled it around in the glass. I could see him struggling to be as happy with my news as I was and it stabbed at somewhere soft and unguarded in the center of my chest. I put my hands on the table and leaned a little bit forward. “You’re not excited for me.” I held up a hand when he opened his mouth to reply. “That wasn’t a question, Lando, it was an observation. I can see that you’re not.”
He swore under his breath and then leaned forward and copied my pose. “I’m happy for you, Dom. It’s me I’m not happy for.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and fought to keep my irritation in check. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means this is the one time in my career I kind of resent that I’m so good at my job. I knew we would eventually get here, but I guess I thought we would have more time.”
More time? It had been three months. Three months of hard work, uncertainty and endless amounts of doubt. For me, it felt like forever to reach this point.
“More time for what, Lando? More time to decide if I was worth the effort or not?” It burned and the image of the pretty boy hanging on his wall and apparently on to his heart taunted me from a really dark place I didn’t even know I had.
“It’s not about you, Dominic. It’s about what you do and if I’m enough a man to watch you walk out the door every day knowing you might not come back. It’s always been there, but now it’s right in my face, and I still don’t have an answer.”
I leaned back and rubbed both of my hands over my short hair in agitation. “I could walk out the front door tomorrow and get nailed by a drunk driver while walking on the sidewalk. I could trip and fall down the stairs when it’s icy and break my neck. And yes, I could go to work one day and up on the wrong end of a bullet, but that happens to a lot of very innocent people that have nothing to do with being in law enforcement. Caring about someone else, being with them is a risk regardless of what they do to pay the bills. I get that you don’t want to be hurt again, but that isn’t a promise anyone can make and keep.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “I care about you a lot, Orlando. More than I was planning on caring while I struggled to get my life back, but I’m willing to take a risk on you. So you have to be willing to do the same if we have any shot at making this work.” I was beyond frustrated because I thought we had gotten past this point in our relationship but apparently not. We really were just stuck in the middle, not gaining any new ground or moving forward.
He matched my stare for a minute before getting up and coming around the table so that he was standing by my side. He reached out a hand and gently brushed the backs of his fingers over my cheek.
“I took a risk when I signed you on as a client because I was attracted to you the minute you walked in my door. I took a risk when we started working together because I knew you were going to push too hard and had to learn that your body has limitations and isn’t indestructible. I took a risk when I let things get personal because I haven’t cared about anyone the way I care about you in a long time and I thought that part of my life and my heart would never function right again.” His thumb caressed my bottom lip and he moved his hand so that he was cupping my clenched jaw in his palm. It was a tender gesture, but there was still a bitter hardness in his eyes that seemed to override it. “You have no idea how hard it has been for me to take those risks, Dom, to keep fear from winning.”
I lifted a hand and curled it around his where it was resting on my face. I turned my head so that I could press a kiss to the center of his palm and then curled his fingers around it so that he was holding on to it. Maybe this was the moment we needed to have. Maybe this was the occasion that we needed to remember. Maybe this was the make it or break it point in us being together. The fork in the road was looming and no, it seemed there was no other choice but to pick which way to go … together or separately.