Dishing It Out. Molly O'Keefe
you’d like,” Marc said equitably to the jumpy guy while Dad stood, arms crossed over his chest, face mottled red.
“He attacked me!”
“Witnesses say you started—”
The moron started swearing, but one hard look from Marc and he was swearing his way across the yard and to the door on the corner of the building.
“That little punk stole from me. I want what’s mine,” Dad demanded.
“I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, Mr. Camden. He may have started it, but witnesses weren’t singing your praises, either. You did have a deadly weapon.”
“It’s a butter knife.” Dad stumbled toward Marc. “I want it back, you thief!”
“Dad.”
Her father jerked, bobbled as he turned to face her. He scrunched his face up at her uniform. “I thought I told you not to come here like that, Tessie.”
“I’ve told you not to have cause for any of us to come here.” She took his arm, forcing herself to look at Marc in the most professional way she could muster. “No charges?”
He merely shook his head.
“Then I’ll get him inside. Be back in five.” Tess forced herself to act like a police officer, not like a daughter. She was in uniform, and she would make sure he got inside and didn’t have anything in his apartment and then...they’d go right back to work.
No tears. No guilt. No pain. This just was what it was.
Marc didn’t say anything, he just looked at her. With that hooded, unreadable expression. Then his gaze dropped to her arm and she knew he was putting two and two together. He wasn’t the strong silent type because he didn’t know what to say—it was because he sat back and watched and understood uncomfortable truths.
Her father was the source of the gash on her arm last week. A purposeful, violent outburst. And here Tess was helping the man who’d physically attacked her—a whole lot more than once. She refused to let the quiver of self-disgust into her voice. “I’ll be back in five.”
He nodded, then handed her the butter knife, handle first. It took a few seconds for her brain to engage enough to take it, but when she did, he headed for the patrol car without a word. Tess swallowed down the tears and led her father back to his apartment.
“Why can’t you fix this, Tessie? Why can’t you make it all right?”
She wished she had a clue.
* * *
MARC HADN’T KNOWN what to say the rest of the day, and one thing the incident with her father had done was shut up Ms. Chatty Pants.
He wished he could feel glad about that, but there was an uncomfortable weight in his gut. The weight of knowing Tess was every bit the mess he’d expected, and instead of being able to judge her for it, he felt sorry for her.
Her own father was not only a total ass, he’d hurt her. After witnessing the violence in the man this afternoon, Marc had no doubt the broken-glass excuse was bullshit. Tess’s father had hurt her on purpose.
It made him sick, and he didn’t know what to do about that. He’d seen a lot of crappy things in his career, worse than a lousy father, worse even than an abusive one, but what little he knew about Tess and seeing the way she’d carefully helped her father back into his apartment—yeah, it really made him nauseous.
She pulled her patrol car up to the apartment complex and Marc still didn’t know what to say. What he was supposed to do.
Maybe nothing. If he’d been the one in her place he’d want nothing except for her to pretend it had never happened. She hadn’t said anything since aside from the basics that had to be said to get their job done for the day.
She stepped out of the car and he followed suit, stomach tightening uncomfortably in the face of a situation he had no idea what to do with. He tried to avoid that feeling at all costs. It had been such a damn constant growing up, he’d found all the ways to distance it from himself.
But none of his self-preservation instincts kicked in. He felt drawn to the feeling inside, into figuring out some way...some way to help.
This is not the kind of thing you fix.
He knew way too much about those things.
They reached the top of the stairs and Tess slowed her pace as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Well, it was an interesting day.” She didn’t meet his gaze, which was unusual for her. This closed-off, shifty way of standing, looking. Discomfort.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out oddly hoarse as he stood by his door.
“Thanks.” She finally met his gaze and the way she oozed embarrassment and pain had him stepping toward her. For what? He had no idea.
“Anyway, good night.” She gave a little nod, looking at the floor, but the slumped posture and the defeat in her spine made him act against every sensible thought in his head.
“Tess.” He didn’t reach out to her, but that’s what he wanted to do. Why the hell did he want to do that?
“The fact of the matter is I’m going to have a good cry, and if you don’t want me to do that all over your shoulder, you better get in your apartment ASAP.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled and the tears were already shimmering in her eyes.
Yes, he should get inside the safety of his apartment. He wanted nothing to do with a crying woman who was his coworker and kind of flinging her life all over his. Her this-precinct-is-a-family edicts and this stuff with her father and making him talk when he normally wouldn’t and...everything.
But he didn’t move to his door. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder, because there was only so much visceral pain he could see in someone else without trying to help.
Not at all smoothly, he pulled her into a hug. He figured it’d be awkward. In the grand scheme of things, he’d never found hugging people anything but awkward.
But she leaned into his shoulder, resting her head there, her fists trapped between his chest and her collarbone. Her breath hitching occasionally.
He wasn’t sure anyone had ever cried on his shoulder before. In particularly tragic situations he dealt with at work, he’d occasionally offer a hand, a shoulder pat, something solid to hold them up.
But never like this.
“A pity hug from you. I am pathetic.” But she didn’t pull away—she sniffled into his shoulder, and it was such a strange sensation. Holding and comforting someone he barely knew. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this for someone he did know.
“How long has he been like that?”
She stiffened. A question she didn’t want to answer, and inevitably the question that got her to pull herself together and step away.
Because the impulse to touch her face, wipe away the tears there, was shockingly strong, he shoved his hands into his pockets. There was something all wrong about this whole exchange, and it wasn’t her crying or pulling away. It was him. His reaction to it. The wanting to understand and fix wasn’t unique; he felt that a lot.
But he never felt compelled to act. Never acted against the voice in his head telling him to put up a barrier or step away. He had learned his lesson from childhood, damn it.
“Look, um, thanks. Really.” She wiped her face with her palms, let out a shaky breath as she looked around. “Can’t say I’ve ever broken down in a hallway before.”
“Where do you usually do your breaking down?”
“Alone.”
Christ.
“But those big broad football shoulders are good for crying on.”