Until Twyla Read online

  “I’ve got you,” I tell her. What I don’t say is that I’m making a vow. I have her now and I intend to always be there when she needs me. The need to protect her consumes me, the feelings so strong that I can’t imagine how anyone could ever ignore it. The guys were right— this boom thing is no joke.

  “Thank you, thank you, so much, without you…. I can’t believe…” sniffling, she tries again. “You saved me twice tonight,” she whimpers.

  “You don’t have to thank me,” I tell her.

  Holding her like this, feeling her body as it shakes from her adrenaline crashing, makes my chest go tight. If anything had happened to her…. fuck. I can’t even go down that road. It’s too big, too raw.

  Sniffling, she lets out a choked sob. “I think I broke my foot or my ankle.”

  Turning, I look to Aurora. “Already called in for an ambulance,” she assures me. “It’s Neil and he’s less than a minute out,” she tells me.

  Neil is her husband and one of the best EMTs we’ve got. I nod and say thanks before I turn back to Twyla. “I’m going to stand and then pick you up so I can take you right to ambulance. You good with that?”

  “Yes, please,” she whispers.

  Letting go of her is way harder than it should be considering I’ve known her for less than two hours and we’ve barely spoken to each other, but fuck if it isn’t painful. No one told me the boom made you crazy on day one. Once I’m up, I bend over and pick her up as gently as possible. As I do, I see the ambulance pulling in behind the squad car that Leo is marching Elias toward. The road rash he has on his face from when I slammed him against the ground isn’t very satisfying, and I can’t help wish I’d had more time with him.

  When he smirks at me, I want to punch the piece of shit in the face. Instead, I walk past him, promising myself that justice is finally going to rock his world. Arriving at the ambulance, I raise my chin toward Neil, the EMT who’s opening the rear doors. He’s one of the best, so I’m glad he’s here.

  “She thinks she may have broken something in her foot,” I tell him.

  “Got it. Do you want me to double back for the stretcher, or can you carry her up?”

  “I’ll carry her,” I tell him. I’m as gentle as possible as I take the two steps up into the ambulance and then set her down on the stretcher. She winces as she puts her legs out and her feet make contact with the surface.

  “Gonna need you to step out for a minute while I do the exam and ask her questions about her medical history,” Neil tells me.

  I give a stiff nod before crouching down next to the stretcher so that Twyla and I are at the same level. “I’ll be right out there,” I tell her. “If you’re uncomfortable or need me at all, just yell my name.”

  Nibbling her lower lip, she blushes. “There’s just one problem with that.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I’m sure yelling ‘hot cop’ would make me seem crazy but it’s the only thing I could yell since I don’t know your name,” she says quietly.

  I laugh for two reasons. One, my girl has a sense of humor, even in dark times. And two, she just called me hot cop. That’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever heard because it means she’s attracted to me.

  “My name is Jensen. Jensen Brian Reed, to be exact.”

  Her smile makes my heart feel too fuckin’ big in my chest. “Jensen,” she murmurs. The sound of my name on her lips is a high I want to experience every day for the rest of my life.

  “I like that better than hot cop,” she continues. “I’m Twyla. Twyla Yvette Penn, to be exact.”

  We grin at each other like two idiots for a few seconds. The moment is over too quickly when Neil clears his throat. “The sooner I get her checked out the sooner we can transport her to the hospital.”

  Turning his way, I narrow my eyes. “Hospital?” I growl.

  He raises his hands in an I surrender motion. “She’s going to need x-rays to determine if the foot is broken, fractured, or just sprained.”

  Frowning, I give him a pointed look. “Don’t pull away without telling me. I’m going to follow you there.”

  His eyebrows go up in surprise before he schools his expression and nods. “Not a problem. I’ll come get you when it’s time.”

  I nod and turn back to Twyla. “See you in a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” she answers, her voice sweet.

  Fuck me, I love hearing her talk. Standing, I turn and look at Neil. “Be gentle with her,” I tell him. I try to say it nicely but it comes out sounding like a threat.

  “I’ll take good care of her,” he answers.

  With that assurance, I walk out of the ambulance and close the doors behind me so that she can be checked over in privacy.

  Chapter Four

  Twyla

  The only time Jensen has left my side since we arrived at the hospital was when the radiologist informed him that he literally couldn’t go into the room with me while I had x-rays taken on my foot. He also couldn’t be in the room for the CT scan they did on my head. Other than that, he’s been here with me. Without a doubt the best thing about tonight has been meeting and spending time with Jensen Reed. The next best things are that I didn’t break my foot, I sprained it, and I don’t have a concussion. Everything else has been a bust.

  To bank back my anxiety between the tests I’ve been peppering him with questions. I now know that he’s twenty-nine, has never been married, and is an only child whose parents retired last year to Florida. I also know that he doesn’t have a girlfriend. When I asked when his last serious relationship was, he stared at me blankly for several seconds.

  “Um, from my senior year in high school to my senior year in college I had a girlfriend. After we graduated, she took a job in Los Angeles and I decided to stay here, so that was that. Since then there’s been nothing serious.”

  “Are you against commitment or something?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “Not at all. I joined the department fresh out of the academy and the guys I work with are interesting, to say the least. Seeing what they have with their women has been a trip. Because of them I knew I couldn’t settle for anything less than a boom.”

  “A boom?”

  “They told me when I met my person, everything would make sense because that’s a boom moment. They were right.”

  The way he looked at me when he explained made me feel like I was hooked up to a generator. It was electric and so intense I wanted to ask him a million more questions. Unfortunately, our conversation was derailed by the arrival of a nurse and since then things have been happening at a fast pace. The good news is I should be getting out of here soon. Case in point, the doctor is finishing up with me at this very moment.

  “There, all wrapped up,” Dr. Paige says as she gestures to my foot. I smile and say thank you as she pulls a sock on over the bandage. She’s been a Godsend to me tonight, never more so than when she gave me a pair of bright white socks from her locker. Without her, my toes would still be freezing.

  “You should take it off for sleep, then rewrap it in the morning. You’ll need to wrap it again each day and keep it wrapped until bed each night. For the next seventy-two hours, it’s critical that you refrain from putting any real weight on this foot,” she stresses. “You need to stay off it as much as possible, okay?”

  I nod, even though I’m stressing over exactly how I can possibly stay off it for that long. I live on the second floor of an older apartment building that doesn’t have an elevator so there’s that, and my parents are in Bruges right now.. The few good-ish friends I’ve made since moving to Nashville work and have busy lives, so it’s not like I can snap my fingers and have one of them drop everything for me.

  Unaware of my internal panic, Dr. Paige goes on. “Keep it elevated and ice it as much as possible. I advise thirty minutes on, thirty minutes off with an ice pack—and make sure you’re wearing a sock. Direct contact is a no-no. As far as heat, that’s a no for the first seventy-two hours. Aft
er that, you can use a heating pad on it for twenty minutes at a time if you find it helps. I’m writing you a script for the six-hundred milligram ibuprofen I just gave you. Take those for the first three days and then drop down to two to three doses of over-the-counter ibuprofen, depending on your pain level. If you need to keep taking the six hundreds for an extra day or so that’s fine, but don’t overdo it. As far as the wrap on your foot goes once the seventy-two hours is up, as long as the swelling is going down, you can also transition to a brace. This should resolve itself completely within two to four weeks, depending on how well you follow the treatment plan.”

  “She’s going to follow it to the letter,” Jensen says.

  “Good, because the amount of patients I see who wind up back in the ER with further injury is almost entirely due to them ignoring the instructions. The injury is to your right foot which means you won’t be able to drive. Don’t try to get around that one—it wouldn’t help your healing process and, more importantly, it could affect other drivers on the road. If you need anything or you’re worried about your pain level, don’t hesitate to come back. I’m going to go hand off your paperwork so you can be discharged.”

  “Okay,” I murmur. “Thank you, Dr. Paige.”

  She says goodbye and walks out of the triage area I’m in, leaving Jensen and I alone again.

  “Listen,” he says, “I don’t want to freak you out, but I’m not going to beat around the bush. I want you to come stay with me.”

  I blink at him like an idiot as I replay his words in my head.

  “Babe,” he prods. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Every time he calls me babe, I melt. Maybe that’s what has happened here. He melted my brain with that sexy southern drawl of his and now I’m hearing things. Yeah. That’d be in line with the night I’ve had.

  “I don’t think I heard you right,” I admit.

  He grins. “Then I’ll say it again so you know you did. I want to take you home with me.”

  I’m not sure what’s crazier. That he’s now said it, twice, or that my immediate thought is to want to say yes. Maybe taking a hit to the head with a gun earlier addled my brain in a way the x-rays didn’t pick up. I need to give him an answer but I don’t even know what to say. Without him giving me a reason why he’s offering, my saying yes would be nuts.

  “Why?”

  “For a lot of reasons, but the one that matters most right now is that you need someone to take care of you. I’m volunteering for the job.”

  Oh. I get it. He’s merely being nice. Even though that’s more of a letdown than it should be, I have to admit that the way he keeps demonstrating what a standup guy he is does nothing to make him less appealing.

  “I know saving me twice in one night gives the impression that I’m not good at taking care of myself, but I swear I don’t normally fail like this.”

  His brow furrows as he leans forward and sets his hands on the side of the hospital bed I’m on.

  “You didn’t fail, babe. Bad shit happens to everyone, and the majority of the time it’s through no fault of their own. Nothing you did caused either of the things that went down tonight to happen. I get what you’re saying about taking care of yourself and I respect that but you need to know I’m not asking you to come home with me out of some twisted hero complex.”

  The warmth in his gaze affects me in ways nothing else ever has. If I weren’t worried about being a total imposition I’d say yes in an instant.

  “I’ll be okay at my apartment,” I tell him.

  I mean, I wouldn’t be great but I could probably hold it down for a few days. I could hop around my small apartment on one foot and Uber Eats and Postmates would ensure I didn’t starve.

  “When you were talking to the nurse who wheeled you to x-ray you told her you’ve only lived in Tennessee for a little over seven months, your parents travel for a living and you don’t have any other family around. You gonna tell me you got a man?”

  The tone of his voice when he asks if I have a man quickens my pulse. “No, I don’t have a man.”

  He lets out a relieved-sounding breath, like I’ve just told him something incredible. “Happy as fuck that you don’t have a man,” he says bluntly.

  The way he looks at me makes me feel hot all over. Beneath the pale green hospital gown and my plain white satin bra, my nipples are stiff. What is happening here?

  “Now tell me this,” he continues. “Are your parents able to fly in and help you for the next few days?”

  My parents are professional travelers. Literally— they earn a living from touring the world and documenting their experiences. Food, hotels, monuments, local attractions, off-the-beaten-path gems, if it exists they dive deep and find it. When I was younger they wrote travel books, but nine years ago they transitioned to YouTube where they vlog. They’re more popular than ever and their audience only grows. They recently hit ten million subscribers, a major milestone in their career.

  Since they’re in Bruges, even the idea of telling them I need a nursemaid for seventy-two hours is nuts. Of course they’d drop everything to do it, but it would take them at least a day to get stateside. My parents’ wanderlust earns them a hell of a living and I don’t want to mess with their schedule, especially since I know how planned out everything is. Most of my adult work experience has consisted of traveling with them as their assistant and camera girl, so I get it. The travel wasn’t fun for me anymore though, and I realized that was because I yearned to set down roots. I was twenty-two years old with a great life and great parents, but something was missing. I felt at loose ends, like I didn’t have anything solid. I’d been homeschooled from fifth grade on, which meant I didn’t have any lifelong friends, and to be honest, I felt I missed out.

  Eighteen months ago while my parents were in London for eight weeks to do an in-depth series on Great Britain, I met and dated Nigel. He was my first—and to this moment, only—boyfriend. He’d asked me to stay when my parents moved on to Switzerland, and I had. For the next two months, we’d lived together in his tiny London flat, but proximity hadn’t elevated our relationship to something deep. He was a sous chef at a restaurant that overnight became an it place in London after William and Kate ate there on a rare night out. Understandably Nigel needed to devote his time to his career, and it was just another thing that kept us apart.

  In the end, we’d parted on great terms and I’d gone back to the gypsy way of life with my parents. There were no words said in anger, no heartbreak, and no tearful goodbyes. Thinking on it later, I realized that although I liked Nigel a lot, I hadn’t been in love with him. I’d felt almost compelled to be in that relationship because I’d never had one before. I don’t regret it, but in my opinion the primary lesson I learned during that time is that being comfortable isn’t the same as experiencing a grand passion.

  After leaving London, I met up with my parents in China. In those few weeks of touring with them, I realized what I’d been missing. A home. While I will always be thankful for the experiences I’ve had while traveling with my parents, I knew I wasn’t meant to keep going like that. I needed to stop and set down roots.

  After making the decision to settle down, I’d had a hell of a time choosing where to live. Finally, my dad bought a map of the world. He hung it on the wall in our temporary living quarters in Shanghai and handed me a dart. “Let fate decide where you’ll land,” he’d said. I’d laughed and thought that choosing where to live based on where a dart landed was preposterous. That was my mindset all the way up to the moment I stepped forward and saw that it was on Tennessee.

  Something inside of me immediately took to the idea. I’d then spent a few days doing research on where, exactly, to live once I arrived. There were a ton of options, but Nashville was the one that called to me. A couple of months later I moved into a quaint little apartment out in the suburbs. Suddenly I can’t help wondering if that dart on the map was fate working to get me to Jensen.

  Shaking my head to clea
r it of such fantasy, I realize he’s waiting for me to answer him. What did he ask again? Squinting, I replay the conversation in my head. Right. He asked if my parents would come take care of me for the next few days. “They’re in Bruges,” I tell him. “Even asking them to come here would be crazy.”

  “Since they can’t blink and get themselves here in the next ten hours, I’m going to say it again. Come home with me, babe. I’m going to take such good care of you, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without me.”

  My stomach twists as the truth of his words hit me. Hard. “My God,” I whisper, “it’s true. Without you, I wouldn’t have survived this night.”

  The look on his face makes my breath catch in my throat. “I’m so fuckin’ happy I was there tonight, babe. I hate that I wasn’t there from the very beginning. I’d lose my mind if something were to happen to you.”

  I know it’s crazy that we’ve only known each other for a handful of hours, but somehow I know he means what he’s saying in a way that isn’t just polite. If I didn’t already know it, the expression on his face would let me know. The intensity of his look causes butterflies to take flight in my stomach and just like that it hits me that I feel safer and more at home with Jensen than I ever have in my life. I’ve traveled the world over but this is the first time I’ve ever felt this particular sense of rightness. I’m staggered by his words and overwhelmed by what he’s done for me tonight but more than that, I don’t want to be away from him.

  “Okay,” I blurt. “I’ll go home with you.”

  Chapter Five

  Jensen

  “We have a problem,” Leo announces as he steps into my kitchen. It’s eight in the morning and I only got two hours of sleep, but when he called and said he needed to see me I got up. He didn’t seem surprised when I texted him last night to let him know I brought Twyla home with me. In an effort to make things easier, he talked two of our fellow officers into following him here to drop Twyla’s car off in the driveway. I assumed he wanted to take my witness statement before his shift ends at nine, but him saying we have a problem makes me think something is up.