Just a Little Series (Parts 1 - 4) by Tracie Puckett Read Free Book Online Page A

everyone he knew, loved, and cared about.”
    “What happened to your parents was a
tragedy, Julie. But it’s unheard of. Most guys violent enough to
commit a crime that heinous never see the light of day after their
arrest. I’m not saying that terrible things don’t happen. They do.
But you can’t call us selfish because of what happened to your
parents. If your dad had any reason to believe his family was in
danger—”
    “Yeah,” I felt no need to hear him repeat
the same words Matt and Charlie had been saying since the funeral. If dad had known, he would’ve prevented it . I felt a tear
slip down my cheek and land on my lips.
    “It’s just hard,” I said. “I miss him so
much, but I can’t get past hating him. He should’ve protected her,
Luke. He should’ve looked out for my mom. Husbands are supposed
to protect their wives, and he let her down . He let me down. He let her die, and I lost my mom. Now they’re both gone.”
    “Julie—”
    “All I want is to see him one more time…
just once, so I can tell him how much I blame him… and how much I
miss him… and how much I need both of them to just come home.”
    As I sat in the passenger’s seat, tears
soaking the top of my shirt, Luke took my hand and brushed my
fingers with his. It looked as though he had a million things
running through his mind, but none that he knew how to say. He
chose to maintain the silence, letting me cry for a little while
longer. When the moments passed, and the rain let up, the sun
finally started to shine on the horizon.
    I dried the tears with the back of my hand
and passed an apologetic glance to Luke.
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t
have—”
    “It’s okay,” he squeezed my fingers tighter.
“It’s healthy to get that out.”
    I nodded.
    “And Julie,” his brown eyes met mine as he
leaned a little closer, “you can’t blame Charlie, and you most
certainly can’t blame anyone else in uniform. And if the day ever
comes that you find yourself falling for someone who’s chosen the
same lifestyle as your father, you can’t blame him for what you’ve
lost either. You can’t make him suffer. If anything, let him help
you. See, you can’t live your life in fear, kid. At some point—and
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, you have to learn to let
go.”
    I bit back another sob and looked away,
staring out the window and avoiding the soft look in his eye.
Something told me that Luke knew a thing or two about holding on to
fear, but it still didn’t comfort me.
    “I’m not ready to let go,” I heard the
bitterness in my voice.
    I turned back and looked at our linked
hands, and back up to Luke’s half-hearted grin.
    “What do you say we change the subject for
now?” he knew that I was on the verge of another emotional
breakdown. Either he didn’t want to listen to another sobfest, or
he truly wanted to spare me from dealing with all those raw
emotions. “How’s that sound?”
    “Like a very, very good idea.”
    “Okay,” he looked down at the notebook. “Any
more questions you haven’t asked?”
    There were plenty on the page, but none that
would open the door to who he really was. All the questions I
wanted answers to were the ones burning in my heart, the ones that
would lead me closer to knowing everything I could know about him.
Sadly, he was right back at the station the other day. I didn’t
really care about the job-shadowing program, the report, or getting
a passing grade. All I really cared about was learning as much as I
possibly could about the man sitting next to me.
    “The scar,” I gently gnawed on the top of my
lip. “How’d you get it?”
    “Another story for another time,” he shifted
uncomfortably in his seat.
    I accepted his answer, though still unable
to pull my gaze from his lips. I couldn’t help but wonder a million
things I knew I shouldn’t… for starters, what would they feel like?
Or better yet, how would they taste?
    And as if he knew