One More Time (3 page)

With a shake of my head, I holstered my gun and went back up the trail to the house. I knocked on the door, waited a little while, then knocked again until I heard Caleb moving around in the house. He had all the lights off but with there being a full moon out and the house mostly made up of big glass windows like in one of those pretty magazines my mom had liked, it wasn’t hard to track his movements inside the house. I even saw when he ran into a box and I heard him cursing as he opened up the front door.

“Hi, officer,” he said as he pulled the door open. He looked around the house toward the garage, and I turned to look with him.

“You have raccoons, a few of them probably. Make sure your trash lids are tight, and you’ll be fine, though they may make a mess of things sometimes.” I shrugged. Cleaning up after the raccoons were done was just par for the course as far as I figured. I was born in Denver, but we’d always lived in the mountains. They were home for me, and I was used to seeing more foxes than dogs around town, though we sure had plenty of both.

“Are they dangerous?” City Boy asked.

I smiled and shook my head. “Not really. Well, if one bites you, then maybe. It’ll need to be tested, and if it’s rabid, you’ll need to get shots. But you should be fine.”

He looked instantly more relieved. “Well, that’s great. Yeah. Okay. So, you want to come in for a beer?”

I shouldn’t have, because I had someone back home waiting on me to come back to bed. But…. Damn, what was his name? Sexyboy83 wasn’t it, though that’s what I’d known him as online. Beard Man wasn’t it either, though he did have one. Whatever. I couldn’t remember his name. And Caleb
was
offering me a beer. I nodded. “Sure. A beer would be good.”

“Okay, then.” Caleb stepped aside and I came in. He turned on the lights, and I blinked a few times, getting used to the light, while he fumbled around until he got to the fridge and pulled out some bottles. “I’ve been to the gas station but not the grocery store yet. I have jerky, beer, and that’s about it. I think I’ll be eating at the diner a lot.”

I laughed and took the beer he handed me. “Yeah, most people do. I’m there most days on my lunch break. It’s the unofficial cop spot, I guess.”

“Good to know. Note to self: don’t rob the diner,” Caleb said, then nearly dropped his beer, as if he hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

I laughed and shook my head at his shocked expression. “Yeah, not a good choice of places.” I sat myself on one of the stools that were at the big island and watched him fumble with his words as I drank my beer. My phone went off, and I pulled it out of my pocket to check the text.

Hey dude, you dead or what?

Smiling, I sent a quick text back.
Yep.

Fucker.

I wanted to laugh but instead put my phone back in my pocket. I sure did pick winners to bring home. At least they were just one-night kinds of guys and neither one of us had any sort of expectations. Those were tricky, useless things I didn’t play with anymore.

“Everything okay?” Caleb asked. “You don’t have to run off to another call or something?”

I shook my head. “Everything’s good. Just someone saying hi.” I got off the stool and began looking around the kitchen and living room, since I was nosy but also because I wanted to know what kind of a guy bought a massive house far away from any major city, just to have it for himself.

Growing up, this place—Rocky Creek Stables, as it was once known before the Smiths retired from renting horses to tourists and just bred their horses instead—was somewhere that we kids always wanted to go. There was a horse place down the road, but they were always snobby to us when all we wanted to do was come pet the horses and feed them carrots and apples we saved from the snacks our parents sent us to school with. My mom had thought I suddenly started loving carrots when Mrs. Smith let us come feed the horses, and I asked for extras every day until she caught on.

Caleb followed me over to a bookshelf that had caught my attention. A picture of a pretty woman stood next to a little elephant statue. “Wife?” I asked.

“Sister,” he corrected.

I nodded and kept looking, though I stopped at the biography of someone I’d heard of and also pulled out a romance novel just to confirm. Two guys lay together kissing on the cover. I put it away before turning back to him. “So, you’re gay I take it.”

He leaned against the wall and took a sip of his beer. “I am.”

He looked kind of uncomfortable, maybe because he thought I was going to be judging him, but I just grinned. “Well, then, as the only out person I know of in this town, welcome to Thornwood. Your nearest gay bar worth going to is about an hour east of here in Denver, but the traffic typically isn’t all that bad so sometimes you can make it in closer to forty minutes if you’re lucky.”

“You’re out?” he asked. “And you’re gay?” he added that last part on, though I thought he should have asked it first.

I nodded. I’d been out since I was a kid.

“And no one cares?” he continued, as if it were some foreign concept he couldn’t quite grasp.

“If anyone cared there was a gay cop in town and actually made a fuss, my dad would have something pretty substantial to say about it,” I said as I stepped away from the bookshelf to come join him against the wall.

“Why? He a mountain mob boss or something?” Caleb joked.

I laughed and shook my head. “No, but some people might think he is. He’s the chief.”

Caleb blushed, and I wondered if I could get him to go any darker or if the faint trail of pink over his cheeks that ran down his neck was as dark as he tended to get. Either way, I wanted him. And not just a little bit. I full-on wanted him under me as he lay stretched out over my bed. His dark blond hair was a few inches long, and I wondered how it would look on my pillows and how much his face would flush as I went down on him.

I was getting hard just thinking about it, but then I felt a bit guilty since I’d had a guy in my bed before coming over. I couldn’t really help being attracted to Caleb, but I could keep from being an asshole by not coming on to him the same night. Plus, I’d known him less than a day. Maybe he had someone waiting to come over to Colorado with him.

I’d find out sooner or later, because as a cop it was my business to know what was going on in my town. But I wasn’t going to stand here with a hard dick pretending I didn’t want Caleb to get down on his knees for me and make it all better. So I quickly downed the last of my beer, handed him my empty bottle, and then moved toward the front door.

“Thanks for the drink,” I told him. “Take care, and be wary of strange raccoons.”

Caleb chuckled and followed me to the door. “Thanks for coming by to check it out for me and making sure I was safe.”

“Sure thing. Thanks for calling me. Good night.”

He waved to me as I went down the trail to my car. I waved to him from beside his SUV and turned on my flashlight so I didn’t trip on my way back to my car. His expired tags would need fixing, but I wouldn’t mention it to him for another month. I still probably wouldn’t give him a ticket, though. In such a small community, we didn’t really like giving out tickets to our neighbors.

I drove back to my house, one of the little townhomes that stood in a row just off the main street. I could walk to the store, and if I didn’t get a load of groceries, I could get myself just as easily to the diner too. I was pretty low on supplies though, so I’d need to take my car the next time I went. I was expecting to have my house to myself when I got there, but I found the bearded guy still naked, still waiting for me on my bed when I came in the front door. With my bedroom door open I could see him as soon as I crossed over the threshold of my little townhouse. Most of them were at least two bedrooms but I’d gone with the cheapest option.

“I thought you’d be gone before I got back,” I said as I began taking off my holster and badge and locking them up.

He got off the bed but didn’t say anything as he started kissing me, and I didn’t mind the silence as he helped me get my clothes off. We were naked again and I was on top of him with his face smashed into the blankets a few minutes later. He moaned, he cried out, he did everything he had before, and I still enjoyed him. But I wished his hair was blonder and he looked more like Caleb.

I had to close my eyes to come, but he didn’t have that problem as he made a mess of my sheets. I’d be changing them as soon as he was gone. Panting, sweaty, and not nearly as tired as I needed to be in order to get some rest so I could go to work the next morning, I tossed the condom into the trash and started up the shower in the little bathroom just off my bedroom.

This time he really was going as I heard him get his things together and head downstairs. I showered quickly, put on a pair of shorts, locked the door behind him, and then started a load of sheets before I tried to get some sleep. I didn’t get much, but at least I was more rested than if I hadn’t tried to get any sleep at all when I showed up for work.

My dad was already standing there with a cup of coffee in his hands and a whole lot of questions ready to go for me. “What’s the new man like? Will he be giving us trouble?” Dad asked as soon as I came in. He plopped a cup of coffee in front of me too, and I sniffed it gratefully. It needed to cool down some before I could actually start drinking it, but I desperately wanted to. I wasn’t a morning person, not at all, and so I felt as if I were suffering just by being there so early.

“He seems fine,” I said as soon as I was able to take a sip. It was still a bit too hot for me, but the caffeine would help me wake up. I just needed to stay awake long enough for the caffeine to make it into my system. I had seen a sign a few weeks back at a grocery store, not ours but somewhere in Denver where I was waiting to meet with a guy before we headed to a hotel, and it said “I Own You” with a coffee cup under it. That was pretty much how I felt every miserable morning that I had to be at the precinct. Which was really little more than a one-room office a block away from my dad’s house—the same one I’d grown up in, the same one he’d probably die in. We were those kinds of people, where we lived in the same little town where he’d been born and where my grandparents had moved to when they were younger than me.

I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than Thornwood. This was home to me, and even though I went into Denver, I was always eager to come right back. There was far more to do in Denver, but I felt more alive, more whole, and more myself back home.

I hadn’t had a text from the guy last night, and I didn’t expect to. There had been very few guys in my life recently who hadn’t gotten the picture. I needed the release, and the sex was typically good. It didn’t have to mean more than that.

“He have a family coming?” Dad asked as he sat down at his desk that touched mine. Sometimes it was weird working across from my dad, but most of the time it felt completely normal. I couldn’t slack like some of the guys tried to do, which was a pain sometimes when all I wanted to do was level up on whatever game I was playing on my phone that week. But I’d been coming into the station with him since Mom died, and before I had my own desk, I’d been right beside him. I’d colored at first, and after that I learned how to read, mostly from the police reports his guys turned in.

I shook my head and took a bigger sip of my coffee. It was starting to really work. “Not that I know of. He has a sister, but I don’t think there’s anyone else coming.” I debated telling my dad that he was gay, especially since no one else was in the office yet, but I figured that wouldn’t be my thing to share. I’d been outed, by my dad of all people, when I was about eight. It hadn’t felt amazing to have people stare at me, or for them to tell me I couldn’t possibly know my own sexuality at that age, but my dad had always been decent about it.

“Think he has any friends in town?”

I wasn’t sure why my dad seemed so focused on Caleb, but I figured it was probably because nothing much happened in Thornwood. We didn’t get murders, and maybe three times a year we responded to a break-in call, but that was usually just some kid coming home late and trying to be all quiet about sneaking in. Caleb moving here was kind of a big deal. If we’d had our own paper, he would have probably made the front page as not only the new guy, but a guy who had moved into the biggest house in town and bought it with a cash offer. The Smiths had told everyone who would listen about that, since it seemed so strange to them. It was a pretty big deal. I half thought Caleb must have been some kind of billionaire from Wall Street or something like that.

“I don’t know, Dad. Anything happening police related?” I asked. I hoped to get the focus off Caleb, not because I didn’t like him, but because it was too early in the morning for me to be thinking about having him, which was where my thoughts would probably go in a bit if my dad didn’t drop him as the preferred topic for the morning.

But my dad was stubborn when he got focused on something. “You have plenty of friends. Maybe you should introduce him to one of them.”

I had no idea who he would be talking about. I was friendly with the people in town, but I wouldn’t actually call any of them friends. “What friends?”

Dad gave me a stern look, and if I’d been a kid, or hell, maybe a bit more awake, I would have expected to be in trouble. As it was, I was still trying to figure out these “friends” he was talking about. “Your townhouse is on my way home. I’ve seen the guys you bring home on occasion, and you look like you’re close to them. Now, I’m not upset that I’ve never met any of your friends. I know you have your own life. But maybe you should introduce them to the new guy. It must be hard moving to a new town and not having anyone you know.”

By the time he was done talking I was openly staring at him. “Dad….” I had no idea where to begin. “Those guys aren’t my friends. We’re friendly, but they’re not someone I would bring over to introduce to you. And the new guy’s name is Caleb.”

I hoped my dad figured out what I was saying without me having to go into detail about it. I really needed him to do that for me.