Text copyright ©2015 Lani Lynn Vale

All Rights Reserved

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Dedication

To my mom. Thank you for reading my sex scenes and not gagging. Love you.

Acknowledgements

Dearest FuriousFotog, you are a blessing. Thank you so much for taking these photos for me. They’re unbelievably beautiful.

Andrew England- when I first started writing, you were the first person that I really took notice of…I always said that one day I would have you on the cover of one of my books, and here you are, lucky number 18. <3

Dearest readers,

I know you’ve been waiting a long time for Michael’s book, and I hope you enjoy reading about him as much as I loved writing his story.

As you know, this is the last in this series, but don’t fret. You’ll see more of them in future books such as Kilgore Fire Department and a future spinoff series of all the ‘Free Kids.’

<3 Thank you so much for reading this book, and all of my earlier work. Just know that it is you right now that made this possible for me.

Lani

Chapter 1

I licked it. So it’s mine.

-Fact of life

Michael

“You’ll need to make sure you get to the house by six if you want to make it on time for dinner,” my father said tiredly. “You know how your mother gets when you don’t show up on time.”

I winced.

I did know how my mother got.

Irrational is what she got.

It’s as if she hadn’t been married to a doctor for the last thirty years.

I can’t name one single time that my father got to any event on time, whether it be a birthday, vacation, sporting event, graduation, or hell, even a fucking birth.

Not one time had I seen her lose it over my father being late, but her baby boy was late and suddenly the whole world stopped.

“I’ll try to be on time,” I told him. “But I’m not promising anything. I have to work until five thirty; it takes nearly thirty minutes to get to your house from the station. And that’s if I leave on time. I told her to make sure she held the party later, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Joslin wanted six,” my father told me hesitantly, opening the door to his office. “And that’s when Dean could be there.”

I squeezed my hands tightly into fists, trying my hardest to not punch a hole in the wall with my fist.

I had no earthly idea why my mother continued to invite my ex-wife.

Dean was at least my fuckin’ brother, and I could understand why he’d have to be there.

It was as if my mom didn’t care that Joslin was no longer married to me. Usually the family chooses the child over the child’s ex.

We were together for a little over a year and a half when I found out she’d cheated.

Granted, the reason she’d cheated had been my fault, or so she’d said, but that still didn’t give her the right to do that to me.

We’d taken vows. And I’d at least meant them.

Refraining from saying, ‘Fuck Joslin,’ I walked to the side doors of the hospital and to the ambulance bay with my father.

“I see,” I settled on.

My father’s face looked pensive, as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to say it.

“Michael, I need to tell you something…” my father started.

I would’ve stayed to listen, but the mic at my shoulder started squawking.

“The nearest unit is needed at 5543 Pleasant Circle. Possible double homicide,” the dispatcher ordered.

Sighing, I turned and offered my hand to my pop.

“Gotta go, dad. I’ll try my hardest to get there on time, but I’m not promising anything,” I told him.

He nodded, looking for the world like he was upset that he hadn’t said what he had to say, and shook my hand before saying, “Be safe.”

My father, like my mother, hadn’t liked that I’d chosen to go into law enforcement.

They’d spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get me through medical school only for me to quit to join the Navy.

Once in the Navy, I’d continued my schooling. After I’d finished, and then got medically discharged due to some slight nerve damage in my left foot from a bomb exploding, did I decided that the medical field wasn’t really something I was much interested in anymore.

Which had pissed both my mother and father off.

Immensely.

But I’d hated it.

I’d only done medical school because it was expected.

None of my family could understand why I’d quit.

My mother was a nurse. My father was a doctor. My brother was a doctor, and my sister was a nurse.

They couldn’t see past the fact that I was happy. They could only see the millions of dollars I was flushing down the drain to be a SWAT officer.

Not to mention they were hardcore Democrats, and I was most definitely not.

My mind, however, screeched to a halt as I saw her.

Nikki.

She had long, rich brown hair, beautiful brown eyes, and stunning caramel skin.

Today, she was in her scrubs.

A dark gray color that, although it should look incredibly ugly, didn’t.

She was a phlebotomist and on the IV team. A licensed paramedic that worked as a tech in the ER. She went around doing IVs throughout the hospital, but mostly stayed down in the ER where she was needed the most.

She was also studying to be a midwife, and from what I’d learned from Nico, her brother and another member of the SWAT team, she was well on her way to graduating.

I was in love with the woman.

No if’s, and’s, or but’s.

So in love with her that I could barely be around her.

She was in love with me, too…or had been when we’d first met.

But I’d ruined that, like I always ruined every-fucking-thing.

See, I was an asshole.

A diagnosed asshole, but an asshole nonetheless.

I was bi-polar.

I take my meds religiously.

Yet, there were times…like when I told Nikki that I didn’t want to have kids with her… that the asshole slipped through, and took hold of innocent people, tearing apart relationships as collateral damage.

I’d not meant it to come out that way.

I’d actually meant it to come out the opposite way entirely.

I didn’t want to have kids fathered by me.

I didn’t want my children to suffer from what I had.

Being bi-polar was only the tip of the iceberg.