THE DO-OVER (The Rooftop Crew #5)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Knox

“I think you’re the first to have to arrest your girlfriend,” DuPont says, snickering with Milliken as they pass by my desk.

“Ex-girlfriend,” Patrice says, but she’s talking to air because they’re busy spreading the gossip.

Back when we were an item, I brought Leilani to the precinct’s Christmas party and to a wedding for an officer at the station. So when Captain Donnelly saw me walk her into the station in cuffs, his chin fell to his chest. I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life—except for that time back in fourth grade when I stuttered my way through my read-aloud session and got stuck with the shitty tagline of “Knox is as dumb as a box of rocks.”

At the moment, Leilani is with the detectives and in a room where she’s out of my sight.

“How did you ever meet her in the first place?” Patrice asks, tapping her pen on the desk across from mine.

I shake my head, remembering that night for the first time in a long time. Leilani has weaved in and out of my life so often that I never really think about the first time we met. But the way I would describe it is that she flew into my life rather than walked in.

“We were at this bar named Duke’s. Me, Dylan, and a few other guys. There was this table of girls nearby that we started talking to.”

“Leilani was one of them?” Patrice asks over a stack of papers as she moves to the other side of her desk.

I shake my head. “No. They were friends with the waitress.”

I smile, remembering the waitress. She was Polynesian, just like Leilani. I’d been flirting with the waitress originally.

“Waitress?”

I nod. “She was waiting on us the entire night and brought us some drinks from her friends. One of them was into Dylan.”

“What’s not to be into?”

I raise my eyebrows. “You’re married.”

“And he’s engaged. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good-looking guy.”

Shaking my head, I continue. “She had this smile that lit up the entire room. She was sweet and funny and—”

“Was Leilani the waitress?”

“No. Leilani came later. I’d just forgotten about that waitress until you brought this up.”

Patrice’s eyebrows furrow as she stares at me as though she wants me to get to the point.

“I’d been talking with the waitress most of the night, flirting, and I was gonna ask her what she was doing when she got off. But one of my friends was saying she was like the girl next door. You know, the kind that you bring home to your mother. That set off the alarm bells in my head.”

“Men are such jackasses.” Patrice opens a drawer at her desk and grabs a Snickers bar, opens the wrapper, and takes a big bite.

I shrug. “I was young. Like… twenty-three? The last thing I wanted was something serious. Someone who’d want to meet my mother. Someone who’d be weighing my capability of taking care of them for the rest of their life. So I came to my senses when my friend said it. Then the door opened, and Leilani blew in.”

Patrice sighs. “Let’s not make it sound like a romance movie. You didn’t live happily ever after, remember? You just arrested her.”

“I know, I know. But I was blown away by her demeanor. Like she was there to party and live life as it came to her instead of having some predestined plan of what she wanted.”

“And now she shoots people with paint guns.”

I hear Patrice, but my mind is still at that bar. I’m thinking about that waitress and the path my life might have traveled if I’d asked her out instead of hooking up with Leilani.

“She won you over in bed, didn’t she?”

I scoff, but Patrice is right. Leilani isn’t one for inhibitions, and she’s as comfortable with her sexuality as she is with her place in this world. I’d never met someone without any insecurities, and I always felt like I fell short. Because growing up poor as s**t with people thinking you’re dumb as rocks leaves a mark. But I kept those parts of me hidden from Leilani and only showed her the strong personality people tend to expect from a police officer.

“Anyway, I think we dated for, like, three months that first time. I guess maybe I wouldn’t even call it dating. More like one of us would call the other when we wanted to have s*x. Then she left for some march or something in DC. Never returned. Came back six months later or so, and that time we actually started dating.” I shake my head, not wanting to relive this memory. “She came and went multiple times. The last time she stayed longer than she ever had before and I thought she’d settled down, but I was wrong.”

“Man, you really screwed that up.” Patrice balls up her Snickers wrapper and tosses it in the trash can.

I straighten in my chair and roll up to my desk. “She left me, not the other way around.”

“I’m talking about the waitress. You should’ve dated her. She seems more your speed.”

“Actually, wanna know something strange? Leilani came in that night to see the waitress, but in all the times I met her friends, I never saw that waitress again. That’s odd, right?”

“Everything about the chick is odd,” Patrice says.

Another good point. I can’t help but wonder whatever happened to that waitress and if she’s even still friends with Leilani.

An hour later, we’ve finished our report on Leilani’s arrest and Patrice has gone home, but I pretend I have a million things to do just so I can find out what’s going to happen to Leilani. I shouldn’t give a s**t, but I can’t help myself.

I head to the men’s room only to see the giant yellow sign saying it’s closed.

“Milliken clogged it again,” DuPont says as he passes by. “Hey, what’s going on with your girlfriend? Maybe they’ll let you fingerprint her.”

“Damn Milliken,” I mutter, heading out to the lobby.

As soon as I step through the door from the back, a woman rushes through the front doors of the station and over to our desk clerk, Mac. “My friend was arrested. I think she’s here. She called me and told me to come down.”

My hand stills on the men’s bathroom door. I haven’t heard that voice in many years, but for whatever reason, I recognize it. It’s that waitress from the night I met Leilani.

Instead of eavesdropping, I go into the bathroom, but the entire time I take a piss and wash my hands, my mind is on what’s happening on the other side of the doors. When I emerge, she’s still there. She turns as the men’s room door shuts, and our gazes meet.

Damn, one thing I forgot was how beautiful she is. How did I forget that? Probably because Leilani’s like a hurricane and all you remember is how she careened into your life.

“You,” she says, walking across the old linoleum to me. “You’re Leilani’s guy, no?”

What lies has Leilani been spouting?

“No.” I shake my head.

Her hands raise and she squints one eye as she thinks of my name. Finally, her vision lands on my nameplate. “Whelan. Um…”

“Knox.”

She snaps her fingers. “Yes. So are you going to help her?”

“No.”

Her shoulders fall. “Why not? She called me and said she’d probably need bail money.”

“Do you know what she did?”

“She said she didn’t do anything. That it’s all a misunderstanding.”

I laugh. “The desk clerk can help you.” I slide by her to disappear into the back, but before I open the door, I turn around to give the girl some advice. “I wouldn’t bail her out. You’ll never see that money again.”

She tucks her long dark hair behind her ears. She’s wearing yoga pants and a waist-length, tight-fitting sweatshirt that shows off her curves. This woman looks better than good, but she also has another look about her. The one that says, “I’m the savior, the helper, the mother hen of all my friends.”

“She’s innocent. She said she was.”

“I wouldn’t believe her.”

Mac’s head swivels in my direction. “Whelan, I’ve got this.”

I raise my hands. “By all means.” I square my gaze on the waitress one last time. “You might as well take that money and rip it into shreds right here. She’s never going to change.”

Her dark eyes narrow and she glances at Mac before stomping over to me. She pokes her finger into my chest. “What is your problem? Are you always such an asshole?”

I’ll make this easy on both of us. “Yes.”

I open the door and leave her behind like the first time I met her.