A/N: I didn’t realize Sunday was yesterday. The woes of taking the summer off for rest and relaxation… thanks for writing in and reminding me that this chapter needed to be up PRONTO.
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Emma sat on her bed, the springs of the mattress creaking under her weight. She’d just finished showering and sitting there, with a towel wrapped around her head and her body, she simply stared off at the rusting iron heating vents that sat below her window.
Jesus fucking fuck.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes, groaning in complete mortification as everything flashed before her for the gazillionth time.
She felt like diagnosing herself with rosacea because her face hadn’t rid itself of the blush that had permanently settled across her cheeks. She felt like she was buzzing, as if she’d injected her blood with a solid dose of molly that she couldn’t come down from.
She kept touching her lips, still unable to believe she’d done what she’d just gone and done. She’d taken it way too far. All she’d wanted to do was tease him, and get back at him for what he’d done to her this morning. But the moment she’d seen how hard he’d been, how thick and ready he’d been just because she’d touched him…
Her body had literally acted on autopilot. She’d been shaking, and she was pretty sure he’d noticed. But she’d just grasped her head and pushed her down to take all of it…
Fuck. She groaned again and buried her face in her hands. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It was the only word that made sense to her at this point, and not in the sexy-I-want-to-fuck way – it was in the shitwhat-I-have-fucking-done way.
Hunter Stone. She’d given head to the town’s sheriff in his office, in broad daylight, during his work day.
Immediately after she’d returned to his house, she’d emailed Jessie and Sarah, telling them briefly that she needed them to call ASAP because shit wasn’t okay, and that she was slowly losing her sanity here in Harbordale. Because that was the only reason she could imagine that she’d stepped so out of her regular character to do something so… risky. Was that even the right word? More like insane. She eventually stood up, her body shivering but this time from the cold that was seeping in through the cracks in the window. After pulling on a warm pair of sweats and a sweater, she found a dry towel and went to the windowpane and bunched it up against the holes in the glass. This house was in need of some serious TLC but God knew she didn’t have the money to do it.
The sun had set a few hours ago and around eight-o-clock, a police officer had paid her a visit to ask if she was okay, if anything unusual had happened or if anyone out of the ordinary had spoken to her. After responding with a yes, no, and no, she went back to the canvas she’d been painting on. After coming home, she’d spent a good twenty minutes pacing around simply panicking. So to settle her nerves, she’d forced herself to unpack her paints so that she could busy herself with something. All the other plans, and items on her to-do list had run away with her sanity, so she found herself absorbing herself wholly and fully into her art. It was the only thing that kept her calm, and somewhat distracted. She’d wanted to use her hands so she hadn’t even bothered with the brushes, and two hours later, she found herself looking down at a cacophony of colors, melting, clashing and crooning against each other. It wasn’t much of anything, but there was a reason they made temperamental fiveyear olds finger-paint. That shit was cathartic.
Now that she’d showered, cleaned herself up, and left her spontaneous painting out by the unlit fireplace to dry, she found herself sitting on her couch, staring at the ceiling again.
Hunter had told her that he’d be around tonight, but hadn’t really said when. The sound of the clock on the mantelpiece was driving her crazy. The sound of its second-hand clock tick-ticking away signalling every passing moment that signified his eventual arrival. Things were already so awkward around him, and she’d royally gone off on her own and made things worse.
When her phone rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin. The shrill sound of her ringtone filled her empty house, and she ran to it, wondering who’d be calling her at nine pm at night.
It was an unknown number, and immediately thinking it was someone wanting to harass her, she debated even answering it.
Comforted by the fact that a detail was parked somewhere incredibly close, she pressed
‘answer’ and held the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Babe?”
She breathed a sigh of relief, “Sarah!” Emma sunk into the couch, her body easing immediately. She subconsciously searched for a cushion to cuddle up to, before remembering that the person who’d vandalized the place earlier this month had ripped them to shreds.
“What was with your email? Freaked me out!” Her voice was a little hard to hear due to the background noise, but the familiarity of her voice was good enough for Emma to feel relaxed at once.
“Sarah, I wish you were here.”
“This is where I tell you that you’re worrying me.”
“It’s hard to summarize everything, how many minutes do you have on your calling card?” “Emma,” there was a pause as Sarah shuffled something around, “I’m at internet café so I’ll keep buying as many as I need, so we can talk as much as we need to. Now, start from the beginning, what’s wrong?”
And Emma did. It was only after hearing the voice of someone she’d grown up with, survived puberty with, and experienced a solid half of her life with, that the little coil of independence that she’d been trying to hold on to simply snapped. She needed to talk to someone, she was literally losing it here. So she told Sarah everything. From arriving here, to staying at a guy’s house who turned out to be the sheriff, to having the town hate her, to sleeping with aforementioned sheriff, to the murder, and then to today. She had to pause four times throughout her story, familiarizing herself with the click and dial tone that rang when Sarah’s calling card ran out. But sure enough, her phone would ring seconds later, with Sarah expectantly waiting for Emma to continue once she picked up.
Sarah didn’t say a word throughout the entire thing, and it was nearly ten-o-clock when she was done. When she finished off by detailing what had happened in the office and how she’d been running around stir-crazy all day, she waited with abated breath for Sarah’s reaction.
After a few moments of silence, Sarah finally spoke. “You gave him a blowjob while he was on duty?” A tone of incredulousness laced her voice, mixed with impressed awe.
“Yes.”
“Like, while he was working and stuff at the station?”
Emma wished she could bury herself six feet under and emerge six months later. “Yes.”
“And he came in your mouth?”
“For God’s sake, yes.”
“All of this just to teach him a lesson?”
Emma cringed, “yes.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I know! I -.”
Sarah cut her off, “Emma, wasn’t his gun attached to his holster? What if your cheek touched the trigger and set it off? You could’ve blown your head off.”
Emma paused, the words on her tongue drying up, “from this entire story, you’re worried about the fact I could’ve shot myself while giving him head?”
“Well yeah. Safety first. You already said adios to the condom. Maybe take the gun off his hip the next time.”
Unexpectedly, Emma found herself giggling. A minute later, she was laughing. This is why she loved this girl. She always knew how to make her feel better, regardless of time, place and circumstance.
“Sarah, you’re nuts.”
“You’re nuts. Although I think I’m loving this side to you. Have you gotten kinky with his handcuffs yet? Is he hot? Can you email me a picture?”
“Shut up! I’m not going to email you a photo of him. Although, if you google his name, his profile comes up on the police department website. And no, this isn’t some BDSM roleplaying porn movie. No handcuffs have been involved.”
“Nothing wrong with BDSM roleplaying porn movies.”
“Jesus, what have you been up to in Thailand?”
“I’m in Malaysia now. But it sounds like I need to come back. I don’t like the sound of all this other shit you told me. Someone wanting to murder you? Emma, that’s serious. You need to leave that town. I know you hate it when I mother you, but I’m officially mothering you.”
“I can’t. You know why I can’t.”
“I get it, Emma. But just live with me for a while, until you’re on your own two feet in Toronto.
You don’t need to go through this alone.”
“I’m not going to make you come home, after you spent years saving up to travel, just so I can squat on your apartment floor.”
“Family comes first, before anything. You’re family, man.”
Emma found herself tearing up, not realizing how much she needed to hear someone say that to her. This was the third time in three weeks that she’d found herself crying. Since when had she become such a fucking cry baby? “Sarah, don’t do anything rash. I’ve got the police taking care of me -.” The door bell sounded and Emma froze, her heart immediately jumping to her throat. “Is that him?” Sarah said on the other line, “Is it Hunter? Oh my god, you are going to have so much fun tonight. Please, make sure to take his gun off first. No Russian roulette shit, okay? No matter how kinky you’re feeling. I’d still wear a condom, even though you’re on birth control, there’s always that one percent chance.”
“Can you stop talking about us having sex?” Emma whispered into the phone, taking the towel off her head so that she looked half-decent and then hating the fact that she wanted to look half decent. Why should she care if Hunter thought she looked decent or not? “Sarah, my heart is pounding.” “Just take a few deep breaths, remember the fact that you had him by the balls literally just a few hours ago, and that you’re Emma. You’re fearless, nothing scares you!”
“Okay, gotta go.”
“Have fun! REMEMBER - SAFE SEX!” Sarah was yelling into the phone as Emma hung up, making her laugh.
Feeling a tiny bit recharged from that conversation, albeit painstakingly nervous from all the thoughts scurrying across her head, Emma went to the door and unlocked it. Taking a deep breath, her heart was literally hammering against her ribcage as she swung it open.
Both Detective Jackson and Hunter stood on the other side, and she barely looked at Hunter as she greeted them.
“You’re working late tonight, detective” she said, trying to force herself to sound normal. She knew her face was red, and she was having a bit of trouble maintaining even breaths. “Everything okay?”
“Absolutely. I just wanted to swing by and check out the lighthouse.”
“I suggested he join us for dinner,” Hunter said, and while Emma could feel his eyes burning into hers, she didn’t dare look at him. The tension was palpable. There was an uncanny mischievousness radiating off of him, and she could feel it.
“Of course,” Emma pulled open the door, thinking of all the ways she could disappear in thirty seconds or less. It was ten p.m. She was not in the mood for a family style dinner with the guy she was sleeping with and the guy who suspected she was sleeping with the guy she was actually sleeping with. “You got your heating and lights working,” Hunter mentioned as Emma made her way to the kitchen. Hunter had ordered a few bottles of wine in his grocery haul, and she’d stolen one for her own house since she could and she didn’t care anymore. Right now was the perfect time to open it, since she needed a bit of liquid courage.
“Yeah, they got them up and working pretty quickly.” Her tone matched his. Unemotional.
Passive. Calm. She felt anything but those three things.
As Emma struggled with uncorking the bottle of red, she heard Jackson and Hunter talk in the living room. They were talking about something that had happened in the office, then about how shit the coffee was, then about something else that had happened in the office and then more about the shitty coffee. When she finally got the bottle uncorked, she raised an eyebrow as she heard the door open and shut, and then silence.
She stood there, pouring wine into three glasses, wondering where they had disappeared off to. She’d just finished pouring the wine into the third cup when the door opened again, and she heard a lot of chattering, cluttering before subdued talking.
With the three wine glasses in hand, she went into the living room to find Hunter and Jackson pouring over the fireplace, filling it with logs of wood. Hunter was positioning it carefully in some sort of formation as Jackson was getting the flint ready.
“Where did you get that?”
The two looked back at her, Jackson giving her a warm smile whereas Hunter…
Well, there was something about the way his eyes grazed her body from her toes to her head that made her skin shiver.
“You know there’s a woodshed in your backyard?” Jackson said, in that fatherly way he spoke, before turning back to the fireplace. “Tons of chopped wood. Enough to last the next two months of winter. This’ll do just the trick and warm up your living room.”
“Oh, really?” Emma put the wine glasses down on the coffee table, and then took a hefty sip from her own, “I haven’t really gone looking out back.”
“Why don’t we get this fire started and then take a glance around the lighthouse? We’ll give
Hunter some space to cook us something too.”
Space away from Hunter? “That sounds great. How exactly are we getting inside the lighthouse?
It’s locked.”
“The old fashioned way. We’re going to break that door down.”
She watched in distant fascination as Hunter and Jackson spent ten minutes on getting the fire started, not used to this sort of domesticity. She had faint memories of sitting by that very fireplace as a kid, and a feeling she couldn’t describe filled her as she saw the two of them fanning the flames into life. She sat up and walked away to get something to nibble on, not wanting to really watch any longer. Hunter had brought a box of his own groceries to her house, and she fished around the carton to find a bag of Ruffles to munch on.
After the crackling sound of hot flames filled the room, Emma abandoned her chips and joined the detective at the front door, pulling on her coat and boots in preparation to go outside. It had been snowing all day and they’d gotten nearly five feet of snow, which had pretty much buried the town in this cocoon of white, hushed, sleepy silence. It was pretty to look at, but not fun to be out in. Not looking back at Hunter as they left the house, Emma walked alongside Jackson, the two of them making their way around the house towards the lighthouse.
It stood perched in the distance like an ominous shadow, dark and forlorn, surrounded by untouched snow and sound of crashing waves in the distance. The ground was uneven, but there was something that resembled a trail that guided the two of on a somewhat steady path to the lighthouse base. The wind picked up the closer they got to the cliffs, and by the time they were near the edifice, Emma could barely hear Jackson over the wind and waves down below.
Jackson had a flashlight ready, and he waves its white beam on the door and around it, looking for signs to see if someone else had made their way here recently. If they had, the snow had covered their tracks, because everything looked untouched and entirely too still. Emma craned her head back, looking up at the tall structure. She couldn’t remember the last time this thing had been working. Was there even a lightbulb up in the lantern room up in the very top?
She remembered Kat’s voice vaguely, telling her about something that had happened here with her dad… something that had involved a bunch of people. She’d been meaning to ask Kat to elaborate for days now, but hadn’t found the perfect opportunity yet. She glanced briefly at Jackson. Would it be appropriate to ask him? Did he even know? She just wanted to know everything and anything she could about her dad that could help her understand how to navigate the barrel of emotions that the townsfolk were suffocating under.
“Hold this,” he handed her the flashlight, and she saw him prepare himself to barge in against the door. She shone the light against the door, wondering whether she should warn him this was a bad idea. That thing looked like it was ready to withstand a tsunami.
To his credit, he did make the door shake. But after the third try, he winced and levied his arm against his chest, giving Emma a look of contempt. “Thing’s tougher than I thought it’d be, for being so old.”
“Maybe we should try and pick the lock?”
“I had Hunter try that a day ago. It’s got some lock that a simple pick won’t break at. We’re gonna have to bring in some tools and literally smash our way in. As long as that’s okay with you?”
She shrugged, “I don’t care.”
“Was hoping not to ruin the beauty but doesn’t look like we have a way around it.”
“Beauty?”
“Of course. You can see this thing from miles out on shore. Ever heard of how a lighthouse is a sailor’s anchor? Anyone who’s been out on the waters has grown up using this lighthouse as their way back to the harbor. I grew up seeing this lighthouse. Pity that the light’s been out for so long, though.” Emma didn’t comment, and simply handed the flashlight back to Jackson once he was done dusting off the snow from his shoulder. She’d already had too much nostalgia for one night, and didn’t really have anything to add. Yes, she’d grown up here but her memories were mainly of her parents fighting, not of sailors and lighthouse lanterns. They made their way back to the house, and Emma found herself sneaking one last glance at the lighthouse, trying to imagine it all lit up in all its former glory. She couldn’t. The thing was as dead as dead could be.
Her house was a reprieve once they got inside, her bones warming up to the immediate envelope of heat that surrounded her as she stepped in. They’d been gone for only thirty minutes, but Hunter had quickly busied himself in the kitchen. The smell of herbs and spices had filled the living room, and she could hear the sizzle of something frying on the pan. Her stomach grumbled, but she refused to go near him. This was already feeling like one long night.
She found her way back to the living room couch, and had just taken a sip of wine when Jackson chose that opportune moment to make her freeze immediately.
“Hunter, I was going to go to the Harbordale cemetery tomorrow to pay respects to my late father. I’d love to drop off some flowers for your mom. Is that where she’s buried?”
Emma simply sat there, hating her life so much at that point that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Looking up, she caught a glint of teasing in Jackson’s eye and her mouth dropped open.
That bastard! He knew she’d been lying!
Hunter came out of the kitchen, a look of absolute confusion on his face. “Pay respects to my mum?”
“If it’s okay with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hunter, I’ll help you with dinner,” Emma shot off the couch, nearly spilling her wine as she made her way over. Giving Jackson a warning glare, which only made him chuckle good humorously to himself, she pushed Hunter back into the kitchen and then took hold of a spatula. She hadn’t held a spatula in a million years so she stood there, not knowing what to do with it. “What should I do?” This day had been a disaster. Damn it. She knew better than to lie to a man who solved homicides for a living. She could tell he was going to draw this one out.
“I’m actually almost done. You can go back out. What’s he saying about visiting my mum at the cemetery?”
She heard the TV in the living room go on, and the sound of CTV news followed shortly after. “He didn’t say cemetery. He just wanted to meet your mom,” she looked down at the steaks sizzling in the pan, and her mouth watered. Veggies were being stir-fried in a pan beside them, and hot gravy had already been whipped up in a small pot. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d feasted like this. “Something about visiting her. So she’s alive?”
“Did you just ask me if my mom’s alive?”
“My mom’s dead. It’s a valid question.”
She poked the steaks, not knowing what to do, and felt her cheeks go hot as he watched her from his spot by the door.
A few heartbeats passed in silence and when the tension became unbearable, she finally moved away from the stove and went to the tap to get some water.
The two moved around the kitchen in silence. Emma got the plates, the ones that were undamaged anyway, from the cupboard while Hunter finished with the steaks. She’d just managed to balance the plates and cutlery on one hand when Hunter turned the stove off and moved the steaks off the hot counter.
“Where are you going?”
She looked at him strangely, “what do you mean? I’m setting the table.”
“Put them down.”
Emma felt a heady rush of adrenaline race through her. “Why?”
His demeanor had changed. Gone was the mischievous teasing in his eyes. When he looked at her, it was with a single minded focus. “Because you’re going to take your shirt off.”
She found that she couldn’t move. Her tongue had gone dry, and after a few moments to regain composure, she merely cocked her hip to the side. “What game are you playing? Detective Jackson’s one room over.”
“That’s why you’re going to be really quiet.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m going to fuck you on that counter behind you.”