Teaser: Untitled Alice & Jacob story

NOT EDITED

For the last year or so, Jacob Mason had woken up almost every single day to work a long shift at the station with his partner, Alice Dawson. Before that, he had spent two months spending damn near every minute with her, sharing the same dorm in the Academy. That morning, however, when a suspect clocked him in the face so hard he lost consciousness, and he woke up to see Alice’s face through one blurry, squinted eye, he was hit with the fact that he was madly in love with a very married woman.

Alice’s full lips moved, and her warm hand touched his face, but he didn’t hear a single damn word. “What?”

Alice snorted, rolling her eyes. “Okay, well that answers it.” She laughed softly. “I asked if you were okay. Lost you for a minute.” Her fingers delicately touched a painful spot beneath his right eye. “You’re gonna have quite the shiner, Jay.”

Christ, he’d always thought she was pretty, but had she always been that beautiful? He cleared his throat. “Feels like it.” He accepted Alice’s hand and let her pull him up to a seated position on the sidewalk. He covered his right eye with his hand, closing the other. Maybe he could think if he wasn’t looking at her. “Umm… did he get away?”

“What do you take me for? A coward? God, no. He’s in the back of the cruiser.”

A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “You tellin’ me you kept chasin’ the guy when he knocked me out cold?”

“Umm, excuse you, I was protecting your honor, Jay.”

Jacob snorted. “ ‘Course. I appreciate it. Consider my honor protected.” He forced himself to look at her again, even though the way the sunrise was hitting her face wasn’t doing him any favors. Damn golden hour bullshit. “He didn’t hit you too, right?”

“No, just ran. But you know me. Top of the class,” she said, gently punching the air between them. That much was true, much to the chagrin of the instructors at Academy and most of the other future officers. She’d been the only woman and the only Black person that year, and they’d given her hell because of it. Sure as hell hadn’t stopped her from kicking ass and taking names.

Yeah, it was starting to make sense why he’d woken up with a love of Alice. And probably a concussion.

“We taking him to the station for questioning?”

“We’re waiting for backup. They’re going to take him to the station, and then I am going to take you to the ER and make sure you aren’t seriously fucked up.”

“So you caught him?”

Alice raised an eyebrow before grabbing his chin to turn his head to the side. “You definitely have a concussion. And you’re bleeding a little too.”

“I’m fine. My head hurts, but I’m fine.”

“You just forgot I caught the guy. We already went over that. Repeating questions is a pretty good indication, Jay.”

He turned back toward her as she tilted her head down toward her radio to request an ETA on backup. He’d already forgotten she’d gotten the suspect into the cruiser, but the way he’d felt about Alice the moment he opened his eyes hadn’t changed or dissipated one bit. So… hoping it’d go away as the concussion faded was officially out of the question.

***

The visit to the ER proved Alice right, and after over twenty minutes of back and forth, Jacob finally managed to convince her to take him back to the station so they could question the guy who had clocked him in the first place. He was a suspect in a kidnapping, and a concussion wasn’t going to stop Jacob from spending every damn second he had on finding that missing little girl.

Though Alice was definitely going to have to do most of the question asking and note taking if they wanted to find out anything noteworthy. Unfortunately, Jacob’s foggy brain wasn’t great for any real cop work. Still, when their real partners finally showed up for the day—Detectives NAME and NAME, Jacob didn’t want them riding Alice’s ass to do the ‘boring’ parts of their job for them. The detectives passing certain tasks off to them was one thing when it was both of them. Forcing dozens of tasks on just Alice was insane, but he knew damn well they’d do it.

Jacob followed her into Interrogation Room One and sat down at the steel table in the middle of the room. Alice gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before sitting down beside him. That was so normal for her, so familiar, but suddenly, today, it felt different. Today, it stirred the flutter of butterflies in his stomach, even though he wished it didn’t. She was married. So married. Sure, he was a fucking asshole, but Alice seemed unreasonably used to it.

Jacob shook his head just enough to draw his focus back to the case, back to work. Oscar Hayes sat at the other side of it, arms crossed over his chest and a smug little smile tugging at one corner of his lips. “I got you pretty good, huh?”

“It might be wise not to admit to assualting a cop,” Alice said.

Oscar glanced over at her before shrugging. “Didn’t admit to nothin’.”

“Sure.” Alice shuffled the papers in front of her before tapping the bottom of the stack against the table. She’d done that a million times too, but today, it brought a small smile to Jacob’s face. He figured it was a leftover habit from her law school days. She’d been doing it the whole time he’d known her. The near professionalism of the act had made her a little intimdating in Academy, something that probably would have come in handy if she had become a lawyer rather than switching course for police officer.

“Why’d you run, Mister Hayes?” Jacob asked.

“You were threatening me. I ran for my safety.”

“Our body cameras would show otherwise,” Alice said.

Oscar offered another shrug. “Your body camera can’t determine how I felt, and I felt threatened.”

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