Chapter One

I don’t know why people think I’m such a dick. I’m a fuckin’ delight to be around.
—Secret thoughts of Foster

Foster

“I need to speak to the officer that gave my grandfather a ticket. Right now,” I heard snapped over the phone.

I shook my head and stood up out of my chair.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Pat,” I said tightly, reining in my anger as best I could.

Pattie Hightower was the front office receptionist who sat behind the wall of glass. The first person the general public saw once they entered the building.

She had a shit job, and didn’t make enough. Everyone in the precinct was guilty of abusing her niceness, myself included.

Limping around the desk, I winced as my leg started the familiar aching burn that usually came around when I’d done too much work with it.

Which I had.

I did every day, but today I’d re-qualified with the SWAT team.

I’d run the obstacle course that every new potential member of SWAT had to run to be accepted into the fold.

I’d previously been on the SWAT team, but an incident last Valentine’s Day with the crazy bitch that tried to take my brother, Miller’s, and my sister-in-law, Mercy’s, life had sidelined me temporarily.

Linda Moose, a.k.a. Crazy Bitch, CB for short, had tried to plow her car straight through Mercy’s face.

At the time, Mercy had been pregnant with my nephew. I’d seen her small body fold into my brother’s, and before I knew it, I’d started running.

Right into the path of the stupid bitch’s bumper.

CB had reversed, so I had, too.

I’d stopped when my back had met the brick mailbox. Unfortunately, Linda had not.

She backed straight into me, pinning my left leg in between the bumper and the brick mailbox from hell.

Then she’d tried to leave.

Bad for her, my gun had been in my hand before I’d even consciously thought about it.

I’d shot her through the back glass.

The first two bullets had passed through her left shoulder, and the next one had grazed the top of her head.

She’d crashed after my last shots took out her tires.

It was inconclusive whether she passed out from hitting the tree, or the bullet to the head.

Regardless, I’d managed to stop her before my leg finally realized there wasn’t much left to stand on.

I’d fallen to the ground and promptly passed out.

Then had woken up in a hospital bed ten hours later, legless, and in a perpetual bad mood.

“You got a live one, Crush,” Chief Rhodes said, eyes alight with laughter.

I didn’t bother to respond.

I’d somehow become the laughing stock of the station.

They thought it was funny to call me Crush.

I, on the other hand, thought it fucking sucked.

I didn’t need to be reminded on a daily basis that I was missing my leg. Well, half a leg.

I had a below the knee amputation.

Which was better than, say, an above the knee amputation. Regardless, it was still an amputation and it had impacted my life greatly.

I witnessed the fact every morning when I looked down. Every morning when I fitted the prosthesis on my leg. Every morning when I walked into work.

My prosthesis looked like anybody’s leg when I was wearing jeans or long pants. The problem was that everyone on the force, as well as in the community, knew I was missing a leg. Knew the weakness I had.

“No, I just want to talk to him. It won’t take but a minute,” I heard a woman’s voice say once I reached the lobby.

Pushing the door closed behind me, I walked up behind the woman, surveying her.

She was around five eight or nine. Full figure, round hips, perfect ass. Long legs encased in tight jeans.

Curly, white blonde hair that was nearly the shade of mine came down to her mid back.

The ends looked like they’d been dipped in purple paint.

“Can I help you?” I asked the woman.

She whirled around, her eyes narrowing on my face, then taking in my badge, gun, and posture before returning her eyes to mine.

My breath caught as I got a load of her face.

She was fucking beautiful.

Her eyes were the shade of warm, melted honey.

Her lips were luscious, and she had the cutest cleft in her chin that I’d ever seen.

And that was saying something, since my nephew and niece had cleft chins. That was hard to compete with.

I wanted to touch it. Badly.

But then her snotty attitude cleared that want right up.

“You’re Officer Spurlock? Badge number 654?” She asked, crossing her arms across her breasts.

I raised my brows at her.

She obviously had done her homework about me.

Looking down at my badge, I pointed towards it with a finger. “That’s me.”

She moved forward, closing the distance I’d left between us in milliseconds.

“Let me tell you something, Officer Spurlock. What you did was despicable,” she hissed.

I raised my eyebrow at her. “And what did I ‘do,’ exactly?”

“You gave my grandfather, a veteran, and a fine man, a ticket for having a pocketknife on him,” she spat.

I blinked.

What the fuck?

“Are you talking about that crazy old man that was wielding a butcher knife at me? That was anything but a ‘pocketknife.’ It’s closer to a machete than a pocket knife,” I clarified.

Her eyes narrowed. “That was a pocket knife.”

I gritted my teeth and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I’d show her how much of a ‘pocketknife’ it wasn’t.

I flipped through my pictures, past the ones of my brother who thought it’d be funny to post a picture of his ass on my phone, over the stack of beer cans we’d used to make a tower, and finally stopping on the one I was searching for.

“Does this,” I said, holding my phone out to show her the picture. “Look like a pocketknife to you, ma’am?”

Her brows lowered in confusion. “N-no. That’s not what he just told me…excuse me.”

With that, she pushed past me.

Caught off balance, I instinctually put my weight on my bad leg, and promptly ate dirt.

The woman was gone before I even hit the floor.

I was able to catch myself before I did any major damage to my person, but not in enough time to prevent the entire station from seeing me fall.

There were men lined up behind the counter, all of their eyes wide as they looked at me, wondering what they should do.

I could practically hear their thoughts.

Should we help him?

Can he get back up by himself?

Oh, my God. That woman just made the cripple fall.

Narrowing my eyes on them, I stood, making sure no one saw how awkward it was to actually stand, and walked out of the door.

Once I reached the front steps, I crossed my arms and watched as the woman yelled at her grandfather. The old man that looked like the most innocent man in the world.

The man who’d pulled the knife on me quicker than I could blink.

He was lucky all I gave him was a weapons citation.

I could’ve arrested him for threatening a police officer with intent to harm.

When she spotted me, she started to march up the steps, coming to a stop two down from me.

“He tells me you’re lying. That he had nothing more than his pocket knife,” she held up a fucking switch blade.

I reached for it, and she warily placed it in my hand.

Acting quickly, I pressed the lever, disengaging the blade and scaring the shit out of her.

“This,” I said, holding my hand out to her, offering her the hilt of the blade. “Is a switchblade. This is not a pocket knife. It’s also illegal, because it’s double sided.”

She looked at the knife now in her hand, then offered it back to me.

“Just keep it.”

I took the blade from her hands, collapsing the blade, and shoving it in my pocket.

“What the fuck, grandpa! That’s illegal, too!” I heard just before she dropped down into her nineties model Camaro and closed the door.

I couldn’t help the smile that overtook my face.

For the first time in months, I had something to smile about.