Love Lies Bleeding by Remmy Duchene (simple e reader txt) 📗

so when they sat in the pizzeria in New Jersey. No, this wasn't Leo's problem. Anderson's wall was starting to get in the way and he'd somehow transferred the fear to Leo. The detective was fairly straightforward with his feelings and Anderson was going to desperately cling to that and pray things worked out.

As he hurried down the long corridors, he was deep in his head again. Anderson pushed away the heat he felt when he thought of Leo touching him and focused on his father's murder. There had to be something he knew that could help Leo with the case. It couldn't have been something that just came around. No one in the right mind got up and decided to decapitate a judge and expect to get away with it.

But no matter how much money he'd spent on his education, he wasn't a cop. He couldn't decipher things that weren't there and make them relevant. He admitted silently right then a cop's brain was a whole other machine. But all of his thinking about it didn't stop his mind from wandering. Since his father's death, his brain seemed to be going to one specific place—his mother's old yearbook. Perhaps it was nothing, but he just couldn't help himself.

"Do you see this, Andy?" his father asked, carefully turning the pages of the old book. "This belonged to your mother."

"Mom?" Anderson asked. His mother had died a year before from cancer. They had caught it too late. There was nothing to be done but to make sure she was comfortable. His father never spoke much of her anymore so when he did, Anderson gathered himself and listened. He remembered so many things about his mother—her beauty, her smile, and that she always smelled like lilacs and roses. She had this big smile that made every bad dream he had go away, up until the night she died. She had a voice that sounded like an angel's and she would use it to sing him to sleep at night. He was young, but Anderson knew beauty. And it was in his mother.

"This yearbook contains pictures of everything that was important in her life. You see, we both went to Harvard—she was this beautiful girl with big brown eyes. She came into our meeting and asked if she could take a photo of us. Well of course the others said no, but I was instantly in love." He trailed off, looked at Anderson before turning the page to point to one specific picture. "The others gave me a hard time about it but I couldn't help myself. She was just so beautiful—and after we graduated, she gave me this photo as a wedding present."

"Just look at that smile." Andy pointed to the man that stood among a few others.

"Yes." His father's voice had tears in it. That was the first time Anderson remembered his father crying. At his young age he knew the man he looked up to all his short life had indeed loved his wife. Anderson smiled. "We were so young then. I really should restore the book but that feels like betraying your mother.

"Why?"

"Well, the way it sits right now has your mother's touch on it. It has places where her finger dug into the cover. You see this rip—right here? It came from her dropping it. And this smudge? That was when she told me she was pregnant with you. She was laughing and crying at the same time. I just don't want to get rid of all that. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"When I die, this book will belong to you," the older man explained.

"But I don't know if I want to be a lawyer," Anderson had told his father, "or go to Harvard."

"I know, but it doesn't matter. This book will remain in our family and you have to take care of it."

"I promise," Anderson whispered.

A horn honked. Anderson looked up to see he was standing in front of a car and jogged out of the way. He waved to the driver in an attempt at an apology before crossing the lot and ducking beneath tree limbs. When he emerged to where his car was with his father's words about his mother's old book echoing in his head again, he gripped the door handle wondering why he was thinking about the book so often since his father's death. It had nothing to do with anyone—just an old yearbook that meant nothing to anyone else but his parents and now him.

As he slid into the front seat of his car, he finally allowed his mind to wander back to the way he had felt when Leo touched him. It may be corny but he couldn't deny the explosion that surged through him.

"You have to stop this, Andy," he whispered. His ringing cell phone pulled him from his regrets and he blindly reached forward and pushed the key. "Yeah?"

"And hello to you too," Byung's voice floated through the speakers to fill the car. "How was last night? Why'd you pull a Houdini on the man?"

"Different," Anderson admitted.

"Ahh—what happened?"

"You free? I have to stop at the station to talk to Leo but after that I should be free."

Byung chuckled, "Yeah. Meet me at Caesar's after you meet with your newest boyfriend."

"Don't call him that," Anderson snapped a little too harshly. "Never call him that."

"Damn, Andy, what's going on?"

Anderson sighed and made a left turn into downtown before speaking again. "I'm sorry, okay? I just… I'll explain when I meet you. Gimme a little while."

"Andy…"

Anderson hung up the phone just as he came to the tunnel and the traffic jam from hell. By the time he got to the station his mood hadn't improved. He only hoped Leo didn't decide to run out for something. It dawned on Anderson then he probably should have called first. Making a face, he dug through his dash for his sunglasses and climbed from the car.

Walking into the precinct felt a little weird, almost like