Under The Bridge

Excerpt

“Are you sure you wanna do this? You don’t have to do this.”
Dylan looked out the passenger window of the police car driven by his lover of ten years, the town’s Chief of Police; and in that precise moment—as he stared into the passing night, seeing nothing but the mist-choked darkness—he changed his mind.
No, he wasn’t sure at all.
For fuck’s sake, he was terrified.
He was sick with fear.
Sick with fear and the memories that had haunted him for a decade.
Unwanted.
Unwelcome.
Which was exactly why he was here.
Suddenly the police radio crackled loudly, a static crash of thunder, so startling it made Dylan jolt in his seat. The voice of Mitch’s deputy, Hilary, blared from the two-way, distorted and garbled.
“Chief? Are you there?”
Mitch pretended he hadn’t caught sight of Dylan’s nervous reaction out of the corner of his eye. Mitch was doing his damnedest to keep Dylan calm, to ease his fears, yet at the same time he desperately wanted to grab Dylan and tell him this trip, this night, this damn foggy night, wasn’t necessary. Screw the shrink. Screw what he thought was right or wrong, what might help and what might not. In Mitch’s eyes, Dylan had already overcome the past. He had buried those demons long ago. Mitch wanted to tell Dylan that he was a strong, confident man with a loving partner.
But instead he didn’t say a word.
Dylan seemed so determined to do this that Mitch was scared it might push his lover even further away from him.
So instead Mitch snatched up the two-way. “Copy that, Hilary. What’s up?”
“Just checkin’ you two are okay.”
That was Hilary for you. The fifty-two-year-old deputy was a mother hen to Mitch and Dylan, much to Mitch’s constant annoyance. She was a single woman who lived alone with two dogs, and filled in her own loneliness by doting over them. Although Mitch and Dylan had never announced their relationship to the angry little town, Hilary was the only one who treated them as a couple. She baked cakes and casseroles for them on her days off, as though Mitch and Dylan were incapable of looking after themselves. She defended them from town gossips at the local supermarket who made the occasional snide remark about Chief Shaw and that boy. And she always knew when Mitch and Dylan had been fighting… and always asked if she could help… which only added to the tension that Mitch tried so hard to suppress.
Mitch sighed now and the frustration in his voice was evident. “Yes, Hilary. We’re okay. We’ll be back in town in twenty minutes. Call me if there’s any emergencies. Only if there’s an emergency.”
“But there ain’t never any emergencies in Twin Rivers, Chief. At least not since…” Her voice trailed off awkwardly. “You know what I mean…”
“Hilary, we’re fine. Over and out.”
Mitch slammed down the two-way and kept driving.
“She’s just worried about us, that’s all,” Dylan said by way of something—an explanation, an apology, a way of easing his own mind a little.
“I know,” Mitch said and placed his hand on Dylan’s knee.
Dylan flinched again.
Mitch took his hand away and kept steering through the fog.
They both knew the old footbridge wasn’t far now.