Free Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance by Charlotte Raine

gestures to a brownstone. It’s beautiful, with caramel brown walls and red carnations in the window boxes.
    “I’ll just wait down here,” I tell her.
    “Tobias…it’s going to take me at least twenty minutes to pack,” she says. “And you shouldn’t wait outside an apartment for that long—one of my neighbors will definitely call the police and tell them that I have a stalker.”
    “You do have a stalker.”
    “…who kills people for fun,” she says. “So, it’s better if you come inside.”
    I open my mouth to argue, but she grabs my hand and drags me up to the door. She unlocks it. We rush up to her apartment with our fingers interlocked. She lets go of my hand as we walk in. I lock the door and turn around to see a room that can only be described as cozy. The furniture is plush, it’s clean without being too neat, and the colors are a mixture of earthy and pastel.
    Lauren goes into a different room. I take a few steps sideways to get a peek of where she went. I see a twin-sized bed with blue sheets. I remember the drawing that the killer made, and picture her sleeping there in her white tank top and plaid boxers. I can’t help but despise the PVP killer for spying on her…for seeing her in such a vulnerable state. At the same time, I feel the urge to see her in the same way. I want to know how she looks when she falls asleep and the way she looks as she wakes up. I want her to be the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning.
    I shake my head. This is my partner. The extreme factors in this investigation are messing with my head.
    “Do you need help?” I call out to her.
    “No,” she yells back. I hear something crash to the ground.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah,” she says. “It was just…everything in my closet.”
    I walk into her room. An avalanche of clothes and shoes are strewn out of her closet. She’s hurriedly picking everything up and throwing it back. I pick up a hanger and slide a ruby red dress onto it. She blushes.
    “Sorry,” she says. “I’ve been so busy lately that I just throw everything in here when it’s in the way.”
    I shrug. “It’s better than my apartment. I pretty much only sleep there, so it’s mostly empty.”
    “Maybe I can fill it up,” she jokes. I smile. I think she could fill up a lot of my life.
     
    ~~~~~
     

Lauren
    TOBIAS’ APARTMENT REMINDS me of an old warehouse with a lot of empty space and where everything is made of metal. When I walk into the apartment, the first thing I see is a dining room, except it looks a lot like the interrogation room with only one chair.
    “Where do your friends sit when they come over for dinner?” I ask, setting my suitcase down.
    “I don’t bring friends over,” he says. He grabs two beers from his kitchen. “Actually…I don’t think I really have friends. Occasionally, I’ll go to the bar with one of the other detectives, but…I don’t even like them.”
    “You don’t seem to like a lot of people,” I say.
    “I think you’re okay,” he says. I smile.
    “That has to be the kindest compliment you’ve told anyone all year,” I say. I follow him to his living room and he sits down on his black couch. He gestures for me to sit too, so I do. He opens one of the beers and hands it to me. I take a sip. He opens his own beer and drinks from it. He rubs the rim of the beer against his bottom lip.
    “Do you want to hear about my first homicide case?” he asks. I rest my elbow on the back of the couch and lean my head against my hand.
    “Definitely,” I say.
    “So, I had just been promoted to detective. The crime scene is in an alleyway, and it’s a woman. She had been shot twice in the chest,” he says. “Rather upsetting, but not rare. Everyone around me is telling me that it was a robbery gone wrong and I’ll never solve it because…how do you figure out who the murderer is when it’s a random robber? But something about the scene seemed off to me. Later I