Supernaturally Kissed (Frostbite, Book One) by Stacey Kennedy

I asked.
    “He wasn’t thrilled.” Max grinned. “But what choice did he have?”
    “Wonderful.” I sighed. “He’ll be a real joy to be around when I get back.” He’d have to do some of the legwork himself.
    “Just shake your spectacular ass at him,” Kipp said, stepping in next to me, “and I doubt he’ll stay angry for long.”
    “Thank you for calling him,” I said to Max, flatly ignoring Kipp’s comment, which made him chuckle. I gave no thought to that either.
    Max nodded and held a card out. “You’re a grievance specialist from here on out. Welcome to the team.”
    I laughed, took the card and studied the visitor’s pass. “I’m a what?”
    “As far as the department knows, I’ve brought you on to help Kipp’s fellow officers deal with their loss.”
    “But I have no experience with that,” I retorted.
    Max’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t you?”
    A wave of uncomfortable heat washed across my body. “I-I…” I sucked in a deep breath to hold myself together. I’d learned long ago to hide my feelings involving my family’s deaths, but whenever someone brought the situation up and I didn’t expect it, the pain pushed its way to the surface. “Sorry.” I shook my head to shed the sadness. “Sorry, you surprised me. You’re right, I do.”
    “What surprised you?” Kipp’s tone sounded tight. “What’s wrong?”
    I glanced at him, straightened my shoulders and demanded my voice to not waver. “My family died.”
    He stared at me, knowingly. “In the car accident?” Of course he’d catch on quick, he was a cop after all.
    I nodded and forced the tremble in my chin to stop. I hadn’t cried over their deaths in years, let alone thought of them. I avoided the topic like the plague and didn’t plan for that to change. But it hadn’t been the topic that made these uneasy emotions rise to the surface, it was Kipp’s gaze on mine, the way his eyes said, “It’s all right for you to cry.”
    The support and comfort sounded nice and all, but leaning on him couldn’t happen. I had enough trouble on my plate and looking to him to heal my pain wasn’t an option I wanted to explore.
    “I’m sorry I had to go about it that way,” Max said. “But it was the only explanation I could come up with for having you join our ranks on such short notice. It’s easy for me to pass off that you’re part of a support group to give aid to people who have lost loved ones.”
    I hastily hid every emotion. “No, it’s fine, it makes sense. It just surprised me is all.”
    “You can’t run and hide forever, you know.” Kipp’s stare remained intent, but now his gaze held a rigid determination.
    My blood boiled. Who was he to say how I dealt with my pain? Ignoring it had always been how I got through my days. I had never once dealt with it, never experienced the stages of grief. Instead, I just trudged on and it worked fine for me.
    Before I could release my wrath, he interjected, “I understand more than you think.”
    I hadn’t expected him to say that. “Calm down. Don’t blow your lid.” That’s what I thought he would come back with. Not him sharing a similar story. I shouldn’t have been curious, but I shouldn’t have been a lot of things. “How?”
    His eyes filled with sadness as they glazed over, lost in a memory. “My mother died from breast cancer and my father followed a year later from a heart attack.”
    I had to wonder what would’ve been worse. In my case, I lost both my parents all at once. Here one day, gone the next. To have to suffer the pain of losing a loved one on two separate occasions, I doubted I could’ve handled it. “When?”
    Kipp blinked and his gaze became steady and strong. “Ten years ago. I’ve had years to deal with their deaths and it’s taken that long to accept that they’re gone. Trust me, holding on to the pain isn’t going to help you. You need to allow yourself to grieve.”
    Caley had said the same thing to me a thousand times.