This woman is driving me insane. I reach up to cup her jaw for more, and she yields to me, giving in to this fire that’s been building.

Finally. While I’m lost in Zoey, I somehow realize that it’s gone quiet around us, and not just in that ‘tuned out everything else’ way, but actual silence.

I smack her lips once more and smile, opening my eyes to find that my friends are all watching raptly. Even Cole is flashing that too-white smile. “Hey, Heather, I got a few questions right too. Don’tcha think I deserve a ‘good job’ too?”

“Good job, Cole,” Heather deadpans. “You have my permission to go spank your monkey.”

The banter between the two of them has taken the attention off Zoey and me, which I’m thankful for because she looks as shell-shocked as I feel.

Trey says, as casual as can be, “Hey, Blake, I forgot to tell you, Serena says hi.”

I glance his way, knowing Serena didn’t say a damn thing because I saw her after our morning jog not twelve hours ago. But the shit-eating grin on his face tells me he said what he said for a reason, to remind me that he thinks Zoey could be my Serena.

Hell, maybe he’s right, but I’ll never know if she won’t at least go out with me. But we can go at the snail pace speed she needs, especially if it leads to kisses like that.

“Serena is Trey’s wife,” I explain to Zoey before giving Trey a meaningful look. “Yeah, man. Tell her hi too.”

Message received, loud and clear, and I’m not arguing anymore. I settle back into my chair, one arm thrown around Zoey, to order us some nachos.

Dinner and drinks, but still not a date.

Chapter 12

Zoey

Work is quiet. Quiet as a tomb, as it were.

I haven’t had a call out in two days, which is rare but possible. County policy is that anyone who dies in a hospital or under the care of a doctor doesn’t need my services unless foul play is suspected. So no foul play, and nobody dying at home or from traffic accidents is good, for me and county residents, but . . . well, I could really use a distraction right now.

My brain is on a playback loop, showing me Blake’s happy smiles at trivia night a few days ago. He’s got this light inside him, a purity that shines golden and bright, drawing people to him like a beacon of joy.

But he’s not all ‘good boy’.

Oh, no, I heard him talking shit with the other teams, dishing it out just as hard as Heather, and that’s saying something.

And I noticed how he automatically laid his arm on my chair as soon as we sat down. It made me feel protected, something I’d deny needing or wanting, but in that moment, with a roomful of people looking at me, I welcomed Blake’s strength at my side.

My nerves had been screaming, reminding me to not get too close, to not spill the beer pitcher and set off a chain reaction where someone slipped in the liquid, fell, and hit their head, and to definitely not mention what I do for a living so nobody got grossed out and gave me that look of horror.

I hate that wide-eyed, mouth gaping look of disgust.

But I’d also realized that while Blake was tuned in to my jangling nerves and doing that arm-wrap thing for me, he was also doing it for himself. He was warning off the other guys and ready to defend me if the evening went the way it did at the beer barn.

Yeah, he’s good, but he’s also this wholesome version of alpha.

And I like it, which is dangerous.

I also liked the good morning texts he’s sent me the last two days, and the completely wrong, but somehow funny, memes he sent, one about iZombie and one about Survivor, accompanied by a note that they made him think of me.

So yeah, my dead, dark heart is threatening to come to life, and that’s a bad thing for us both.

Distraction? I need a big one.

As if I conjured it, the requested distraction magically appears. Not in my morgue office but in my email with a happy little alert ding. Seems the state lab finally got around to my blood tests. I open up the results of Richard Horne’s second blood tests, reading each line carefully and mentally comparing them to the previous report.

I was expecting them to be different, confirming some sort of contamination in the sample or error in the processing, but these results are nearly identical to the previous ones, with only slight variations that can be accounted for by the use of a different machine.

For all intents and purposes, they’re the same. Which means that Richard Horne had oddly high levels of heavy metals in his body when he died. And that’s weird, even for me.

“Hmm,” I ponder out loud, knowing there’s no one to hear me, as I spin in my chair. “What causes heavy metal levels and a heart attack?”

My mind is racing ahead, already contemplating possibilities and dismissing them in rapid-fire succession. I stare at the report until the black numbers blur and my eyes unfocus, which is how Jeff and Alver find me—frozenly staring off into space.

“Zoey?” Jeff says, and I startle, jumping and making a squeaking sound.

“Oh, shit, Jeff. You scared me.”

Jeff looks to Alver, who shrugs in answer like he’s seen me do weirder things before. Truthfully, he has. Though he hasn’t said a single word about catching Blake and me in that oddly questionable position, and I certainly haven’t had the guts to explain.