Paradise City

There was caution tape everywhere.

I wasn't allowed to touch anything, but all I wanted to do was clean everything up. It felt so wrong to stand there in the middle of it all and not be able to do anything. It felt wrong to just stare at my dad's broken record player on the floor, and not try to fix it. Everything just felt wrong.

"Ms. Jordan?" After the cop had asked Dean a few questions, he pulled me aside. "This kind of break in seems very personal, do you have any enemies?"

"Um, none that I can think of." I lied.

There was Alisha and her disgusting vermin of a boyfriend, Reece. There was no forced entry. Either the person who did this had expert lock-picking skills, or had a key to the apartment. I was going to guess the latter.

"Callie!"

Speak of the devil.

Alisha busted through the door and men in uniform, surveying the damage. The look of shock on her face was fake, forced, and not fooling anyone. Especially me. "Oh my God! What happened!? Are you okay? Who did this?"

"Excuse me ma'am, who are you?" The cop asked.

"I'm her landlord. I own the building."

One of the officers took her away for questioning. I could see the tiny smirk on her face and she watched me. It took everything in me not to pick up a piece of this broken glass and hurl it at her fake blonde head.

"Ms. Jordan, if you know or have any idea who did this, we ask you to please speak up. You might be scared, but I promise we won't let anything happen to you."

"Thank you, Officer. I'll think about it. I really just want to get this cleaned up and go to bed."

He nodded. "We'll be in touch."

In a matter of minutes, the investigative team had cleared the room. All that was left was me and yellow tape hanging from every corner. Dean stood cautiously by the door as if someone was going to break in again.

My hands shook as I began picking up pieces of the record player. The wood floor had been dented where someone had thrown it down hard. There was no way this was going to get fixed.

"This was my dad's." My voice cracked as I spoke. "It belonged to his dad. Grandpa had given it to him as a housewarming present when my parents moved to Tennessee."

I placed it back on the desk, trying to keep all of the little pieces together.

"Come on, Callie. You've got to be exhausted." Dean whispered to me.

"I have to get this cleaned up. I can't just leave it like this." I cried.

"Yes, you can. We can work on this tomorrow." He replied.

I knew he was just trying to help, but I didn't want it. I wanted to be alone.

"I have to work tomorrow."

"Take the night off."

"I can't." That wasn't a lie. I had already taken too many days off so that I could spend time with him. He didn't know that, though. I told him that we had just been over-staffed and they didn't need me.

"Callie, please. You can sleep in my bed. I'll sleep on the couch. We can fix all of this tomorrow. Please, let's just go to bed."

With one more look around the apartment, I sighed and gave up. Dean mumbled a small 'thank you', and took my hand, leading me out into the hallway and to his apartment. His apartment was untouched. Still empty and pristine. Like it hadn't been lived in for months. It made me sad to see.

If it was Alisha, what was I going to do about it? Alisha owned the entire building. She was my landlord. She had my name on a contract; binding me to that flat for a year's time. What if it was Reece? Still, nothing I could do about it. If Reece was arrested, Alisha would do nothing but make my life a living hell. She could have me evicted. She could throw a cinder block through the windshield of my car, next. Who knows? She was proving to be a completely different person than the sweet, small town girl from Alaska that I had met when I first moved here.

Do I move out? Find someone to pick up the rest of my lease? What about Dean? What if she started taking things out on him? That only scratched the surface of how complicated this really was. I'm sure I could think of a million more reasons why Alisha was not the person to mess with. One of them being that her 'best friend' was my coworker.

Dean sat at the edge of his bed as I quickly changed into a t-shirt of his. I noticed that he didn't look, and smiled to myself.

"Callie." He said softly, reaching for my hand. I took it, allowing him to pull me onto his lap. "Do you know who broke in to your apartment?"

I sighed. I hadn't filled Dean in on anything that happened between Alisha and I while he was gone. But since I was being honest with him today, since I had already come clean about my parents, I might as well just tell him about the Alisha problem.

"Yeah, I do." He looked surprised. "Well, not for sure. But I'm almost certain that Alisha was behind it."

"Alisha? As in our landlord? Alisha Davis?" I nodded. "Why?"

"She's turned into a different person. Fun, bubbly Alisha has turned into a monster. I haven't talked to her in a few weeks, but ever since Reece broke up with her she had been drinking constantly, and doing drugs, and Reece was hitting her up for sex. And now they're back together? The last time I went out with them I was outside of the club talking to James and I heard some arguing. I went to investigate and saw Reece trying to- you know, force himself on to Alisha. I got in the middle of it, and he threatened me, and well... I kind of- I uh, I punched him in the face."

Dean's lips formed a hard line like he was trying to hold back a smile.

"It's not funny. I was genuinely scared for my life."

"So you think that Alisha had Reece ransack your house?"

I nodded. "I knew it when I saw that the wedding dress was okay. Alisha didn't know that it was in my closet, so she wouldn't have been able to tell Reece about it. Everything else of my parent's was destroyed; my dad's records and the TV. She knew those things mattered to me because I told her. But she didn't know about that dress."

"That makes sense." He picked me up and laid me down in his bed and pulled the covers back, tucking me in. "We'll figure out what to do about it in the morning. Right now, you sleep."

He turned to leave, but I caught his hand.

"Stay with me, please?"

His eyes were soft as he smiled. "Of course."

"Don't get any ideas, I just don't want to be alone." I added.

A genuine smile spread across his face as he climbed into bed behind me. "Ideas? What? I would never!" He pulled the covers back over us, wrapped his large arms around me, and kissed my shoulder.

"Sweet dreams."