He shrugged. “I don’t know much about it really. I do know that he and Lawson were in the military together,” he admitted.
“You don’t know much about it?” she replied, confused. “You’ve been living there for years now, right? It’s never come up?”
“I guess I’m a bit of an outsider at the sanctuary,” he explained. “I think it’s because I kept to myself so much when I first arrived. I hoped that if I didn’t ask people questions, they wouldn’t ask me questions I didn’t want to answer. I’m just the guy who fixes stuff, and I like it that way.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “That’s a shame,” she remarked. “You think you could ask them about it? See if there’s anything they’d be willing to do to help us?”
“Yeah, I think I could manage that,” he replied. “I don’t know them super well, but they don’t like it when people are up to no good. There was some stuff that happened not too long ago with a gang that the sheriff asked for their help with. And if it’s something that could possibly pose a threat to Warrior Peak, they’d definitely want to help.”
“Hope so,” she replied, as the waiter arrived with their menus. She turned her attention to the food options, and her stomach grumbled. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, too caught up with how much she felt like she had to do. She knew sheneeded to focus on taking care of herself, but at least Aaron was there to remind her to rest and eat.
“What’s good here?” she asked, and he grinned.
“The garlic bread is amazing,” he replied. “They make it fresh in-house. You have to try it.”
“That sounds really good,” she murmured, and her mouth started to water as some of the delicious savory scents came floating out of the kitchen. She began to relax as she cast her gaze over the menu, deciding what she was going to have. Her stomach had been in such knots when she’d first gotten here that she’d hardly been able to think about eating—now it was catching up with her.
They ordered a huge pile of food, until the table was practically quaking under the weight of it. She grabbed a slice of garlic bread first.
“Oh, my God, this garlic bread really is amazing,” she hummed, as she took a bite of the cheesy, crispy, garlicky deliciousness that had just arrived.
He grinned at her. “See? I told you.”
“I’ll never doubt your opinions on Italian food again,” she promised him. “You have my word.”
Maybe it was the food, maybe it was the peace of the restaurant, or maybe it was finally getting a start on her mission, but she was really starting to relax now. They chatted about the sanctuary and about the small town they were in, Blue Ridge. It reminded her a little of Kings Mountain, except without the stress that was now tied to that place for her. She was amazed at how easily the conversation seemed to flow between them now that she was starting to let her guard down.
“You ever think about going back to being a cop?” she asked him with interest once they were waiting for their dessert.
He thought about the question for a moment, and then shrugged. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “There’s so much that’shappened, I’m not even sure where I would be able to start. And I’d have to explain why I just walked away from it all those years ago.”
“When people find out what kind of trouble you were in, they’ll understand,” she replied, catching herself off guard with how much she meant it. She’d had a hard time forgiving him for what had happened all those years ago, but knowing what she did now, she could better understand his reasoning.
“Plus, someone needs to bully the rookies until they harden up,” she joked.
He laughed. “Hey, now, I was never a bully,” he protested, shaking his head. “I just made sure they didn’t get soft once they’d graduated training.”
“Oh, yeah?” she fired back playfully. “And when you used to call them on the radio and send them to the middle of nowhere, that was part of hardening them up too, was it?”
“You were just as guilty of that as I was,” he reminded her, and she laughed as their order of homemade tiramisu arrived.
She could still remember the way they practically rolled around the car laughing together when they played these little pranks on the rookies in the department. They were probably a little mean, but when they were in it together, it didn’t feel that way.
“Yeah, and you were my superior,” she shot back. “So you’re the one who’d have to answer for it. You were supposed to set a good example.”
“I think I was setting a great example,” he argued playfully. “Showing you how to let loose and have some fun for a change.”
“For a change?” she protested, laughing. “You saying that I’m not fun?”
“I’m saying you were a rookie who took the work dead seriously,” he replied, digging his spoon into their dessert. “And maybe you could use a little loosening up from time to time.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, and he chuckled. She had always liked his laugh, how genuine it sounded, like he really meant it. There were so many guys who came across as so insincere—she had been on enough crappy first dates to confirm that theory—but he had never seemed that way to her.
It was starting to feel distinctly like old times, much to her surprise. When she had imagined seeing him again, she had never thought they would be able to talk like this. She had thought about chewing him out, giving him a piece of her mind, telling him off for what he had done to her, but never that they could sit around and laugh and talk about the past together, as though they were old friends.
As he looked at her, she felt the familiar flutter in her chest she had come to recognize when she was near him. And she knew that, no matter how much she might have wanted to tell herself otherwise, there was always something more than friendship between them.
“I guess we should be getting back to Warrior Peak,” he remarked, once the waiter had cleared away the delicious tiramisu they’d shared.
