“Suspicious,” I said. “This many adjectives on one page is never a good sign.”
“Adjectives?”
“‘Hand-foraged.’ ‘Line-caught.’ ‘Heritage grains.’ It’s word salad with a side of actual salad.”
“You say that like you’re not about to order the hand-foraged heritage something,” he said.
I sighed. “I am absolutely ordering the hand-foraged heritage something.”
He grinned.
The waiter came, all practiced charm and Charleston drawl, and rattled off the specials. Levi ordered a bourbon he’d never be able to pronounce in uniform. I chose wine from a list long enough to occupy a grad seminar.
We picked mains, something with scallops for me, something with more meat than plate for him.
When we were alone again, he leaned back, studying me over the candle.
“This is weird,” he said.
“Which part?” I asked. “The part where you flew in on a mysterious private jet tied to a shadowy security empire? Or the part where we’re on something that suspiciously resembles a date?”
“Both,” he said. “But I was going to go with the part where you’re letting me buy you dinner without interrogating me mid-entrée.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I fully intend to interrogate you. I’m just pacing myself.”
The bourbon came, deep amber in the glass. My wine followed, garnet-dark. We clinked, a soft chime in the humid air.
“To what, exactly?” I asked.
He considered. “Surviving long enough to do this again?”
My throat tightened.
“Ambitious,” I said, tipping my glass toward his. “To surviving tonight, first.”
We sipped.
For a while, we talked around the obvious.
He asked about Canada, about the small town I’d grown up in. The endless winters, the way the snow swallowed sound, the smell of woodsmoke and wet wool. He remembered details I’d half forgotten telling him—my dad’s old hockey jacket that smelled like cold and coffee, the way my mom always put too much cinnamon in her Christmas cookies.
I asked about Montana, about the brothers I’d heard about in fragments. His voice softened when he spoke of them, of wide sky and long drives and a house that always had one more chair at the table.
“You could have gone back,” I said, tracing the rim of my glass with one finger. “Two years ago. You could’ve left it all behind.”
He shrugged, staring out toward the street for a moment. “Maybe,” he said. “But I’ve never been good at walking away from unfinished business.”
“You walked away from me,” I said, before I could stop myself.
His head turned back slowly. The hurt in his eyes was raw, unhidden for once.
“I thought I was finishing something,” he said.
I let out a breath that felt like it had been stuck in my chest for twenty-four months.
“By disappearing?” I asked. “By cutting me off like I was an operational risk instead of an actual person?”
“Amelia,” he said quietly. “If I’d stayed in your orbit, you would’ve been an operational risk. To people who don’t mind making examples out of civilians.”
