Warren let the silence stretch as he turned it over. Reid had ties to Radley, that much was certain. That was as good a reason as any to bring him straight to Worthbridge. But the Jude Ellison connection? That still didn’t sit right. He’d watched him today. Shared a joke with him. Seen him talking timidly withFreddie Webb, the local copper. If there’d been history there, it looked like clean history. And if Jude had gone from someone like Reid, a criminal, to someone like Webb, a police officer. Chalk and cheese didn’t cover it.
Still, people were surprising in what they went for.
“You wanna go through our backstory now?” he asked, mostly to stop himself sliding any further down the rabbit hole of what kind of bloke Jude Ellison might actually go for.
Because that shouldn’t matter.
Not even a little.
And it definitely didn’t twist something low in his chest to think Jude had a thing for either coppers or criminals. Especially when Warren had been both.
At the same time.
Naomi fixed her hair back. “Aren’t we reusing the old playbook?”
“Doubt ‘Mr and Mrs Drug Cartel’ will fly in a sleepy coastal town with a secondary school cover.”
“Fair.”
Warren drummed his fingers on the table. “Alright, let’s get this sorted and I’ll grab us some food. Spotted a jerk chicken place by the seafront. You still eat that, yeah?”
Naomi pulled a face. “I’m vegan now.”
He snorted. “’Course you are.” The shake of his head held more amusement than judgement.
“I only ever liked your mum’s jerk chicken, anyway.”
That one landed. His mum’s cooking wasn’t food, it was love ladled out in heaping portions, packed into foil and Tupperware after church, always enough to share. Naomi had once wolfed it down without shame, licking sauce off her fingers. Hearing her dismiss it now, fold it into a throwaway line, pinched somewhere deeper than he cared to admit.
He cocked his head. “That was never in the script.”
“Neither were a lot of things.” She drank her coffee. “Ops team came through this morning, stocked the cupboards. Dry goods, fridge basics. Standard issue. Probably not your usual beer, though.”
“I don’t drink anymore.”
Naomi widened her eyes. “Since when?”
“Since the last post. Too much booze. Too many blurred lines. Didn’t want to end up part of the collateral.”
She tightened her hand around her mug. “How was it?”
“Different.” Warren shrugged. “The same.”
Actually, it had been different.Verydifferent. But he didn’t want to go into all that right then. Certainly not with her.
Warren leaned back in the chair, eyeing her over the rim of his mug. The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable. Not exactly. But it was full.
“Right then,” he said. “Let’s write the script. Stick to the playbook. Don’t give the neighbours anything to sniff at.”
Naomi nodded once. “We’ll be boring as hell.”
Warren offered the ghost of a smile. “Wouldn’t that be a first.”
Naomi smiled back. Genuine. A smile that once might’ve meant something. And for a moment, Warren felt the echo of curiosity. The question that used to keep him awake, wanting to know every corner of her mind. Not because there was anything left burning. He wasn’t carrying a torch, not even an ember. But because he’d once cared. And even now, after all the silence and the sharp edges of their parting, decency pulled at him.
He didn’t love her. Hadn’t for a long time.
He’d moved on. Sometimes carelessly, sometimes with intention. His bed had never been empty for long, though it had often been lonely. Whatever had once tethered them together had come undone quietly, like smoke through a gap in the window. He could barely remember the scent of her shampoo.
