Maddox was quiet for a long moment, and all Jade could hear was someone laughing at another table, the espresso machine hissing, and her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears.
"I'll transfer," Maddox said finally. "To Carla. If she's willing to take me."
Relief flooded Jade's chest. "She is. I already asked."
"Of course you did." There was a note of fondness laced in Maddox’s voice. "You're thorough."
“I try.”
There was another silence between them, less tense this time. Maddox took a sip of her coffee, grimaced slightly, and set it down again.
"So what does this mean?" Maddox asked. "For us."
Jade had been asking herself the same question all day. "I don't know," she admitted. "I know I want to see where this goes, and I know it's going to be complicated. We work in the same building and we're on the same committee. People are going to notice eventually."
"You want to keep it quiet," Maddox said. It wasn't a question.
"For now," Jade said slowly. "Not a secret—I'm not asking us to hide—but maybe private while we figure out what we're doing? Give ourselves space to mess up without an audience."
Maddox's mouth quirked slightly. "You think we're going to mess up?"
"I think we're both rusty at this." Jade surprised herself with a small smile. "And I don't know about you, but I'm terrible at navigating new relationships. My last one ended with my ex telling me I was exhausting."
"Mine ended with me being told I was emotionally unavailable," Maddox said. "So we're both coming in with baggage."
"At least it's balanced."
That earned an actual smile from Maddox, brief but real. "Fair enough."
They sat with that for a moment. Jade watched Maddox's fingers drum once against her mug, a nervous tell she probably didn't realize she had.
"I'm not good at this," Maddox said quietly. "Relationships, talking about feelings, any of it."
"I gathered that."
"I'm going to screw up," Maddox continued. "I'm going to pull away when I should lean in, and I'm going to shut down instead of talking. It's what I do."
"And I'm going to push when I should give space," Jade said. "I'm going to care too much and try to fix things that aren't mine to fix. That's whatIdo."
Maddox looked at her, something unreadable in her expression. "So we're both disasters."
"Apparently."
"But you still want to try."
It wasn't quite a question, but Jade answered anyway. "Yeah, I do."
"Me too," Maddox said, and something vulnerable flickered in her expression.
The conversation shifted to logistics about the practical realities of trying to date someone you worked with, even peripherally. They agreed to be professional at the precinct, no different than they'd been before. If anyone asked, they were colleagues, nothing more.
"At least not yet," Jade added. "We can decide later when—if—we want to tell people."
"If it becomes something worth telling people about," Maddox said.
"Right."
There was another pause, and Maddox checked her watch. “I should go. I need to grab Zeus from the unit and get him home. It’s been a long day for him.”
