Jade smiled. “A long day for you too.”
“Yeah.” Maddox stood, and Jade stood with her. They ended up closer than Jade had planned, close enough that she could smell the coffee on Maddox’s breath and see the tiredness around her eyes.
"Thank you," Maddox said. "For figuring this out. The therapy thing. I know that couldn't have been easy."
"It wasn't," Jade admitted. "But it was necessary."
"Still, thank you."
They stood there another moment, neither quite wanting to leave. Then Maddox reached out and squeezed Jade's hand once, brief and warm, before stepping back.
"I'll text you," Maddox said. “About when we can see each other again.”
"I'd like that."
Maddox turned toward the door, and Jade watched her go, tracking her movement through the window as she walked to her vehicle parked at the curb on Main Street.
Then she was alone at the table with two coffee cups and the weight of what they'd just agreed to. Jade sat back down slowly. Around her, Honey and Hearth continued its early evening rhythm. The barista wiped down the counter, a couple at a nearby table shared a pastry, and soft acoustic music drifted from the speakers.
She pulled out her phone and texted Carla. “She agreed to transfer. First session next week?”
The response came quickly. “I'll reach out to her tomorrow to schedule. You doing okay?”
Jade typed back a response. “Yeah. I think so.”
It was true, mostly. Shewasdoing okay. They'd navigated the hardest conversation and had chosen to try anyway. It wasn't a guarantee of success. Maddox could still bolt, and Jade could still overwhelm her. They could crash and burn spectacularly.
But they'd done it right. As right as they could, given the circumstances.
Jade finished her coffee and gathered her things and reflected. Tomorrow, they'd both show up at work and be professional colleagues like nothing had changed.
Except everything had changed.
Jade drove home with the windows down and let herself feel the ache of cautious hope settling in her chest.
9
The afternoon sun hit the windshield at exactly the angle that made Maddox reach for her sunglasses. Thursday, two o’clock, patrol route through the neighborhoods east of downtown. It was the kind of shift where nothing happened until it did.
Zeus shifted in the back compartment, his tags clinking as he settled into a new position. She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He was alert but relaxed, his ears tracking sounds she couldn't hear.
Her phone sat in the passenger seat cup holder, screen dark except for the notification light that had blinked earlier. She'd read Jade's text at lunch.
Jade: “Good luck with your shift. Thinking about you.”
It was simple and direct, the kind of message she’d gotten from exactly no one in the past six years.
Maddox flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. A week had passed since she'd woken up in Jade's bed and they'd agreed to see where this went. It’d been seven days of texts that came at odd hours, of Zeus's ears perking up when Riley mentionedJade's name, of her own thoughts drifting during patrol to what they might do that evening.
Not that she was obsessing. It was just that Jade had slipped into her daily routine without Maddox noticing when it happened.
The radio crackled with dispatch coordinating a traffic stop on the west side, nothing that required her attention. Maddox turned down Oleander Street, past the elementary school where they'd done the K-9 demonstration last month.
"Unit 12, what's your twenty?" Riley's voice came through clear.
Maddox keyed the radio. "Oleander and Sixth. Heading north."
"Copy. I'm two blocks west if you want company."
