“Sounds like police work.”
She laughs. “Really?”
“Start with a crime, end with an arrest. Everything in between is paperwork and dead ends.”
“That’s depressing.”
“That’s accurate.”
She’s quiet for a moment, then turns to look at me. “Do you like it? Being a deputy?”
No one’s asked me that in years. I think about it—really think about it—before answering.
“I like helping people. I like knowing the town is safe because I’m out there.” I tap my fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t love the paperwork. Or the politics. Or the drunks on Saturday nights who think they can take a swing at me.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Often enough.” I shrug. “Liam usually handles the worst of it. He’s better at talking people down.”
“And you’re better at...?”
“Scaring them into compliance.”
She grins. “The stoic deputy routine.”
“It’s not a routine.”
“Sure it isn’t.” She’s still grinning. “You’ve been practicing that glare since high school.”
“It’s a natural gift.”
She laughs again, and the sound settles somewhere in my chest. Warm. Dangerous.
I tell her about Seth and his anxiety, about how he’s one of the best deputies I’ve ever worked with but can’t seem to believe it himself. She asks questions, real questions, and actually listens to the answers. I tell her about my brother Liam and how he’s been on my case lately about “opening up more.”
She laughs at that. “Liam’s not wrong, you know.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m just saying?—”
“I said don’t start.”
But I’m almost smiling, and she knows it.
We stop for gas and bad coffee. She buys me a breakfast burrito without asking if I want one, and I eat it because she’s watching with that hopeful look on her face. When she gets mustard on her chin and doesn’t notice, I almost reach over to wipe it away.
Almost.
By the time we hit the LA sprawl, we’re almost talking like we used to. Almost. The traffic is brutal—nothing like Honeyridge Falls, where rush hour means three cars at the only stop sign—and she navigates us through it with the ease of someone who’s done it a thousand times.
This is her life. This city, this apartment we’re driving to, the career she built here. She made a whole existence without me. Without us.
The thought shouldn’t sting as much as it does.
The ache in my chest hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s worse. Because every smile, every laugh, every brush of her fingers when she hands me something—it all reminds me what I lost. What I’m terrified to want again.
“Turn left here,” she says, pointing. “It’s the building on the corner. Third floor.”
