By the time Friday night rolls around, I've almost convinced myself I'm handling this professionally. Almost. Then I'm behind the bar at Ironside, pouring drinks for the usual crowd, and every time the door opens my pulse jumps with stupid hope.
The place is busy—Friday night crowd filling booths and claiming bar stools. Noise and motion that usually settles my mind, gives me something to focus on besides thoughts that won't stop circling.
Tonight it's just noise.
I pour bourbon for a regular, slide a beer down the bar to another. The motions are automatic, muscle memory from years behind this counter. Pour, serve, collect payment, repeat. Simple transactions that don't require thinking or feeling or wonderingwhether I made a mistake getting involved with someone who might never be ready.
"You want to talk about it?" Will asks during a lull.
"No."
"Going to anyway." He leans against the bar, crossing his arms. "You're distracted. Making mistakes you don't normally make. Whatever's going on with you and the insurance investigator, it's affecting your focus."
"It's handled."
"Doesn't look handled."
I pour two whiskeys and slide them down the bar without responding. Will doesn't push, just watches with that steady assessment that means he's cataloging everything for later discussion.
My phone buzzes. For a moment, I hope it's Mira.
Just Davis with an update on accelerant analysis from the latest fire.
I respond with the information he needs and pocket the phone.
"She'll come around," Will says. "If she's worth having, she'll work through whatever's making her run."
"And if she doesn't?"
"Then she wasn't ready. And you move on."
Simple advice. The kind I'd give someone else without hesitation. Doesn't feel simple when it's my own situation.
The door opens, and for a second my pulse jumps—automatic hope that it's her, that she's reconsidered, that she's ready to talk instead of hide.
Just another customer looking for drinks and distraction.
I pour their order and try to convince myself that Cole and Will are right. That space and time will let Mira process what happened. That she'll work through the fear and confusion and come back ready to explore what we started.
I fail completely.
The weekend passes in a blur of shifts and cases and deliberately not thinking about her. By Monday I stop checking my phone every few minutes. Stop hoping every notification is her. Stop scanning crowds for her face. She needs space. Fine. I get it. Doesn't mean I'm waiting around indefinitely for her to decide whether she can handle what we could be building.
I focus on the investigation instead. Interview more businesses, review vendor records, build the case against whoever's setting these fires. Professional partnership without the personal complications. The way it should have been from the start.
Except working the case means encountering her. Coordinated interviews with witnesses. Evidence review sessions with Davis. Case meetings where we both pretend the tension is professional disagreement instead of unresolved personal shit.
She's good at pretending. Better than me.
Which is why, when dispatch calls about another fire—small warehouse on the industrial edge of town, fully involved when crews arrived—I'm not surprised to pull up and see her vehicle already in the lot. Same accelerant patterns as the others. Same methodical approach. Another fire in the series targeting local businesses.
Mira's there to photograph the scene for insurance purposes. I'm there to document evidence and determine origin. We work opposite sides of the burned-out structure, carefully maintaining distance.
The air still carries the acrid bite of smoke, underlaid with the chemical tang of accelerant. Charred wood crumbles under my boots as I move through the debris field, cataloging burn patterns and collecting samples.
Professional focus. Don't think about Mira working fifty feet away. Don't wonder if she's thinking about me. Don't acknowledge the tension that crackles between us like residual heat.
Until our paths intersect near what's left of the loading dock.
