"You're not holding back with her." Tommy leaned in. "Whatever piece you were keeping, you gave it to her. I can see it." Tommy grinned, and the seriousness passed as quickly as it had arrived. "Also, you're terrible at hiding it, so maybe work on that if you don't want the entire bar knowing your business."
"The entire bar already knows my business."
"Fair point. Carry on with the staring."
At the bar, Gator was talking to Claire. Jake noticed because Gator didn't talk to anyone he didn't have to, and Claire was the kind of person who usually made him retreat into monosyllables. But she'd said something, and Gator's face had changed, and now he was actually laughing. Not the polite laugh he deployed for civilians, the one that didn't reach past his mouth. A real laugh, caught off guard, like she'd landed a punch he hadn't seen coming.
Jake watched his mentor try to recover his composure and fail. Claire said something else, leaning in like she was sharinga secret, and Gator laughed again, shaking his head like he couldn't quite believe what was happening. He spoke back, and Claire's expression shifted into delighted surprise, and then she was laughing too, the kind of laugh that made people at nearby tables turn and smile without knowing why.
"What the hell," Jake said, mostly to himself.
"Claire," Ray said, following Jake's gaze. "She does that. Gets under people's defenses without them noticing. It's why she's a good prosecutor."
"Gator doesn't laugh like that. I've known him my entire adult life.”
"She's been working on him since the first night you brought Emily here. Told me she was going to crack him open like a walnut." Ray took a sip of his bourbon. "Looks like she figured out the combination."
"He never talks to anyone outside the crew. Not really talks."
"Maybe he needed someone who wouldn't let him hide." Ray shrugged. "Claire doesn't take no for an answer. That's her superpower."
Whatever Claire said made Gator actually put his head down on the bar, shoulders shaking. She reached over and patted his back like she was comforting a friend, and Gator straightened up with tears in his eyes from laughing, which was genuinely an event Jake had never witnessed in his entire life.
"How the hell is she doing that?" he said to Emily.
"My friend is a miracle worker." Emily's voice was warm. "He needed someone who wouldn't let him hide. She's that person for a lot of people."
The jukebox switchedto a slower track, and couples started drifting toward the small cleared space near the back that served as a dance floor. Ray was deep in conversation with Tommy,hands moving through the air to illustrate a point. Claire was still at the bar, and Gator was actually leaning in to listen to whatever she was saying, which was a sight Jake genuinely never thought he'd see.
Emily touched his arm.
"Come outside with me for a minute?"
Jake didn't ask why. He followed.
The back door of The Anchor led to a narrow alley that wasn't really an alley, just the space between the building and the tree line where the property ended. Someone had put a little patio set out here years ago, a round metal table and two chairs that the staff used for breaks. The string lights from the deck wrapped around the corner, casting everything in a warm glow. A stack of milk crates sat against the wall, and the faint smell of the kitchen drifted through a vent somewhere overhead.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't romantic in any way that greeting cards would recognize. But it was private, and the noise from inside faded to a muffled hum that felt like it was coming from very far away.
Emily walked to the edge of the concrete pad and stopped, looking out at the darkness where the trees began. Jake came up behind her and waited. He'd learned her silences over the past month. Some of them wanted filling. Some of them wanted company. This one wanted presence without pressure.
"I'm not having a crisis," she said, which was exactly what someone having a crisis would say. But her voice was calm. "I just needed a minute."
"Okay."
"With you." She turned to face him. The string lights caught her profile, the line of her jaw, how her hair fell across her shoulder. "I needed a minute with you. Before I could go back in there and be present for the rest of it."
Jake understood. The noise, the people, the celebration. All of it good. All of it a lot. Sometimes you had to step outside the thing to feel it properly. Sometimes you needed to stand in the stillness with someone who understood that you weren't leaving, you were just taking a breath.
He opened his arms, and she stepped into them.
She didn't say anything. Neither did he. He held her while the muffled bass from the jukebox leaked through the walls and the Florida night rise around them, warm and heavy with the smell of salt and earth.
Her head was against him, her arms around his waist, and Jake could feel the tension draining out of her with each breath. The past month leaving her body. The case, the pressure, the fear of losing Costa before they could find him. The institutional bullshit from Marchand. The self imposed expectation that came from being Emily Callahan, federal prosecutor, who didn't make mistakes and didn't show weakness and didn't let anyone see her need anything. All of it flowing out of her and into the night, leaving just this. The two of them in a corner of a bar that had become home, holding each other because they could.
He ran his hand up her spine, slow and smooth, and felt her melt further into him. The crickets were loud out here, filling the darkness beyond the tree line with their endless song. Somewhere inside, someone laughed, and the sound was muffled enough to feel like it belonged to another world.
"I keep waiting for it to go wrong," Emily said, her voice muffled against his shirt. "Not with us. With everything. The case closing too easily. The Marshals losing Costa in transit. Vance making one last move."
