"I know that now." She reached up and touched his face, her palm warm against his jaw. "You taught me that. Not with words. Just by being the kind of person who shows up and doesn't expect anything in return."
"I expect plenty in return."
"You expect me to be myself. That's different." Her thumb traced along his cheekbone. "That's the hardest thing anyone's ever asked of me, and you don't even know you're asking."
Jake turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm. Then he helped her into the car, closed her door, and walked around to the driver's side.
The engine started. The headlights cut through the darkness. Behind them, The Anchor fell into its late-night pattern, holding the shape of everything that had happened there without comment. Gator was probably closing out the register. Rick was probably wiping down the bar. The corner booth where they'd all sat together was probably empty now, waiting for the next Friday night when it would fill again with the same people, telling the same stories, building the life they'd chosen.
Jake pulled out onto the road, and Emily's hand found his on the center console. He drove them home through streets that had become familiar, past the turnoff for her apartment that they didn't take anymore, toward a house that had stopped being only his somewhere in the past month. Her toothbrush was in his bathroom. Her coffee was in his cabinet. Her presence was in every room, subtle and undeniable, the proof of a life being built one day at a time.
The night was warm. The windows were down. Emily's hand rested on his thigh, her fingers tracing absent patterns on the denim.
And Jake Walsh, for the first time in his life, wasn't holding anything back.
CHAPTER 26
She'd spent forty minutes deciding between two dresses and then putting on jeans and a white top because that was who she wanted to be tonight.
Not the prosecutor. Not the woman who'd been navigating federal scrutiny and Marchand's choreographed disapproval. Just Emily, on a Saturday, going out with Jake.
He was waiting in the kitchen when she came downstairs, leaning against the counter with Ranger at his feet. Jeans, a navy button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, no hat. He'd cleaned up without overdoing it, like the effort was there but would deny it under oath.
"You look incredible," he said.
"You're biased."
"Doesn't make it less true."
She crossed to him and kissed him, because she could, because she wanted to, because six weeks ago she wouldn't have and tonight she didn't think twice. His hand found the small of her back, anchoring her as it always did, and she let herself be steadied.
"Where are we going?"
"Dinner first. Then wherever you want."
"That's dangerous. I could want anything."
"That's the idea."
He took her to a place on the water she hadn't been, small and unassuming, the kind of restaurant that survived on locals who didn't tell anyone about it. The host knew him by name and seated them at a corner table where the window framed the last of the sunset burning itself out over the harbor.
They ordered without deliberation, wine for her and bourbon for him, appetizers they'd share because somewhere in the last month they'd stopped pretending they weren't the kind of couple who ate off each other's plates.
"How's Claire?" Jake asked.
"Suspicious."
"Of what?"
"Of everything. She thinks we're moving too fast. She also thinks you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. She holds both opinions simultaneously and sees no contradiction."
Jake's mouth curved. "I like Claire."
"Everyone likes Claire. It's her most dangerous quality."
The food came, and they talked how Jake and Emily had learned to talk, which was to say about everything and nothing, the conversation moving without effort between the serious and the trivial. He told her about a call from a buddy in Virginia who wanted to open a training facility, how he'd spent twenty minutes explaining why Northern Virginia real estate was going to eat the man alive. She told him about a motion she'd filed that morning that was going to make opposing counsel's week thoroughly miserable, and Jake laughed at the right parts and asked questions that proved he'd been listening to every detail she'd shared over the past month about the case's procedural infrastructure.
She caught herself thinking, halfway through the appetizer course, that this was the thing she'd been most afraid of.
