"Hey, Jake."
He didn't turn around. He knew the voice, but he didn't know why it was in his backyard.
Claire Harper came through the gate in the fence like she'd been there before, which she hadn't. Sunglasses pushed up on her head, bag over her shoulder, moving with the pace of a woman who'd come here on purpose and wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
Ranger lifted his head. Assessed. His tail moved once, a polite acknowledgment of a person he'd filed underEmily's, and he retreated back into the shade.
Jake sat back on his heels. Set the drill down. The afternoon sun was behind Claire, and he had to squint to read her face, but he didn't need to see her clearly to know why she was here.
He stood and turned to face her. T-shirt off, draped over the railing of the half-finished deck, because it was ninety-two degrees and he'd been working for two hours and he hadn't been expecting company.
He saw her eyes move. Not where they'd move if she were anyone else. Not to the shoulders or the arms or the chest that Emily's hands knew by heart. Claire Harper's eyes went to the scar tissue. The knife wound above his left rib cage, a raised line of white against tanned skin, irregular at the edges where the blade had torn on the way out. And below his left collarbone, the crater. Smaller than people expected. Puckered and smooth, the skin grafted over damage the body had tried to repair and mostly succeeded.
Jake gave her a half smile. Pointed to the knife wound. "HVT extraction in Syria. He didn't want to go."
Claire's expression didn't change. She looked at the bullet wound.
Jake shrugged one shoulder, the one that still ached when it rained. "Firefight in northern Iraq. That one hurt."
He watched her take it in. Watched her process it how she processed everything, with the clinical attention of a woman who'd spent a career evaluating evidence. She didn't flinch. Didn't look away. Didn't do any of the things people usually did when confronted with the proof that the charming man with the backwards cap had been cut open and shot and survived both and carried the receipts in his skin.
"You didn't have to?—"
"Yeah." He picked up the t-shirt, pulled it over his head. "Sometimes it's just easier to get it out of the way."
"I'm not here to talk about those scars," Claire said. She set her bag on the railing and crossed her arms. "I'm here to talk about the invisible one both of you are going to carry if you let this happen."
Jake looked at her for a long beat. Then he turned, picked up Ranger's tennis ball from the deck boards, and threw it across the yard. Ranger launched out of the shade, a blur of purpose, and Jake watched him run because watching the dog was easier than looking at Claire Harper.
"I'm a soldier." He picked up the drill. Knelt back down beside the board he'd been working on. Lined up the next screw. "People get promoted. Move to other units." He drove the screw home without looking up. "I keep my head down. Stay in the fight."
The drill whined and stopped. Ranger returned with the ball, dropping it at Jake's knee, panting.
"That," Claire said, "is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard."
Jake didn't respond. He reached for the next screw.
"And I've heard a lot of bullshit, Jake. I work in federal court. I listen to defense attorneys manufacture reasonable doubt out of nothing for a living. I know what it sounds like when someone builds a story to survive a feeling they can't face." She took a step closer. "You're not a soldier right now. You're a man building a deck for a woman who asked you to, and you're telling yourself it's fine that she's leaving."
He set the screw. Positioned the drill. Didn't drive it.
"She earned that job, Claire."
"I know she earned it. I watched her earn it. I've been watching her earn things since law school." Claire's voice had shifted. Not harder. Steadier. The difference between a closing argument and a conversation she meant. "But that's not what this is about and you know it."
"What's it about?"
"It's about you sitting in her office today and saying all the right words and not meaning a single one of them. It's about you smiling at her like you were happy for her when you were dying inside, and her knowing it, and both of you pretending it was fine."
Jake's hand was still on the drill. His finger rested on the trigger. He didn't pull it.
"She told you."
"She didn't have to tell me. I've known that woman for ten years. I can read her face from across a courtroom." Claire paused. "I could read yours too, if you'd look at me."
He looked at her.
Whatever she found on his face made her stop. The prosecutorial certainty shifted. A different register surfaced, less precise and more honest, and Jake recognized it because he'd seen it on Emily's face the first time she'd let him see past the walls.
