"I've never been more sure of anything."
"It's a big job, Em. The kind of job you don't get offered twice."
"Then they'll offer it to someone else. Someone who doesn't have what I have. Someone who doesn't know what all in actually means."
He pulled her close, his chin resting on top of her head, his arms around her like he was learning how to hold on instead of letting go. She breathed him in. Sawdust and sun and the solid warmth of a man who'd left a half-finished deck to come find her.
"We'll finish it this weekend," she said.
"You hate power tools."
"I'll supervise."
Ranger flopped in the grass at their feet with a martyred sigh, and the world went on around them, and none of it mattered.
CHAPTER 31
The bleachers at Westshore Little League had become familiar over the past few weeks. The way the aluminum seats caught the afternoon sun. The smell of cut grass and hot dogs from the concession stand. The sounds of kids warming up, balls hitting gloves, parents calling encouragement from the sidelines.
Emily had missed most of the season, but she'd made it to the last four games. Enough to learn the names of the kids on Jacob's team, to understand the dynamics between the parents, to find her spot on the third row where she could see both the field and the fence where Jake always ended up.
He was there now, crouched on the other side of the chain link, playing catch with Jacob while they waited for the earlier game to finish. The kid's swing was still a work in progress, but his arm had gotten stronger. Emily watched him wind up and throw, watched Jake catch it easily and toss it back with instructions she couldn't hear from here.
"You're watching him again."
Emily turned. Erika was settling onto the bleacher beside her, two bottles of water in hand. She passed one to Emily and took a long drink from the other.
"Can you blame me?"
"Not even a little." Erika's smile was knowing. "Jake Walsh playing catch with my kid is pretty much peak wholesome content."
Emily laughed. She'd grown close to Erika over the past weeks, closer than she'd expected. The group text with Claire had started as a joke. Claire insisting that Emily needed "female reinforcements" who weren't also her coworkers, but it had become real. Daily check-ins. Photos of nothing in particular. The easy rhythm of friendship that Emily had never quite let herself have before.
Her tribe was expanding. That was the word Claire had used, and Emily had rolled her eyes at it, but she couldn't deny the truth of it. She had people now. Not just Jake, not just the family at The Anchor. She had Erika sending her memes at midnight and Claire analyzing her outfit choices and the three of them making plans for a girls' night that kept getting postponed but would happen eventually.
At the fence, Jacob threw wide and Jake had to lunge to catch it. Whatever he said made him laugh, then demonstrated the grip again, patient as always. Jacob tried again. Better this time.
"So," Erika said. "Three months. Has he started to lose his shine?"
Emily felt her face do that thing she couldn't control. The smile that came up from somewhere deep, the one that made her feel like a teenager with a crush instead of a thirty-one-year-old federal prosecutor.
"I'm afraid it's just gotten brighter."
Erika's grin widened. "God, you've got it bad."
"I really do."
"Good. He deserves someone who looks at him like that." Erika took another sip of water. “Jake said you're moving in?"
Emily nodded. The decision had been easy, in the end. She'd been spending every night at his place anyway, her apartment becoming little more than a storage unit for clothes she never wore. Last week, Jake had cleared out half the closet without being asked. The week before that, Ranger had started waiting for her at the door instead of him.
"Next weekend," she said. "Claire's already planning the unpacking party. She has a spreadsheet."
"Of course she does."
On the field, the earlier game was wrapping up. Kids streamed toward their parents, high-fives and consolation hugs depending on the outcome. Jacob jogged back to the dugout, and Jake straightened, stretching his back, scanning the bleachers until he found her.
He smiled. The real one. The one that started in his eyes.
