"I saw it." Jake scooped him up. "You're basically Derek Jeter."
"Who's Derek Jeter?"
"I'm going to pretend you didn't ask that."
"Mom, who's Derek Jeter?"
Erika gathered Jacob for post-game snacks, giving Jake a look that held both amusement and an ache she'd learned to carry lightly. She hugged Emily goodbye, and Emily wassurprised by how hard she held on. Like she was passing a trust across a threshold and wanted to make sure it landed safely.
"Come back," Erika said. "Both of you. Jacob will talk about this for weeks."
"We will," Emily said. And meant it.
Then it was the two of them, walking back to the Range Rover through the thinning crowd of parents and siblings and kids still in their uniforms. The morning had burned off into full Florida afternoon, heat rising from the asphalt in visible waves.
"So," Jake said.
"So."
"You hungry?"
"Starving."
He stopped at the car, turned to face her. Sunglasses on his head, Rays t-shirt soft from years of washing, the face of a man who'd spent two hours cheering for an eight-year-old like it was the most important thing in the world.
"I could take you somewhere," he said. "Or." He paused, and Emily caught a hesitation she hadn't seen from him before. Not uncertainty exactly. Care. The attention of a man choosing his next words because they mattered. "I could cook for you. My place. There's someone I'd like you to meet."
His place. Another layer. And someone else, which meant another piece of himself he was choosing to share.
A week ago she would have saidtake me somewhere. Public. Neutral. Safe. The Emily Callahan risk management protocol, field-tested and reliable.
"Who's the someone?" she asked.
"You'll see."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." But his eyes were warm, a surprise he was enjoying.
Emily studied him. The man who showed up for a dead friend's son every Saturday. Who cheered like it mattered because it did. Who'd let an eight-year-old announce to a stranger that he'd given up a professional baseball career and hadn't tried to stop him.
"Surprise me," she said.
Jake smiled. The real one.
"Get in."
Jake's housewas not what she expected.
She'd imagined spare. Functional. The living space of a man who'd spent years in barracks and forward operating bases, who kept his life clean and minimal because that's what the work demanded.
Instead, she found a Craftsman bungalow on a sleepy street in South Tampa, with a deep front porch and mature oaks that threw shade across the whole yard. The kind of house that looked like someone lived there. Really lived there.
"This is yours?" she asked, climbing out of the Range Rover.
"Bought it when I got out. Needed a project." He led her up the front steps, keys in hand. "Fair warning. The someone I mentioned? He's enthusiastic."
Before Emily could ask what that meant, Jake opened the front door.
