"You made me dance."
"I didn't make you do anything. You could have said no."
"No, I couldn't have."
She smiled. The smile that was only his, the one that started slow and arrived like sunrise, and Jake Walsh felt the power of being in love with someone who was looking at him like he was the answer to a question she'd been afraid to ask.
"I had the best night," she said. "The best night I've had since I can't remember when."
"Better than law school Claire?"
"Better than everything." She was watching the city lights pass. "I forgot I could feel like that. Happy. Really happy. Not accomplishment-happy or case-closed-happy. Body-happy. The kind where you don't have to think about it, you just feel it."
"Body-happy," Jake repeated. "I'm stealing that."
"You can have it. You earned it."
He pulled up in front of her building. Killed the engine. The sudden absence of road noise left a silence that felt intimate and complete.
Emily unbuckled her seatbelt but didn't move to open the door. She was looking at him again with that expression, the one that was bravery and desire and several drinks' worth of lowered inhibitions all fused together into a single, devastating invitation.
"Come up with me," she said.
Jake looked at her. Not with want, though the want was there, had been there all night, had been there since she'd walked down those steps in those jeans and those heels and that top that left her shoulders bare. He looked at her with care. With the concentration of a man who understood that some moments determined everything that came after.
She was beautiful. She was willing. She'd had the best night of her life and she wanted to extend it into a night neither of them would forget. Every signal she was giving him said yes, andevery part of him that was male and alive and desperately in love with this woman wanted to follow her through that door and into whatever came next.
He took her hand. Pulled her gently across the console toward him. Pressed a soft kiss to her lips, unhurried, tender, the kind of kiss that carried a promise rather than a demand.
"I'm coming up to tuck you in," he said. "Kiss you goodnight. And lock your door on my way out."
Emily's face underwent a transformation that any other night would have made him laugh. The softness dissolved into a pout that was somehow both adorable and threatening, her brow furrowing, frustration and near-outrage competing for control of her features.
"Damn you, Jake Walsh."
"I'm sorry."
"No, you're not."
"I'm a little sorry."
She fell into him. The fight went out of her all at once, replaced by the accumulated preeminence of the evening. The drinks, the dancing, the emotional expenditure of being a version of herself she hadn't accessed in years. She pressed her face against his neck and he felt her body go heavy against his, fatigue arriving like a wave she'd been outrunning since the dance floor.
"Why do you have to be so perfect?" The words were muffled against his collar, soft and tired, the voice of a woman who'd spent her life expecting people to disappoint her.
Jake held her. One arm around her back, one hand cradling the base of her skull, the way you'd hold a thing so valuable it didn't know its own worth yet. He let the question sit unanswered because the answer was that he wasn't perfect. He was a man who had nightmares and kept people at arm's length and had spent twelve years avoiding exactly this kind ofvulnerability. But he was also a man who knew, with certainty that lived in his bones, that if he followed her upstairs tonight it would mean less in the morning than if he didn't.
She deserved a first time that she'd chosen with clear eyes. Not a night she'd have to wonder about.
"Let's get you upstairs," he said.
Her apartment was tidy in the way that revealed her personality more than any conversation ever had. Books organized by subject. A coffeemaker that cost more than some of his firearms. A single framed photo on the bookshelf of Emily and Claire, younger, arms around each other, grinning at the camera with the unguarded confidence of women who hadn't yet learned what the world would ask of them.
Emily leaned on him through the hallway, her heels dangling from one hand, her other arm looped through his. She directed him to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him with heavy eyes.
"Stay," she said.
"You know I can't."
