"I know you won't. There's a difference."
He knelt in front of her. Pulled the blanket back. Helped her swing her legs onto the mattress and spread the covers over her with the care of someone performing an act he intended to remember.
She was asleep before he finished tucking the blanket around her shoulders. Or nearly. Her eyes had closed and her breathing had found the slow cadence of surrender, and Jake pressed his lips to her forehead and held them there. Memorizing. The warmth of her skin. The faint smell of perfume and sweat and the scent that was only her. The significance of this night, of this woman, of this life he was building one decision at a time.
He straightened. Crossed to the door. Took one last look at her, curled on her side, hair spread across the pillow, face finally, completely, at peace.
He was pulling the bedroom door closed when he heard it.
Barely a whisper. Wrapped in sleep and fading even as it reached him, the words dissolving at their edges like smoke in still air. He froze with his hand on the doorknob, not breathing, straining to hear what might not have been there at all.
"I love you..."
The last syllable trailed into silence. Into the deep, even breathing of a woman who'd fallen asleep before the words had fully left her mouth.
Jake stood in the doorway of Emily Callahan's bedroom and let the words find its place inside him. It sat next to the morning at his kitchen table. Next to the weight of her head on his lap. Next to every small, terrifying, irreversible thing that had happened since she'd walked into Ray's office and looked at him like she was deciding whether to trust him or arrest him.
He closed the door. Locked the front door on his way out. Tested the deadbolt.
The night air hit him on the steps and he stopped. Looked up. Her window was dark. The city hummed around him, distant and unimportant.
Three words. Maybe. Possibly. He couldn't be sure.
Jake Walsh walked to his car. Sat behind the wheel. Let the engine stay cold.
Three words. Maybe.
He drove home slow.
CHAPTER 11
The group text came from Emily at nine-fifteen on a Monday morning, which meant she'd already been at her desk for two hours and was looking for a reason to leave it.
Take us out to lunch, babe?
Jake saw it first. Claire's response came four seconds later.
A date with Jake Walsh?
Yes ma'am,Jake typed.
Emily's reply was an angry face followed by a laughing face, and Jake set his phone down smiling because that two-emoji sequence was the most Emily Callahan thing he'd ever seen.
He picked a place called Olivia, a farm-to-table spot on the south end of Harbor Island that Emily had mentioned once in passing. Not The Anchor. Somewhere Claire would be comfortable and nobody would report back to Tommy before the appetizers arrived.
Claire was fifteen minutes late. Emily was ten.
Jake had picked a table near the window and watched them come through the door together, Claire with her sunglasses pushed up on her head and her bag over one shoulder, Emily still holding her phone like she'd been mid-email when the elevatorarrived. They moved through the restaurant the way two women who'd been navigating the world together for a decade moved through restaurants. In sync without trying.
"Sorry." Claire dropped into the chair across from him. "Ray had a thing."
"Ray always has a thing."
"This thing had a thing." She picked up the menu, scanned it with the efficiency of someone who made decisions for a living. "Oh, they have the burrata. We're getting the burrata."
"Are we?" Jake asked.
"We are." Claire caught the server's eye with a look that could have flagged down aircraft. "A glass of the Sancerre, please. And the burrata for the table."
