Jake Walsh was the opposite of that. Jake Walsh had carried every life he'd taken like a debt he'd never stop paying, and he'd walked away from the world that required it and built a life designed around gentleness, around showing up, around being the warm, present thing that the violence had tried to take from him.
And some man in a conference room had called it an itch.
"He tried to take you away from me," Emily said.
Jake went still.
"That's what he did today. He tried to send you to Miami for four weeks because he wanted you out of his building. He dressed it up as an opportunity but it was a removal. And I don'tcare about his politics or his institutional power or his unnamed concerns." Her voice was level. Prosecutorial. The voice she used when she was building a case that could not be argued with. "He tried to take you away from me. That's not acceptable."
Jake stared at her.
"I have spent my entire life not choosing things for myself," Emily said. "I've done what was expected. What was planned. What looked right and checked the boxes and kept me on the path that someone else drew. And then you walked into Ray's office and looked at me like you could see every wall I'd built and weren't afraid of any of them, and for the first time in my life I chose something because I wanted it."
She leaned forward. The last of the daylight caught the water behind her and she didn't care.
"You. I chose you. And no one gets to take that away from me. Not Marchand. Not the DEA. Not your own guilt about raising your voice at a man who had it coming." Her eyes held his. "You don't owe anyone an apology for what happened today. Least of all me."
The silence that followed was the longest of Emily's life.
Jake reached across the table. His hand found hers. His fingers closed around her fingers and held on with the grip of a man who'd been holding things alone for so long that the act of letting someone else carry part of it felt like learning to breathe in a new atmosphere.
"How did you find this place?" he asked.
"Rick Weever."
Jake almost laughed. Not quite. The ghost of one, fighting through everything else. "Rick gave up the Salt Line?"
"He took one look at my face and decided I was worth the security breach."
"He's going to hear about that."
"He said to tell you I threatened him."
This time Jake did laugh. Broken and real, the sound of a man who'd been sitting in the dark and someone had turned on a small light and it was enough.
"Emily."
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you found me."
She tightened her grip on his hand. The Gulf went dark by degrees around them, the orange fading to gray fading to the deep blue that meant night was coming, and Emily Callahan sat on a platform over the water with Jake Walsh's hand in hers and let the silence hold what words couldn't.
After a while, Jake stood. Didn't let go.
"Come on," he said. "I'll follow you home."
Emily looked up at him. The man who'd given her his worst and found her still sitting beside him. The man who'd saidI'm glad you found melike it was the truest sentence he'd ever spoken.
"You don't have to follow me," she said. "You could stay."
Jake went still. She watched the gravity of the offer reach him, what she was saying and what she meant by it and everything that lived in the space between.
"Emily."
"I'm not asking for anything." She stood. His hand still in hers. "I'm asking you to come home with me."
The Gulf stretched out behind them, dark and patient, and the string lights from the deck caught the edge of Jake Walsh's face as he looked at the woman who'd driven to a bar she'd never heard of and she wasn't going to leave him there.
