"Okay," he said.
Emily Callahan led Jake Walsh back through the Salt Line and out to the gravel lot where their cars sat side by side, and the night wrapped around them, and the word she heard in her headwas the one she'd whispered into her own pillow four nights ago without knowing she'd said it.
It was still true.
CHAPTER 16
The drive from the Salt Line to Emily's apartment took twenty-two minutes. She knew because she counted every one of them, following Jake's taillights through Clearwater and across the bridge and into Tampa, her hands on the wheel and her heart doing things the rest of her refused to acknowledge.
She'd asked him to come home with her.
Not in the heat of a moment. Not after wine or dancing or the kind of evening designed to end this way. After the worst day of his life, sitting on a platform over the Gulf while he told her about faces he'd carry forever, she'd looked at Jake Walsh and said come home with me. And he'd said okay.
Emily pulled into her parking spot and killed the engine and sat, watching Jake's Range Rover slide into the visitor space beside her. The dashboard clock read 9:47. Her apartment was twelve floors up. Her bed was made because her bed was always made because Emily Callahan did not leave things undone.
She was about to undo everything.
Jake was already out of his car when she opened her door. He stood in the yellow wash of the parking garage lights, hands in his pockets, watching her with an expression she'd been learningto read for two weeks and still couldn't fully translate. Patience and want that had nothing to do with hesitation.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey."
They stood five feet apart in a parking garage that smelled like concrete and motor oil, and Emily felt the distance between them like a held breath.
"I should warn you," she said. "My apartment is very clean."
"I'd expect nothing less."
"And I don't have Dos Equis."
"I'll survive."
"And I'm not going to tuck you in and lock the door on my way out."
Jake went still. The parking garage was silent except for the hum of fluorescent lights and the sound of Emily's pulse in her own ears.
"Emily."
"I know what I said at the Salt Line. I'm not asking for anything." She failed to hide the truth in her eyes. "But I'm also done pretending I don't want everything."
Jake crossed the five feet between them. He didn't rush. Didn't close the distance the way she'd expected, with urgency or relief or the kind of momentum that two weeks of tension should have built. He crossed it the way he did everything. Like every step was a choice he was making with his whole body.
He stopped in front of her. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, the heat he carried that she'd been aware of since the first day in his car. His hand came up and found the side of her face, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, and Emily's eyes closed before she could decide to close them.
"You're sure," he said.
"I've been sure since you tucked me in and walked out of my apartment four days ago." She opened her eyes. "I'vebeen sure since you looked at me in Ray's office and I forgot how to breathe. I've been sure since you told me the principle is patience and I understood you weren't talking about surveillance."
"I wasn't."
"I know." She turned her face into his hand. "Take me upstairs, Jake."
The elevator was slow. Emily had never noticed before because she'd never stood in it with Jake Walsh's hand on the small of her back, warm through her shirt, his thumb moving in absent circles that she felt in the base of her spine. The floors counted up and neither of them spoke and the silence was so full of what was about to happen that words would have cheapened it.
She unlocked her door. The apartment was dark and cool and exactly as she'd left it that morning, a lifetime ago, when she'd been a woman who went to work and came home and kept the world at arm's length.
Jake stepped in behind her. She heard the door close. Heard the lock turn. Heard him set his keys on the table by the entrance, the small metallic sound loud in the small apartment.
