Silence. Three seconds. She could feel him across the line, seeing the things she wasn't showing him, and for the first time since they'd met she was grateful he couldn't see her face because her face would have ended this.
"Emily."
Not Em. Emily. He'd heard it. The wall. The retreat. The old door slamming shut.
"Report back tomorrow," she said again. Steadier this time. The prosecutor's voice. The one that won motions and filed status reports early and did not need anyone.
"Okay." The voice of a man who knew he was standing on the wrong side of a door that had been open yesterday. "I'll check in at oh-eight-hundred."
"Fine."
Another beat. Longer. The road noise filled it. She could picture him driving the Range Rover through the dark. One hand on the wheel. The other holding his phone. Looking at the road and thinking about her and deciding.
"Em. I lo---"
She hung up.
Her thumb hit the red circle before the word finished and the screen went dark and the kitchen was silent and Emily Callahan was standing barefoot on her own tile floor with a dead phone in her hand and the first two-thirds ofI love youringing in her skull like a bell she'd cut off mid-swing.
She put the phone down. She was shaking.
She went back to the couch. Sat down. Pressed her hands flat against her thighs, the way she did in courtrooms when the verdict was coming and she needed to be still.
She'd hung up on him.
She'd hung up on Jake Walsh in the middle of telling her he loved her because hearing it would have destroyed the last wall she had standing and she wasn't ready for the rubble. She wasn't ready to be the woman with no walls in an empty apartment with nothing between her and the knowledge that the man she loved was driving through the dark toward danger for all she knew and she couldn't do a damn thing about it except sit here and wait.
Call him back.
Don't you dare.
You already broke. In Ray's office. Over a memo. You broke hours ago and you've been pretending you didn't.
Emily stared at the ceiling. Flat white. No character. No water stains, no texture, no cracks that made shapes if you looked long enough. The ceiling of a woman who had never lain on her back and traced patterns with someone and laughed about what the shapes looked like.
The phone sat on the kitchen counter. Dark screen. She could see it from the couch if she turned her head.
She didn't turn her head.
The hours dissolved. Nine o'clock. Ten. Eleven. She didn't move. Didn't eat. Didn't open the wine she'd bought three weeks ago and never touched because every time she'd wanted a drink she'd been at The Anchor.
Midnight. The apartment was dark. She hadn't turned on a light. The streetlight outside her window threw a pale stripe across the floor that moved when the wind moved the trees, and that was the only thing in this apartment that was alive.
She was so tired. Thirty-one years of holding this position. Thirty-one years of building walls and convincing herself that safety lived on this side and everything else lived on the other and the two could never touch. And now she was sitting in the dark in an apartment that felt like nowhere, and the only place she wanted to be was a house in South Tampa with a dog who waited by the door and a man who would always wait longer.
The phone was on the counter.
Emily got off the couch. Crossed to the kitchen. Her feet were cold on the tile. The clock on the microwave said 3:51.
She picked up the phone. The screen lit her face. No notifications. No missed calls. He hadn't tried to call back. Because Jake Walsh understood that she'd hung up for a reason and he respected the reason even though it was wrong and he would wait. He would always wait.
She opened the text thread. Their last exchange was from yesterday morning. A photo of Ranger on the porch. Her reply:Tell him I'm coming home tonight.His reply:He knows. He's been waiting by the door since noon.
Her vision blurred. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Stood in her kitchen at 3:54 in the morning, barefoot, in a Vanderbilt t-shirt with a hole in the collar, in an apartment that felt like nothing, and typed four words.
I love you too.
She pressed send. The message went blue.
