She looked up at me, eyes wet. “And what am I doing now, Rios? Besides chasing ghosts and harassing a police chief who’d rather I vanish in a puff of smoke than keep asking questions?”
“You’re doing the thing the system failed to do,” I said. “You’re looking at the gray. You’re refusing to take the easy answer when it doesn’t fit the evidence. You’re putting your faith somewhere better than a badge or a title.”
“Where?” she asked, almost desperate.
“In the work,” I said simply. “In the questions. In the people who’ve proven they’ll bleed for the truth.”
Her gaze searched mine. “You mean you.”
Yeah, and that meant more to me than I was ready to analyze, so I pressed on. “And you.”
The silence that followed was dense and charged.
She broke eye contact first, scrubbing at one cheek with the heel of her hand in a gesture that was more frustrated than vain. “I don’t know how to not be angry. At them. At myself. At…everything.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m familiar with that particular flavor of rage.”
She huffed out something that might have been a laugh if you tilted your head and squinted. “How do you live with it?”
I studied the proud line of her spine and the tension around her mouth. The familiar exhaustion in her eyes.
“Badly sometimes,” I said. “Better when I’m not doing it alone.”
She looked back down at her empty glass. “I don’t really know how to not do things alone.”
“I noticed,” I said dryly.
Her lips twitched.
I hesitated for half a second before deciding to hell with it. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Compared to what we’ve already covered?” she asked. “Shoot.”
“When’s the last time somebody gave you a hug?”
Her head jerked up. “What?”
“Hug,” I repeated. “You know. Arms. Squeezing. Human contact that isn’t hostile cross-examination.”
She blinked. “I—why does that matter?”
“Because you found a dead man today, went toe-to-toe with a hostile cop, and confessed one of your biggest professional failures to the guy your hometown wanted to lynch, and you’re sitting here holding yourself together with sheer spite. That’s impressive. It’s also exhausting. And sometimes the thing you need isn’t another drink or another argument. It’s somebody else holding some of the weight for a minute.”
Her throat worked. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
Her eyes flashed. “I don’t need?—”
“I didn’t say you needed it,” I cut in. “I asked when the last time you had it was.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked away. “I don’t remember.” Her answer was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it.
Something in my chest twisted. “Can I give you one?”
Her head snapped back toward me. “Why?”
“Because you look like you’re about to shatter. And because I’m very good at this particular form of first aid.”
