I watched the door she'd walked through.
The feeling wouldn't settle—that sense of being examined. Evaluated. Like I'd been weighed on some invisible scale and she'd recorded the result.
Paranoia. Had to be.
The stress of the closure threats, the corruption case, Sloane walking back into my life. I was seeing shadows where there was only light.
I made myself eat. The lasagna was good.
I couldn't shake the taste of something wrong.
The doorbell rang at six-fifteen the next evening when I was off shift.
I'd cleaned the apartment twice. Not that it needed it—I wasn't the kind of person who let things accumulate.
But I'd straightened the books on the shelf. Adjusted the lamp by the couch. Checked the fridge three times like I was expecting a health inspection instead of my ex-fiancée.
The word landed wrong.Ex-fiancée.Too clinical for what we'd been. Too small for what we'd lost.
I opened the door.
Sloane stood in the hallway with her messenger bag slung across her body and her armor firmly in place. Professional blazer. Hair pulled back. Green eyes that used to look at me like I was the answer to every question she'd ever asked.
Now they were guarded. Careful.
The same way mine probably were.
"Come in."
She stepped past me, close enough that I caught her scent—something subtle, not perfume exactly, more like clean laundry and the faint ghost of newsprint. My chest tightened.
Eight years.
Eight years since I'd smelled that combination. Since I'd known exactly what shampoo she used and how she took her coffee and the sound she made when she laughed for real, not the polished version she gave interview subjects.
"Nice place." She was surveying the apartment the way she surveyed everything—taking in details, filing them away. The minimalist furniture. The framed photo of my father in his dressblues. The bookshelf heavy on tactical manuals and light on fiction.
"It works."
We stood there for a moment, the silence stretching.
Two people who used to know each other's bodies better than their own, now strangers wearing familiar faces.
"Should we—" she started.
"The files are in the living room," I said at the same time.
Awkward laughter. Hers was nervous. Mine felt rusty, like a door hinge that hadn't been used in too long.
We moved to the couch. I'd spread out my documentation on the coffee table before she arrived—incident reports, inspection records, ownership chains traced through shell companies. The pattern I'd been building for years.
Sloane settled into the cushion beside me. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I caught the scent of her shampoo.
Same one. After all this time, the same damn shampoo.
My mind flashed to Sunday mornings. Her hair was still damp from the shower. The way I used to bury my face in her neck just to breathe her in. The way she'd laugh and squirm and then go still when my mouth found the spot behind her ear.
Focus.
