Then she dropped it.
The hallway exploded into fire.
Blue and orange racing along the trails she'd laid, spreading faster than anything natural should. The carpet ignited. The walls caught. Within seconds, a wall of fire between me and the stairwell.
The sprinklers kicked on. Water hissing against the flames.
But it wasn't enough. The fire was too hot, too fast, too hungry. It pushed back against the spray, eating through the hallway, growing despite everything the building threw at it.
Through the flames, the stairwell door closing.
She was gone.
CHAPTER 17
Garrett
Move in with me.
And she'd said yes.
Stop going back and forth. Just stay.
And she'd said yes.
I kept replaying it. The way her eyes went bright. The way she'd pressed her lips together and nodded. The way she'd whispered I'm already home against my neck.
She was staying. Not just for the night. Not just until the case was over.
Staying.
Coming home after a shift and finding her on the couch, chasing some story until 2 AM. Fighting over closet space. Arguing about dishes.
All the small, ordinary moments that added up to a life.
She'd given me back the ring.
Keep it. For when we're ready.
I put it in my locker. Back corner, behind my extra shirt. I found myself checking on it between calls.
Making sure it was still there. Making sure I hadn't dreamed the whole thing.
Proposing again wasn't a matter of if. I'd known since the moment she walked back into my life.
I just had to figure out how.
We'd bought that ring in our twenties. Every spare dollar scraped together, convinced that modest diamond was the most beautiful thing we'd ever seen. I'd thought about replacing it. Something that reflected who she'd become.
But that ring had history. That ring had waited, just like I had.
"Stone." Shane in the doorway. "You coming? Dinner's ready."
"Yeah." I closed my locker. "Be right there."
Brian had made pasta. Rodriguez was complaining about the garlic. Ortiz telling a story about his kid's soccer game that nobody was really listening to.
The familiar chaos of a shift dinner. The sounds of family.
