“He’s the best dog.”
She reached across the counter and put her hand over mine. Her fingers were still cool from the salad bowl. Neither of us said anything else about it.
My phone buzzed on the counter. I glanced at the screen. Donovan. A text, not a call, which meant it wasn’t urgent. Probably an update on the Martinez situation or Jace with another data point or just Donovan checking in the way he did when he couldn’t sleep and figured I couldn’t either.
If it was important, he’d be calling in the next thirty seconds. When he didn’t, I turned the phone facedown.
The work would be there in the morning. It was always there. Patient and demanding and ready to swallow however many hours I was willing to feed it. For the past six years, those hours had been unlimited. The job got whatever it wanted because there was nothing competing for the space.
Tonight, something was competing.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“When does William come back?”
“Tomorrow morning. Trish said she’d have him home by nine.” She held my gaze. Waited.
From next door, faint through the walls, Jolly barked once. The single, sharp announcement he made when he heard a sound and wanted the record to show he’d been on duty. Then silence.
“He knows how to spend the night by himself,” I said.
“But he doesn’t necessarily like it.”
I smiled. “He’ll survive. Will be poking his head through that fence hole at dawn.”
I’d told her things tonight I hadn’t told anyone who wasn’t Donovan. About Montana. About why I’d enlisted. About the hollow efficiency of a life built for leaving.
I’d said more in the last hour than I typically said in a week, and none of it had been difficult, because she didn’t make it difficult. She asked and I answered, and the answers came without the resistance I was used to feeling.
I thought about what I’d told Vance at Brannigan’s a couple nights ago. That some guys eventually settled down. Took local contracts. Built something permanent. That Citadel didn’t chain anyone to the field.
I’d said it like I was describing someone else’s life. A path other people took. Now, sitting in this kitchen with thedrawings on the fridge and the herbs on the windowsill and a woman who’d approached every wall I had and walked through them like they weren’t there, I realized I hadn’t been describing someone else at all.
I just hadn’t caught up to it yet.
Kayla’s hand was still on mine. The kitchen was quiet. The light hummed faintly overhead. Somewhere next door, Jolly had gone back to sleep, satisfied that his single bark had been sufficient commentary on the situation.
I turned my hand over under hers and laced our fingers together.
“Come here.”
She slid off her stool and stepped into me. I was still sitting, which put her even with me for once, and she settled between my knees with her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face with an expression that made my chest go tight.
Not guarded, not careful. Just present, all the way through, nothing held in reserve.
I untied the belt of her robe. Slowly. Watching her face the whole time, watching the way her breath changed, the way her lips parted. The robe fell open, and I pressed my mouth to the hollow of her throat, her fingers curled into my hair, and the sound she made was quiet and deep and went straight through me.
This was different from before. The hallway had been collision. Need overriding thought, two people who’d been circling each other for weeks finally running out of reasons to hold back.
This was deliberate.
I knew the shape of her now. Knew the places that made her breath catch, knew the sounds she made when I found them, knew the way her fingers tightened in my hair when I took my time.
I pulled her closer. She came willingly, her body pressing into mine, the thin fabric sliding under my hands. My mouth moved down from her throat to her collarbone, and she exhaled and tipped her head back, and I felt the trust in that gesture as clearly as I’d ever felt anything.
I stood, lifting her with me, and she wrapped around me the way she had in the hallway, legs around my waist, arms around my neck, her mouth finding mine. But the pace remained unhurried. Every touch a choice rather than a reflex.
