I nodded. “How about if there’s something you can’t talk about, you just say that. If you let me know it’s job stuff, I won’t push.”
“Deal. That would be great.” He exhaled. A long, slow breath, the kind that came from somewhere deep, and the set of his jaw changed. Not softer exactly. Just no longer braced.
This had been weighing on him. Somehow that made me feel better.
“Do you want to sit outside?” I asked.
He nodded.
We went out through the back door and sat on the decksteps. The night was cool and clear. Stars were starting to show through the darkening blue overhead, and the mountains were black shapes against a sky that wasn’t quite done being light.
Across the yard, through the gap in the fence, Jolly’s dark shape was visible in Ben’s yard. He was curled near the opening, asleep, his nose resting on his front paws, his body aimed toward William’s side of the fence even in dreams.
We sat close enough that our arms touched.
“I’m looking at dining tables,” Ben said.
The words came out of nowhere and landed softly between us. Ordinary words. The kind of thing a person said when they were furnishing a house.
“I measured the room yesterday,” he said. “Something that seats four would fit. Maybe six if I went with a round one.”
I looked at him. A man who’d lived out of duffel bags for six years. A man whose kitchen had a coffeemaker and a drawer of takeout menus and nothing on the walls. A man who’d told me, sitting in my kitchen a few nights ago, that he didn’t stay anywhere long enough to buy groceries.
And now he was measuring rooms for a dining table.
I didn’t comment on it. Didn’t say what it meant, because he knew what it meant and I knew what it meant, and naming it would make it smaller than it was.
“Round is nice,” I said. “No head of the table. Everyone’s equal.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Jolly shifted in his sleep. His tail moved once against the grass.
I leaned into Ben’s side. He put his arm around me, and I felt his breath slow, matching the quiet.
I wasn’t afraid.
It wasn’t something I needed to announce. It was quieterthan that. Settled. The feeling of standing on ground that held your weight, not because it was guaranteed but because it was real.
Because he’d told me everything and let me choose. And I’d chosen this. To be here, right now, with him.
I closed my eyes. Let the night hold us.
Chapter 24
Ben
The thing about volunteering to be bitten by your own dog was that the dog didn’t care that it was you who volunteered.
I flexed my fingers inside the fabric, checking the fit of the four-pound bite sleeve. The padding ran from my wrist to above my elbow—dense, layered, designed to absorb the impact of a full-speed hit from an animal with a bite force that could crack bone.
I’d worn one hundreds of times. It never got routine.
“All right,” I said, turning to face the group. “Who’s playing handler today? Jolly’s ready.”
Six officers stood along the wall of the training bay, which was a converted warehouse space on the back side of the PD building that they used for tactical exercises.
Reeves was closest, arms crossed, watching Jolly with the kind of focused attention I’d been looking for since we started this contract. Briggson stood a few feet away, feet planted wide, his usual expression firmly in place. A coupleof the others I’d trained with regularly—Calloway, Peters—filled in the back row.
