"Slade, you old dog. Didn't know you were coming down this weekend." Buddy appeared at Slade's elbow, oblivious to the tension.
"Surprise visit," Slade said, turning away from Trent with a look that indicated he wasn’t done. "Wanted to see what kind of trouble my niece has been getting into, especially because she hasn't invited me since she moved here from Jacksonville."
"I'd be lost without her," Buddy said. "Mostly."
"She certainly keeps us on our toes." Sterling shook Slade's hand.
"That's frightening." Slade looped an arm around Dove's shoulder, kissing her temple as a father might.
They fell into easy conversation—shop talk, war stories, the kind of shorthand that people developed when they'd worked adjacent to the same world for long enough. Trent caught fragments of it—old cases, mutual acquaintances, jurisdictional headaches that had apparently been funny in retrospect.
He let the words wash over him without engaging as Buddy, Sterling, and Slade made their way back to the bar where Juniper and Fallon were sipping wine and laughing.
Dove stayed.
"You doing okay?” she asked quietly.
“Good days and bad. Today was somewhere in between.” He hadn’t seen much of Dove since the funeral. Since she’d spent the night at his house. Since they once again agreed they were better off as friends. That time, it was him waking up in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed, handing her a cup of coffee, and telling her he was sorry. That he shouldn’t have taken advantage of or used her like that when he was hurting.
In usual Dove fashion, she shrugged it off as if she knew exactly what he was doing and was a willing participant in his need to bury his pain in human flesh, which just made him an asshole. But she kissed his cheek, got out of bed, and made him pancakes like it didn’t matter.
Only, it did.
“You were a little hard on my uncle.”
Trent picked at the label on his beer bottle, not meeting her eyes. “I understand my father's death was an accident. But you have to understand it was also all over the news. Federal witness name leaked before the case fell apart. Investigation launched. Lots of handwringing and promises made to find who did it, because it was that leak, along with the destruction of evidence, and the death of another witness that destroyed the case. But then the news cycle moved on, the investigation went cold, and my mother spent the next twenty years wondering which of the people who'd sworn to protect her husband decided they didn't want this case to go to trial. And now one of them waltzes into town while an?—”
“It wasn’t my uncle.”
“I never said it was. I'm just telling you what happened and where my head's at.”
She stepped closer—close enough that he could smell her shampoo—something floral and clean that didn't belong in a place that smelled like beer and river mud. “My uncle never told me the details about the accident that nearly put him on desk duty. The one that’s haunted him for twenty years. He warned me when I joined the Army that the job had costs."
“My father was one of his costs.” Trent shrugged, but the motion was stiff. "My mother liked him. Appreciated his presence at the funeral. She never believed he was the one who leaked the name. But every time I think about that day, I just..." He shook his head. "The system was supposed to protect my dad. Instead, someone within that system betrayed him and everyone else involved in that case. And no one ever paid for it." And that was the biggest reason he’d kept what he’d seen to himself for two decades. Not to mention, he wasn’t even sure of what he saw.
Dove reached out and curled her fingers around his bicep, her grip warm through his shirt. It was a small touch. An innocent touch. But it sent heat spreading through his chest in a way that had nothing to do with the humid air. "I'm sorry," she said. "For what happened to your father. For what your family went through. And for ambushing you with my uncle without warning."
"You didn't know."
"I should have. I knew my uncle worked in South Florida witness protection for most of his career. I knew your father died while in witness protection when you were young. I should have put it together."
"It's not exactly cocktail conversation. 'Hey, did your uncle happen to be involved in my father's death?' doesn't come up naturally."
Her mouth twitched despite the heaviness of the moment. "I'll add it to my list of icebreakers."
"Right after 'do you have any twelve-foot alligators I should know about?'"
"That one's already on the list."
The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. This was what Dove did—pushed until he pushed back, then kept pushing until the pushing turned into something that almost felt like a conversation.
It was annoying as hell. It was also the only thing that had worked in weeks.
"I'm fine," he said. "Or I will be. I just need time to figure out what fine looks like now."
"You don't have to figure it out alone."
"I'm not. I've got the gators."
