The Aegis Network, Buddy, and Sterling had helped put her back together—at least somewhat. Enough that she was no longer a loud-mouthed female who had a death wish and slept with any man willing. Not her finest few months.
Calusa Cove and its good citizens had done something to her soul. Settled it, maybe? It had given her community. Friendships like she’d never experienced before. A sense of belonging that even the Army hadn’t provided. However, she still hadn’t felt completely whole, and trust didn’t come easily or naturally.
But watching Trent feed his gators while one of them mourned—that hit her different. That slipped past the last of the walls she'd built and lodged somewhere soft and unprotected. She hadn't liked the gators. Never pretended she did. But she liked him, and the thing about Trent was that you couldn't separate the man from the mud, the Glades, and the creatures he'd built his life around. She was learning to accept that truth about him.
She needed coffee. She also needed to stop staring at a man who was probably already figuring out how to tell her that last night was a mistake. Trent’s walls were far higher than hers.
The sound of a cell vibrating on the nightstand caught her attention. She lifted her phone and stared at a text from her uncle.
Aaron: Breakfast?
She smacked her palm to her forehead. Sometimes her uncle was worse than her mother when it came to wanting to know the details about her love life.
Dove: Maybe lunch.
Aaron: Still on Army time, I see.
Dove: No. Gators come in the house and eat you if you don't feed them early enough.
Aaron: That's funny.
She decided to leave it at that and made her way to the kitchen.
It was clean and quiet, filled with little reminders of Linda. A cross-stitch she'd made that read Home Sweet Home hung over the stove. Curtains that Linda had made years ago. Dove understood the need to preserve legacy, and Trent, while a complicated man, wasn't one to go and change anything just because he could.
Dove moved carefully through the space, opening cabinets until she found the coffee, filters, and mugs—because Trent hadn't moved with the times like everyone else.
The coffee maker gurgled and hissed. Outside, Trent had finished with the gators and was standing at the edge of the moat, staring at the water like it held answers to questions he didn't know how to ask.
Dove poured two mugs and headed for the porch.
He turned toward her when the door opened, and something in her stomach dropped at the look on his face. Guarded. Careful. The expression of a man preparing to have a conversation he didn't want to have. A conversation they’d had before.
"Breakfast of champions," she said, keeping it light and doing her best to act as if nothing mattered as she held up one of the mugs. Acting as if everything were causal. Acting as if she wasn’t about to die a little inside when he told her he was sorry, but they were better off as friends.
He crossed the yard toward her, and she tracked his movement the way she'd once tracked targets—noting the tension in his shoulders, the set of his jaw, the way his boots fell heavily on the damp grass. He climbed the porch steps, and when she handed him the mug, their fingers brushed.
She watched him take a sip of coffee, watched him use the motion to avoid her eyes, and felt the last fragile piece of hope crumble that maybe this time things might stick.
“So,” she said. "Regrets already."
He peered over his mug with a raised brow. “Why on earth would you assume that?”
“Because we’ve been here before.” She kept her voice steady, like this wasn't a knife sliding between her ribs.
"I don't regret it," he said, and something in his tone made her pause. “I do care about you.” He stared into his coffee like it might save him from having to say the next words. From having to let her down easy.
She’d save him the trouble. “It’s only been three weeks since your mom passed away,” she said. “You’re still grieving.”
“It’s been rough. She was my world, and I’m a little lost without her.”
She nodded, leaning against the porch railing. This, at least, she understood. Grief was a sniper's bullet—you didn't see it coming, and by the time you felt the impact, the damage was already done.
"I can tell," she said. "You haven't even moved her sweater from the couch." The words were out before she could stop them.
Trent actually stepped back, coffee sloshing over the rim of his mug, and the look on his face made Dove want to put her fist through the porch railing.
"Shit." She heard her own voice crack. "I'm sorry. That was—I shouldn't have said that."
