Dawson shook Trent's hand on the way out. Keaton followed. Fallon paused long enough to catch Trent's eye and give him the look she'd been giving him since he was twenty-one and had pulled her out of a river—the one that said everything without speaking a word.
No matter what, she was still his best friend. That meant more than words.
Then it was just him and Cullen.
The conference room held the kind of quiet that lived between two men who'd known each other since childhood—since before the fights and the grudges and the slow, stubborn work of building something real from the wreckage of being young and angry and convinced they didn't need anyone. The kind of quiet where you could say something that mattered or say nothing at all, and both were fine.
Cullen leaned back, watching Trent with the unhurried patience of a man who had no intention of leaving until the conversation he came for actually happened. "How are you doing?" he asked. "Not the snakes. Not the mining. Not whatever the hell is going on with Karl and Dutton. I'm asking about you."
Trent turned his coffee cup in a slow circle on the table. The mug was empty. He kept turning it anyway, because his hands needed something to do while his mouth figured out how to say what his chest already knew.
"I'm actually doing ok. But I'm worried about Dove," he said. "She's running on fumes. Didn’t sleep but a few hours last night. She's pouring everything into movement, into staying busy—because the second she stops, the grief catches up. And she'd rather run herself into the ground than let that happen."
"Sounds familiar."
"Yeah." No point denying it. "It does."
Cullen didn't push. He just sat there—patient in a way that people who didn't know him mistook for indifference but was actually the opposite. Cullen watched. Cullen listened. He just didn't make a show of it.
"I'm falling hard," Trent said.
He hadn't planned to say it. The words just came up from somewhere deep and unguarded, the place he'd spent most of his adult life keeping bricked over because it was safer to feel nothing than to feel something and lose it. But the bricks had been coming loose for weeks now. Since before his mother died. Maybe since the first time Dove had crossed his bridge with a careful smile and looked at his gators like they might eat her alive.
"Harder than I've ever fallen for anyone. And I don't know what I'd do if I lost her." His voice roughened on the last part. Cullen had earned the right to hear him sound less than steady. "And it terrifies me."
"Does she know this?" Cullen asked.
"I can't say we've had a deep conversation about our relationship. Too many other things are happening in our lives right now.
"That's the perfect time to stop sitting on the sidelines," Cullen said, his voice low and steady. The voice of a man who'd learned the hard way what happened when you let the important things pass you by because you were too proud or too scared or too convinced you didn't deserve them. "Fight for her. Not the way you're used to fighting—not fists and stubbornness and that thick skull God gave you. Fight for her by letting her in." He tapped his fingers on the table. "You both have some pretty tall walls. Knock yours down already, and then start chiseling trough hers."
Trent looked at him. "I'm afraid if I push too hard—if I tell her how I really feel—she'll run."
"She's a tough woman. And right now, that wall is keeping the grief out. And maybe it's keeping you out, too." Cullen leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You want in—really in—you gotta be willing to risk your heart. And maybe she's been waiting for you to figure it out because your walls have been bigger than hers."
Trent thought about that a moment. His friend might be right. “Since when did you get so wise?”
“Not wise. But I’m a man who lost everything. My wife left me and took my son. I had nothing but walls.” He tapped his finger on the table. “And then some asshole from my past kept showing up, trying to tell me I wasn’t a waste of time.”
Trent thought about this morning—the gray light in the bedroom. The way Dove had looked at him with her defenses down and her voice stripped bare. The way she said, “I need you” like the words had cost her something she wasn't sure she could afford. The way she'd kissed him like she was trying to outrun something that was gaining on her. And then, afterward—the walls went back up, one by one, and the talk turned to meetings and case files and keeping busy was grief's only language she understood—and he'd allowed it all because he was too afraid to admit that he loved her.
There it was. The word. Still inside his head, still unspoken, but so close to the surface now, it pressed against his teeth every time he opened his mouth.
Cullen stood and pushed in his chair. He clapped Trent on the shoulder as he passed. "You got this, Mallor. Don't overthink it."
He left. And Trent sat alone in the conference room, hand over his chest. He loved Dove, no question about that. He should be terrified that they hadn’t used birth control. But the only thing that frightened him was the idea that she might not be ready to love him back.
Chapter Seventeen
Dove had noticed the SUV two blocks from the Aegis office.
Dark. Small. Tinted windows deep enough that the driver was nothing but a shape behind smoked glass. It pulled out from a side street as they cleared the parking lot—no signal, no hesitation—and settled three car lengths back with the practiced patience of something that didn't need to rush because the driver already knew exactly where they were going.
She didn't say anything yet. Just watched it in the passenger mirror, tracking without turning her head. The vehicle matched every speed change. It held the distance like a precise, deliberate measurement.
“We’re being followed,” she said.
“I just noticed that.” Trent's hands shifted on the wheel.
