“She already has ammunition, and a reason to use it.”
She looked at him. "I get it. But the people reading that article don't know the difference."
They ate at the kitchen table. Pad Thai from the place on Lake Flower that Callie liked and Noah tolerated. The food was fine. The company was better. They talked about the article, about the case, about the seventy-two hours until ballistics came back on Aspen's rifles. Callie was practical in the way that made her good at her job. She broke the problem into pieces and dealt with each one.
“Okay, so the article hurts your reputation. So you respond by being good at your job. You don't engage publicly. You don't confront Natalie. You let the work speak."
“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s Ethan.”
She stopped chewing. "What about him?”
"He left school early today. No explanation. And Lacey at The Daily Grind confirmed it. Natalie has been meeting Ethan there. Three times in two weeks. Same booth. I think Luther has too.”
Callie set her fork down. “Really?”
"It looks that way."
“Why?”
"I don't know. This is the first I've heard of it being in person."
Callie was quiet for a moment. She didn't panic. She didn't offer easy reassurance. She processed it the way she processed everything, turning it over, examining the edges.
"He's seventeen," she said. "He's grieving. He's angry. And someone is paying attention to him when it feels like nobody else is. That's not his fault."
"I know it's not his fault."
"Do you, though?" She said it without accusation. "Because from where he's sitting, his father is gone twelve hours a day working a case that's all over the news. His sister just left. His girlfriend was murdered months ago. And the one person in town who seems to care about what he thinks is a woman with a last name that makes your jaw tighten every time you hear it. I mean, it’s not like she’s a stranger, Noah. She stayed here. You were dating her.”
“We were friends with benefits.”
“Is that what we are?”
“That’s different. You know that.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Noah didn't respond. She wasn't wrong. He had been so focused on what Ethan was doing that he hadn't spent enough time thinking about why.
"So what are you going to do?" she asked.
"I don't know, Callie. I wish I did. Confronting him hasn't worked. Spending time with him hasn’t worked. Giving him space hasn't worked. I'm running out of options."
"You're not running out of options. You're running out of patience. Those are different things."
He looked at her across the table. The evening light through the window was soft and the kitchen was warm and for a moment the rest of it fell away. The article. Ethan. The case. All the pressure that had been building for weeks compressed into a single point and then dissolved.
“Look, whatever they throw at you," Callie said. "I'm here."
She said it simply, the way she said everything.
Noah reached across the table and took her hand. She let him. They stayed like that for a moment, hands resting on the table between the takeout containers and the napkins and the ordinary debris of a meal.
He leaned across and kissed her. The first kiss that felt like a choice instead of an accident.
She kissed him back. Her hand came up and rested against the side of his face.
They pulled apart. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.
