Her smile breaks across her face like sunrise.
"I want you." She kisses me again—quick, fierce. "Now go sleep before you fall over."
We stand there for a moment. The silence stretches—not uncomfortable exactly, but full of something neither of us seems to know how to name. Everything that happened in that crevice hangs in the air between us. The heat of it. The rawness. And now we're standing in a hallway like normal people, and I have no idea what the rules are.
“So,” I clear my throat. "I'm just down the hall. If you need anything."
"Okay."
"Anything at all. Even if it's just—" I run a hand through my hair. "I don't know. If the nightmares hit, or you can't sleep, or you want company."
"Okay."
"Listen." I take a breath. "When this is over—when Harmon's in custody and you've testified, and everything settles—I'd like to take you somewhere. Dinner. A real date. Something that doesn't involve running for our lives."
The offer catches her off guard. After everything—the chaos, the adrenaline, the impossible intimacy of that crevice—this feels almost quaint. Me asking her on a date. Like we're normal people who met at a coffee shop.
"I'd like that," she says.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
We're both standing there smiling like idiots. Neither of us moves.
"Okay." I nod like an idiot, a big grin on my face. "Good. That's—good."
"Good."
More nodding. More standing. This is excruciating.
"I should—" I gesture vaguely down the hall. "I'll find you later. We can—there's a deck. It's nice at sunset."
"That sounds nice."
"Good. Okay. Good."
I back away, nearly tripping over my own feet, and I'm biting my lip to keep from laughing because I may be lethal, competent, and dangerous. A man who killed people today without blinking. But I’m still fumbling a hallway goodbye like a teenager after a first date.
Evie does that to me.
Lightens the weight of the world.
"Jon."
“Yes.” I stop.
"Thank you. For everything."
Something softens in me. "You don't have to thank me."
"I know. I wanted to anyway."
A small voice echoes from somewhere deeper in the building: "Aunt Evie!"
I turn to see Rosie running toward me, Mitzy trailing behind with an amused expression. The little girl skids to a stop, her face smeared with what looks like chocolate.
"Mitzy has a room with BUNK BEDS," she announces. "And a TV. And she said I can watch movies until dinner."
