"Sure I do. You look at her the same way I look at Maggie. Like you're hungry and grateful and scared to death all at the same time."
Yeah. He's not wrong. "I don't know how to… reach her," I admit. Gritted out, like confessing something shameful. "Except in bed. It's the one place she lets go, and I—" I cut myself off.
James doesn't miss a beat. "She trusts you with her body. That matters more than you think."
"What if it doesn't?"
He shrugs. "Then you love her anyway."
Fuck.
James claps his big hand on my shoulder. "Bring her over for dinner tonight."
"Yeah?" Rougher than I intend.
"Yeah. Maggie's already making enough food to feed a battalion. You two come over. Sit at our table. Remember marriages do work. Might do the girl good to see fifty-year-olds still making it and still flirting over mashed potatoes."
That pulls an actual laugh out of me, shaky but real.
"Tell her it's a command performance," he adds. "From the Queen herself." He jerks his chin toward the back, where Maggie is banging around in the kitchen, humming off-key.
I nod. "I'll ask her."
"Don't ask. Invite. There's a difference."
Before I can answer, Malachi sticks his head in. "War room, girls."
James stands, joints cracking. "Coming, Your Majesty." He squeezes my shoulder once more as he passes.
We handle club business. Donovan's last known movements, Chuck's vanishing act, the money trails weaving through accounts they shouldn't touch. Two years ago, I pulled Castiel's name out of a server in Chicago and flagged him as a financial threat. Now he's circling Willowridge, my wife flinched at his name, and I still can't see how those two facts connect. The not knowing is eating me alive.
I give Malachi the intel, run scenarios, build contingencies. Do the job. The whole time, a steady drumbeat: Dinner. Sloane. Don't fuck this up.
I catch Sloane on her break around three. She's in the hospital courtyard, scrubs wrinkled, stethoscope draped around her neck, coffee in one hand and phone in the other. There's afaint crease between her brows. I could watch her do absolutely nothing for the rest of my life and not get bored.
She looks up the second I step out, as though she feels me before she sees me.
Her mouth softens. "Hey, husband."
Yeah. That. That word. It hits me immediately.
"Hey, nurse," I say, walking over. I dip down and steal a quick kiss before the nurse at the other table can pretend not to watch. "James and Maggie want us over for dinner tonight. Maggie's cooking. James promised stories."
Wariness flickers across her face. "Is this a 'we're worried about your marriage' intervention?"
"It's a 'we love you and want to feed you' intervention. Different vibe. Better side dishes."
Her lips twitch. "I don't want them to feel like they have to… fix us."
"Pretty sure they don't see it like that. But if it helps, I do want them to talk. About them. About… making it."
Her eyes search mine. Whatever she sees there satisfies something, because she exhales slowly.
"Okay. Dinner. I can go over after my shift."
"Good. I'll pick you up."
We talk for another minute about her day, the patient who coded and is somehow still hanging on, the paperwork that never ends.
