The table was loud in the way it got when people who’d been running on adrenaline finally sat down and let it drain—overlapping voices, someone’s boot knocking a chair leg, Hooper saying something that made Burke choke on his drink. Jojo moved between the table and the stove with practiced efficiency, refilling plates and topping off glasses without being asked, while Rawley kept one eye on his infant son sleeping in a bassinet by the fireplace.
I sat at the far end with my coffee and watched the room. I’d sat at a lot of tables in my life—Navy mess halls, SEAL team briefings, covert operations planning sessions, even a few family dinners with people who shared my DNA if not my sense of humor. I’d never once felt like I was supposed to be at one until now, and I didn’t know what to do with that except sit still and let it be true.
Across the table, Cruz was listening to something Sterling was saying, his expression carefully neutral in the way it got when he was actually paying attention. He’d changed into jeans and a flannel shirt—borrowed from my closet, though neither of us had mentioned it—and looked more like someone who belonged on a ranch than someone who’d been running covert operations in Belarus seventy-two hours ago.
He caught me looking and held my eyes for a long moment, something passing between us that made my chest tight. Then Sterling said something that required his full attention, and he turned away, leaving me to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.
After dinner, I found myself on the porch—not deliberately avoiding the conversation inside, but not rushing to rejoin it either. The air had cooled with the sunset, carrying the smell of cut grass and wood smoke that belonged to Montana and nowhere else.
Behind me, the farmhouse windows glowed with light, the noise of the table drifting through the screen door in bursts of laughter and overlapping conversation.
I’d been standing there maybe five minutes when Cruz found me—the way Cruz always found me, without appearing to look. He came out through the screen door with two fresh cups of coffee, handed me one without speaking, then leaned against the rail beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched.
We stood in the dark without talking, the night stretching out around us, the mountains dark shapes against a sky going from blue to black. Somewhere in the pasture below, one of Rawley’s horses whinnied, the sound carrying across the open ground with unnatural clarity.
I turned the silver bracelet on my wrist once, feeling the engraved “J” catch against my thumb. Thought about the Belize seeds in their starter trays under the grow lights in my greenhouse. Thought about the text Cruz had sent from somewhere over the Atlantic that was just logistics and still felt like something else entirely.
Thought about the fact that Cruz had moved a mission timeline, jumped out of a plane in the dark, and sat at my kitchen table at three in the morning not because I’d asked him to, but because he’d already decided, a long time ago, that this was where he was going to be.
“You’re not going back to Belarus,” I said, not a question.
Cruz kept his eyes on the valley, arms crossed, face doing nothing in particular. “The contract closes out next week regardless,” he said. “Sterling has the documentation handled.”A pause. Then, quietly: “I was thinking Montana for a while, if you have the room.”
The mountains were dark shapes against a sky going from blue to black, the greenhouse glass catching the last of the light below the porch.
I’d spent thirty years being a man who operated alone and told himself he preferred it. Who built his house at the edge of a property he’d chosen specifically for the distance it put between him and other people. Who kept his feelings locked down so tight he sometimes forgot where the key was.
I turned that over once, set it down, and said, “I’ve got four greenhouses and a drainage problem in the fourth one. You any good with a shovel?”
Cruz’s mouth curved—just slightly, the way it did when he was genuinely pleased and trying not to show it. “I’ll manage,” he said.
I nodded once, like it was settled, because it was. We stood there together in the dark while the noise of the table drifted through the window behind us, the weight of his shoulder against mine both foreign and exactly right.
“You know,” I said after a minute, “you could have just asked. Instead of jumping out of a plane in the dark.”
Cruz looked at me then—really looked at me, the way he did when he was trying to read something written in a language he didn’t quite speak. “Would you have said yes?” he asked.
I thought about the text he’d sent from Belarus. About the seeds from San Ignacio. About the way he’d sat at my kitchen table at three in the morning like it was the most natural place in the world to be.
About the fact that, somewhere along the way, I’d started counting the days between his texts.
“I guess we’ll never know,” I said, and watched his mouth curve again, that not-quite-smile becoming something real.
Behind us, the farmhouse was full of people who’d become, without my permission or participation, something like family. Ahead of us, the valley spread out in all directions—mountains to the east, pasture to the west, sky overhead so clear I could pick out individual stars without trying.
And beside me, closer than he had any right to be, Cruz stood with his shoulder against mine and his eyes on the horizon, like whatever came next was exactly where he’d been headed all along.
Chapter Seven
~ Jackson ~
I stood in the kitchen doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, and watched Cruz move through the house with that practiced efficiency I’d come to expect.
His jump bag was already packed—clothes, satellite phone, the gun I’d pretended not to notice he kept under his pillow—and now he was collecting the last of his gear, stacking it by the front door with methodical precision.
Behind him, the rest of his team worked with the same focused attention—Harker folding a laptop into its case, Nguyen checking the battery on what looked like a handheld scanner, Sterling standing by the window with his eyes on the property map I’d drawn.
They’d been here five weeks. Five weeks of Cruz sleeping in my bed, of breakfast at the kitchen table with five extra plates, of the rhythm that came with having other people in a house built for one. Five weeks of watching Cruz move through my space like he belonged there, of catching him looking at me with that expression I still couldn’t quite read.
