Page 47 of Reckless

Neither of us feels the need to leave.

Somewhere along the way, sitting in comfortable silence stopped being strange.

Now it just feels like another part of our day.

She kicks my ankle under the desk, and I let my hand drift over and rest against her knee for a second before I go back to typing. It’s a small thing. It’s become one of a hundred small things I do without deciding to, the kind of gestures that used to feel foreign to me and now feel like the only honest language I’ve got.

I’ve barely turned back to the monitors before Sage starts reading over my shoulder.

I don’t tell her to stop.

A few months ago, I probably would have angled the screen away out of habit. Not because there was anything on it she couldn’t see, simply because I’ve spent most of my life working alone. People behind me used to feel like variables, but she doesn’t anymore.

“You’d have made a decent accountant,” she says after a minute, her eyes moving across the color-coded budget sheets still open from Church.

I don’t look up. “I’d have made a terrible accountant.”

She hums as if she doesn’t believe me. “You literally color-code budgets.”

“I color-code everybody’s budgets.”

She does that adorable little giggle again. “Exactly!”

I drag one report into another folder. “I’d have hacked the IRS by the second week just to make tax season interesting.”

The laugh that comes out of her is soft enough that half the clubhouse would miss it.

I don’t.

“That’s probably the most Ghost thing you’ve ever said.”

I glare at her. “It wasn’t a joke.”

She glares right back. “I know,” she says, smiling to herself.

“That’s somehow worse.” I reach for the packet of beef jerky she’d brought in, only to find her fingers beating me to it. She steals it without even pretending to ask for permission. I watch her pull a strip from the packet before tossing it back onto my desk like it’s personally offended her.

I snort out a laugh. “You bought it?”

She shrugs, chewing on it with a crinkled face. “And I’m eating it!”

Raising my brow, I shake my head. “You hate it, Sage.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Maybe I like it?”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“It is kinda disgusting.” She snatches the packet again, grabbing another mouthful.

“You literally just said it was disgusting.”

“It is!” she says, chewing through a grimace, tearing off a piece anyway and popping it into her mouth while her face immediately screws up again.

I wait.

She chews and then swallows with visible effort. Then she reaches straight back into the packet for another piece.

I smirk at her stubbornness. “That’s theft, Sage.”