I looked at him then, more closely. The exhaustion. The weight he hadn’t named.
“You two good?” I asked.
He hesitated, then sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Talk to me.”
Jack ran a hand through his hair. “I got an offer. Official feeler from the city DA’s office. More responsibility. More reach. Bigger impact.”
“Sounds like a win.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Except… she told me to take it. Didn’t even want a discussion about it.”
I frowned. “You told her you’d stay if she asked?”
He nodded. “And she said she wouldn’t be the reason I gave up a chance to do more good.”
“That sounds like something she would say.”
“It does. But it also sounds like someone saying goodbye before I ever get a chance to choose her.”
The weight of that landed hard. He wasn’t just torn; he was grieving something that hadn’t even ended yet.
“She’s trying to let you go clean,” I said. “Before resentment ever has a chance to grow.”
“I know,” Jack murmured. “But I wish she’d be selfish for once. Just once.”
We fell into a long quiet. The kind where you could hear every ice cube crack in the glass, every gust of wind rattled the neon sign outside.
I stared into my drink and finally said, “You know... I don’t know if I ever actually wanted this job.”
Jack looked at me, startled.
“I mean… really wanted it. Not just took over because my father died or because no one else stepped up.”
He didn’t answer. Just waited.
“I thought it would give me purpose. After leaving the military... I needed a straight line to do some good. But half the time, I feel like I’m running damage control for a system built on landmines.”
“That’s the gig,” Jack said. “You know that.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “But lately I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe, the only way to lead something broken is to be willing to break it first.”
Jack raised his glass. “Now you’re starting to sound like Ava.”
“God help me.”
We clinked glasses and drank.
There was no answer at the bottom of the glass. But there was a strange kind of clarity in the moment, two men, sitting in the shadows, while February howled outside, both wondering how long they could keep pretending they were in control.
CHAPTER 17
AVA - PLAY NICE JUST ONCE
There was a kind of fury that didn’t explode.
It simmered. Boiled low and slow under your skin until everything in your body ached from holding it in.
