Page 26 of You, Only You

I didn't push. I'd grown up with a father who'd hidden everything, and I'd learned the hard way that pushing people to talk before they were ready just made them build the walls higher.

"Is that why you're so protective of her?" I asked quietly. "Not just because of what happened later. It goes further back than that, doesn't it?"

His fork paused halfway to his mouth. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.

"I've been trying to keep her safe since she was sixteen," he said finally, his voice so low I barely heard it. "Couldn't keep her from losing Mom. Couldn't keep her from having to grow up too fast with a brother who was barely an adult himself." He set the fork down carefully, precisely. "And then later, when it actually mattered, when I should have been able to..."

He didn't finish that sentence either. But I heard what lived in the space where the words should have been. Seven years of it. A guilt so heavy it had calcified into something he mistook for identity.

"Will." I waited until he looked at me. Those ice-blue eyes were different than I'd ever seen them. Not unguarded, exactly. More like the guard had stepped away for a moment, and what was behind it was exhausted. "Cooking breakfast for your sister every morning while you were in law school isn't failing. It's the opposite of failing. It's showing up. Every day. That's not nothing."

Something moved in his expression. I couldn't tell if it was surprise or pain or something else. He looked at me like I'd said something in a language he understood but hadn't heard spoken in a long time.

"The cooking is just what's left," he said quietly. "The one thing from then that I can still do. The one thing that doesn't get..." He stopped again. Pressed his thumb against the edge of the counter, hard, like the pressure was helping him hold something in place.

I wanted to touch his hand. Wanted to cover his knuckles with my palm the way he'd let me hook my fingers around his in the car last night. But the morning light was different from the dark of the car, and daylight made things more real, moreconsequential, and I wasn't sure either of us was ready for what it would mean if I reached for him now.

So I did what I always did when emotions got too big for the space they were in.

I deflected.

"Well," I said, taking another bite of omelet, "for what it's worth, these eggs are legitimately fantastic. Not adequate. Fantastic. I'm going on the record."

He blinked at the tonal shift, and then the corner of his mouth curved. Not the startled laugh from earlier. Something smaller. Quieter. The kind of smile that was just for me, in this kitchen, on this morning, and nowhere else.

I looked at my plate because looking at that smile for too long felt like looking at the sun.

"Fantastic," he repeated. "That's an upgrade from adequate."

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late."

We finished breakfast and I washed my plate because I was a guest and because it gave me something to do with my hands that wasn't reaching for him. He dried it. We moved around the kitchen in the same careful choreography we'd developed in the storage unit, aware of each other's positions, maintaining distance, orbiting like planets that had agreed on their trajectories.

It was comfortable and unbearable at the same time.

Agent Joseph Bates was not what I expected.

I'd pictured standard FBI: dark suit, stern expression, the kind of humorless competence that came from years of bureaucratic service. Bates was wearing a rumpled blazer over a polo shirt, had a coffee stain on his sleeve, and greeted us at the cafe with a tired smile that suggested he hadn't slept well in approximately a decade.

"Ms. Ashford." He shook my hand with a firm grip, his eyes doing that assessing thing that law enforcement types seemed hardwired for. "Will tells me you're the one who cracked the financial trail."

"The financial trail was there. I just followed it."

"Modest." He glanced at Will. "I like her better than you already."

"Everyone does," Will said dryly. "It's becoming a pattern."

We settled into a corner booth, and I spread out my evidence: the timeline of Meridian fund transfers, the utility payment correlations, the shell company map. Bates listened without interrupting as I walked him through each connection, his expression growing grimmer with every page.

When I finished, he let out a low whistle. "This is exceptional work. You've built a roadmap to prosecution."

"But?" I could hear the hesitation in his voice.

"But." He tapped the page showing the discretionary fund transfers. "This gets us to Meridian Tech's accounts. It doesn't get us to Victor Reeves personally. Without proof that he authorized these transfers with full knowledge of what they funded, his lawyers will argue negligence at worst. Rogue subordinates. Plausible deniability."

"He'll walk," I said flatly.