She huffed a startled laugh. “That’s what I’m going for.”
I leaned back against the car beside her, close enough to feel the warmth coming off her but not crowding. “You want to walk for a minute?”
Her grip on the cup tightened. “I really should?—”
“Just around the block,” I said. “We can talk. No heavy stuff. I promise.”
She hesitated, eyes searching my face like she was trying to decide if the promise was safe. Then she sighed. “You say that like it’s reassuring.”
“Is it not?”
She studied me another beat, then shook her head with a small, reluctant smile. “You’re impossible.”
She started walking with me anyway, tossing her cup into a trash can as we passed it.
“You smell like smoke,” she said, after half a block.
“I’m a firefighter.”
“You always smell like smoke. Even off duty. Even when you haven’t been near a fire in days.” She slanted a look up at me. “It’s like it followed you home and decided to stay.”
“Some things do that,” I said.
She caught the edge in it and looked away, but the corner of her mouth moved. “That was almost smooth.”
“Almost.”
“About sixty percent of the way to smooth.”
“I’ll take sixty percent.”
She laughed, quietly and briefly, and something in my chest settled at the sound of it. We walked another half block in easy silence, the rain holding off for once, the street calm around us.
“Your hair’s doing that thing again,” she said.
“What thing?”
“That thing where it looks like you got dressed in the dark and just hoped for the best.”
“I did get dressed in the dark.”
“That explains a lot, actually.”
“You keep noticing things about me. I’m choosing to find that flattering.”
“I’m choosing to let you believe that,” she said, and there it was—that tone she had, dry and warm at the same time, the one that had always made sarcasm sound like something closer to affection. Like the words meant one thing and the voice meant another, and you had to know her well enough to hear the difference. And I knew her well enough.
For a few minutes, walking beside her in the pale afternoon quiet, it almost felt like old times. Like nothing had changed between us, like the parking lot had never happened, like fifteen years of careful distance had just quietly dissolved.
Almost.
But I noticed the way she flinched when a truck backfired two blocks away. The way her eyes darted to every passing car, every shadow moving behind a window. The way she angled her body so she could see both directions at once, like she was walking point on a call she hadn’t told anyone about.
She was terrified of something.
And it was killing me.
Every time she startled, every time her gaze flicked away like she expected trouble to step out of the next doorway, something protective and primal rose in my chest. I wanted to put myself between her and whatever was making her look over her shoulder. I wanted to demand answers—not because I had the right, but because the thought of her facing something alone made my skin crawl.
