“It doesn’t.” His voice was quiet. “It sounds honest.”
Something loosened beneath her ribs. A hairline fracture in the wall she’d spent years building.
“Your turn,” she said, deflecting. “Tell me something honest.”
He was quiet for a moment. The rain hammered the canvas walls. The power flickered again.
“I promised my grandfather I’d take him fishing one more time,” he said finally. “He was sick. Cancer. I was deployed and I kept saying, ‘When I get back, when I get back.’” He looked down at his wine. “He died three weeks before I came home.”
“Dakota.”
“It’s fine. It was years ago.” He took a breath. “But I still have the fishing flies he gave me. Haven’t been able to use them.” A pause. “Haven’t been able to throw them away either.”
The food arrived—grilled mahi-mahi with coconut rice and roasted vegetables. Simple, fresh, surprisingly good. Jayden took a bite and let the flavors settle on her tongue. The fish was perfectly seasoned, the rice fragrant with lime and fresh herbs.
“Eight out of ten,” she said. “Maybe eight and a half.”
Dakota raised an eyebrow. “Professional assessment?”
“Always.” She took another bite. “The presentation could use work—this parsley garnish is purely decorative, no one’s eating that—but the execution is solid. Local ingredients, clearly. Fresh catch. Someone back there actually knows what they’re doing.”
“You really can’t turn it off, can you?”
“The assessing?” She shook her head. “Occupational hazard. I walk into any restaurant, any hotel, any bathroom, and my brain immediately starts cataloging. Cleanliness. Service. Temperature of the food. Whether the staff looks happy or just well-trained.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“Says the man who scanned this entire pavilion for threats the moment we walked in.”
He smiled. “Touché.”
They ate in comfortable silence, the storm raging around them, and Jayden realized she couldn’t remember the last time silence had felt comfortable with another person.
Mostly because this wasn’t a mission. This was two travelers, lost on their way to tomorrow.
She could be lost for a day and not hate it.
The power went out.
The pavilion plunged into darkness, and several people gasped. But the emergency lights kicked in almost immediately, casting everything in a dim golden glow, and then the generator hummed to life and the string lights flickered back on.
“Told you,” Dakota said. “Generator.”
“Show-off.”
His smile in the dim light possessed its own electric power.
They lingered over coffee—rich, dark, served in tiny cups—until the pavilion started to empty and the staff began pointedly stacking chairs.
“I should probably go to bed,” Jayden said, pushing back from the table.
“I’m going to check on the carry-ons.” Dakota stood. “See you in the morning?”
“Thank you,” she said. “For . . . I don’t know . . .”
“I do know.” He smiled at her, something in his eyes. “Thank you too.”
Could he feel it? The charge in the air?
