Chapter 9
Freya arriving yesterday has already changed everything.
The house feels different with her in it. Lived in. Warm. Like a place meant for more than one person.
It reminds me of when I was younger, when I thought I was a so-called normal man headed for a house, a picket fence, and a life that made sense.
That dream came true.
And I woke up from it just as fast.
Now I’m here again, in a distinctly feminine house that smells like vanilla, full of candles and pillows, with a baby on the way—it’s like being offered the same future twice.
Everything about her here feels so…me.
That’s the thought I shut down hard. I’ve been down that road before. I know what it costs when someone else gets to decide whether you keep your dream or lose it.
I won’t let my kid have a broken dad. And I don’t think I’d survive being lied to again.
No matter how damn hot she looks in that button-down, no matter how much I want to be the one pinning that badge over her heart, this is where the line stays.
We’re friends.
In time, that will be enough.
I take my mind off my excitement at her arrival by doing something that always calms me. I cook.
Chili might not sound fancy, but I tried and tested more than a dozen recipes over the years, and this one hits. It’s mild enough for pregnancy, won’t make her too hot, but it’s flavorful.
I glance around the kitchen and make sure it’s all where it needs to be. The cornbread is cooling. Ginger beer…
My kitchen screams of a man trying too hard.
Maybe I am.
Feeding the mother of my child hits someplace deep. And it should. For as many times as Freya and I use the word friend, we’re parents together, and surely that’s something more?
Will she be my best friend?
I don’t do gray areas well. I prefer lines. Tasks. Things you can finish.
I stir the chili even though it doesn’t need it, because my hands need the motion. I taste it one last time so when Freya arrives, it’s there for whenever she wants it. The cumin, tomato, and hint of dark chocolate melt on my tongue. A goddamn taste sensation. Perfect.
Just then, headlights wash across the window.
My pulse spikes ever so slightly, and I’m not impressed with how hard it is to keep calm around her. Maybe it’s because there’s still so much to talk about. I know we have time, but I’ve never felt settled with uncertainty.
Like what am I going to do for work when the baby comes?
I told Gabriel this morning that I’m not feeling stakeouts as a dad. I don’t want to leave Freya alone with a baby, or even leave her now in case she gets heartburn.
The door opens.
Freya walks in with her shoulders slumped and hair frizzed from the day, her curls springing out of the bun she had tame this morning.
“Hey.” She toes her shoes off.
Something in me sharpens. That tone isn’t “normal” tired. That’s “something happened” tired.
“Hey.” I turn the burner down. “How was work?”
Her laugh is flat and humorless. “Strange. Heavy.” She breathes in. “Sweet baby Jesus, it smells good in here.”
“Sit.” I lift her bag off her arm before she can protest and gesture to the sofa. She doesn’t argue; she just collapses into the cushions like her legs gave out. She rolls her ankle once under the coffee table, the kind of move someone makes when something’s been bothering them all day.
She’s got to be beat. She started work today after that long drive yesterday. Everything is new at the station. I wish I could take it all on, but Freya, like myself, is something of a workaholic.
She lets her head fall back, eyes closing, a quiet groan slipping out.
“Hope you like chili,” I say.
Her eyes open slowly. “Are you serious right now? I’d eat a brick. I’m starving.” She smiles. “But seriously, you didn’t have to cook for me.”
I shrug. “I like cooking.”
She studies me, curiosity in her eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.” I hesitate to say when the passion started but tell myself I’ll need to open up more than I’m used to if we’re raising a kid together.
I sit next to her, laying my arm on the back of the sofa and my knee propped up between us. “When Ava and I were in captivity…I was suddenly put in charge of cooking meals for a child. I figured she deserved for me to be good at it.”
It brings back haunting memories, some good, some bad. It’s hard to explain to anyone how the injustice of me and Ava being kept in captivity led to me also discovering the best parts of myself. Not just cooking.
She’s shocked as anyone would be. “Your captors gave you stuff to cook?”
I nod. “It was all part of the guise of normality that fucker had going.”
Freya’s eyebrows pinch together. “Grooming…”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
“And you stayed with her…to protect her? Because I’m guessing with your Navy SEALs training, you could have maybe escaped.”
“Maybe…” Absolutely. I could have gotten out, but not with a kid in tow. “But, yeah, she was innocent. So…” I stayed.
It’s hard to talk like this, but I need to keep trying. I don’t want to pass any trauma onto our kid.
Freya stares at me for a moment too long, and I know she’s considering how deep to dive.
“Ava was very lucky to have you.”
I correct her because that goofy redhead turned my life around. “Trust me, the luck was mine.”
“How so?”
“I was self-destructive when I got taken. Caring for her gave me purpose.”
Captivity made me realize that even though I’d given my all to my wife and best friend, and they treated my loyalty like it was worthless, I was still needed somewhere in this world. As long as I was useful, life was worth living.
Her eyes warm, and there’s no pity in them, but she also considers if there’s space for more questions. She tilts her head and pins me with an unnerving silence, giving me space to say more if I want to.
She’s a good listener.
But I’m not a great talker.
Not about myself.
“So what happened today?” I ask, thinking back to when she walked in like she’d been hit by a dump truck.
She sucks her teeth. “Am I that transparent?”
“I pay attention.”
She sighs heavily. “A fatality case. Zoe Marshall. The tox reports are finally in, and Callum assigned me the closure pass. I should probably just rubber stamp it, but something felt wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
She speaks with a certainty she doesn’t trust. “Isn’t it weird that a young girl was drunk driving by the quarry? So that’s the first thing I thought was strange…but Ingram said…”
“Suicide?” I answer.
“How did you know?”
“Small town, big whispers. Nobody wants to say it out loud.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t really want to keep the case open. It’s touchy. Hurtful. I’m the rookie in the office, and Ingram is way more qualified…”
“Are you giving yourself reasons not to trust your gut?” I quirk an eyebrow.
Her eyes widen.
I shake my head. “You know my compass?”
“Yeah. The one you use like a worry stone sometimes?”
I laugh to myself. “It makes sense you’d see it that way, but it’s more like my crystal ball.” I think back to when I decided to keep it with me at all times.
She lifts her eyebrows. “What’s that mean?”
I pull out my compass from my pocket, where I keep it at all times.
I remember in captivity feeling fucking lucky they never took it from me.
I smooth my thumb over the scratched surface, then lift it.
“I’ve had this compass since the SEALs. We were on a mission; I was with just one teammate at the time.
Satellites went out while we were on our way to our location. ”
“So your compass saved you?”
I laugh roughly. “No, it didn’t.” I glance down at the object, remembering the day vividly and how it was one of those times when I might not have come out alive. “There are magnetic anomalies, places on this earth where a compass isn’t reliable, and we happened to be in one.”
“What did you do?” she asks.
“First, I calmed my nervous system when I started to think we were fucked. And then I visualized our map, all the planning I had stored up in my memory, and I just knew which way we had to go. It was instinct.”
She teases, but there’s appreciation and affection behind it. “I didn’t know your worry stone was so sentimental.”
I laugh roughly. “It reminds me to trust myself.”
If only it could teach me to trust other people again.
I show her the compass one more time before slipping it back in my pocket. “Even Albert Einstein said that the most valuable thing is intuition.”
Her smile is warm, and I love how whenever I share parts of myself, she’s right there with me.
“So don’t do that, Freya. Never give yourself a reason to not trust yourself.”
She nods. “You’re right.”
“That goes on the life lessons list for our kid, too.”
She smirks. “You’re keeping a list?”
“Damn straight. I’m pretty sure raising a kid is harder than any other mission I tackled in the SEALs.” I smile lightly to help lift her spirits.
She crosses her arms. “Well, I’ve heard with kids, nothing goes to plan. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“On the outside, yes.” I smirk.
“Mm-hm…” She eyes me with cute, suspicious, warm eyes.
“If Ingram has a problem, you’re just doing your job.”
“He’ll hate me double-guessing him.” She winces. “What’s he like?”
“I heard he’s alright. Family guy…” I stop myself because none of this matters. “Who cares what he’s like? Do your thing.”
“That office is small as hell. If he hates me, it will become a shoebox real fast.”
As if he’d get away with mistreating her. “I won’t let that happen…”
Her eyebrows shoot to the ceiling. “Oh yeah? What are you gonna…” She pauses, runs her gaze from my head to my toes, and my God, there’s that look she used to give me that got us this baby in the first place.
“Okay, Easton.” She taps her lips and continues to assess me. “You’re decent backup, I guess.”
I give a one-syllable laugh. I’m glad she and I can still have easy conversations. We’ll need that in our future. Because I’ve never been a father, but the older I get, the more I know that laughing together is only half of what keeps people going.
The other half is keeping it real. “If you want any help with the case, let me know.”
“It’s confidential.”
“Who needs to know I know?”
“True.”
“I’m here if you need me.” It’s the only simple truth I need to leave her with.
A smug smile lifts her cheeks. “That’s nice to hear.” She lifts her feet and plops them onto my lap, playful, casual, but there’s a flicker in her eyes. “I mean…what level of need are we talking? Massage level?”
It’s nice she feels she can ask.
“Massage level?” I lift a brow. “Pretty high-tier perk. You don’t even have a punch card yet.”
She snorts. “Please. After today, I’ve earned at least two stamps.”
God, she’s adorable. Exhausted, hungry, and somehow still full of this bright, dry humor that hits me square in the sternum.
“Alright,” I say, settling my hands around her arch.
I start kneading, and it’s hard not to think about when I was holding other parts of her body. I force my focus back to her foot—not the memory of her arching under me months ago.
“I’ll stamp your card,” I tease, “but there’s a disclaimer.”
She grins. “There’s fine print?”
She softens under my touch, and I love how she’s melting.
“Fine print is,” I say, “I’m doing this because you’re sore. Not because you get to seduce backup whenever you want.”
She laughs that throaty laugh of hers. “Seduce you? Please. If I were seducing you, you’d know.”
A pulse of heat goes straight to my groin, so fast I have to look away for a second because all of me remembers vividly what it’s like to be seduced by her.
“This request,” she adds, matter of fact, “is for the baby.”
“For the baby,” I repeat, nodding seriously even though my pulse is trying to leap out of my throat. “Just making sure.”
“Oh, absolutely.” She moans when I hit a good spot. “A strictly medical procedure.” Her shoulders drop an inch, like I just flipped the right switch.
“We’re okay, then,” I murmur, working slow, warm circles into her arch, letting my thumbs map the tension there while trying like hell not to imagine what she’d feel like if she made those same sounds against my neck.
Her head tips back as if she’s melting into the sofa. A low ache coils right behind my zipper, sharp enough that I have to grit my teeth.
“Ugh…” she groans. “How can my feet be this sore when I was sitting all day?”
My hands keep moving, slow and steady, thumbs pressing into arches that are clearly grateful for it. This is supposed to be simple. Practical. A favor between friends.
And then my attention drifts where it shouldn’t—up her neck, long and soft, the faint line of her collarbone visible where her uniform shirt gapes just enough to show skin. Skin I know too well. Skin I’ve had my mouth on before.
That’s not okay.
She’s trusting me with this. A friendly, much-needed massage. Not whatever my brain wants to turn it into if I let it.
I drag my focus back to my hands.
We’re going to be in each other’s lives. We’re going to have to get used to closeness that doesn’t mean more. I’m going to be supporting her in the delivery room for God’s sake.
A foot massage is bare minimum compared to the trust she’ll need to have in me then.
I ground myself in the motion.
Pressure.
Release.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, eyes half-closed.
“Anytime,” I say quietly.
The timer in the kitchen starts beeping.
Neither of us move.
In fact, even with the annoying beep in the background, my thumbs slow, my pressure is unhurried.
And that’s when I realize. The dangerous part isn’t touching her. It’s how right this feels—and how easily I could let it mean more.