10. Chapter 10
Loralee
The door opens less than five minutes later. Rocco carries a paper bag in one hand and a cardboard tray with two covered cups in the other. His gaze finds me sitting at the kitchen table, and the tension in his shoulders eases by a degree.
“I thought you were downhill.”
“I walk quickly.”
“You brought food.”
“I bought dinner for myself. The second sandwich is available if you want it.”
I look inside the bag. “You bought the one with roasted vegetables.”
“It was listed first.”
“And no onions.”
“They overwhelm everything else.”
I take out the sandwich. “You remembered.”
“I pay attention.”
Rocco places one of the covered cups beside my sandwich. The scent of coffee rises through the opening in the lid.
He sits across from me with a sandwich containing enough meat to feed two people. For a few minutes, we eat without speaking. The silence is comfortable now that I have chosen it rather than fallen into it.
My gaze moves around the cabin while I drink the coffee. The room reveals very little about the man occupying it. His boots are lined beside the door. A dark jacket hangs from a wooden peg. The kitchen counter holds only a coffeemaker, two clean mugs, and a bowl containing three apples.
Everything has a purpose. Nothing asks to be noticed.
A worn green duffel rests beneath the far end of the table. The letters printed along one side have faded, but I can still make out a last name.
BLACKRIDGE.
A small insignia appears beneath it.
I look at Rocco. “Were you in the Army?”
His hand stops halfway to his cup.
I point toward the duffel. “I’m not receiving secret knowledge. Your name is printed on government-issued luggage.”
His gaze follows mine. “Eight years.”
The answer explains something I have sensed since the first time he stepped into my booth. The watchfulness. The way he positions himself between people and an open path. The efficiency that turns even making tea into a task completed according to instructions.
“What did you do?”
“Military police.”
“That suits you.”
“Most people say that.”
“Do they mean it as a compliment?”
“Not always.”
I smile, but he does not. His attention drops to the cup between his hands.
“You don’t have to tell me anything else,” I say.
“I know.”
It’s quiet for a moment. I feel the questions waiting inside me, but I resist asking. Curiosity does not entitle me to the private pieces of another person.
Rocco leans back in the chair. “The Army wasn’t originally my idea.”
I remain still and listen, sensing he’s choosing to share.
“When I was seventeen and eighteen, I spent time with people who believed boredom justified almost anything. We drank. Used whatever someone brought to a party. Drove when we shouldn’t have.”
A shadow crosses his face.
“Did someone get hurt?”
“No. We were lucky. One night, we went onto a construction site after drinking,” he continues.
“No plan to steal anything. We were making noise, breaking bottles, being idiots. One of the others had pills in his vehicle. Enough for possession charges to become part of the situation when the police arrived.”
“And you were arrested.”
“Yes.”
His tone remains even, but I hear the younger man beneath it. Eighteen, angry and frightened, perhaps pretending to be neither.
“My attorney negotiated deferred adjudication. Treatment, community service, probation, and no further trouble. The judge didn’t order me into the military.
That isn’t how it officially worked, even then.
But he told me I could continue in the direction I was going and eventually land in prison, or I could finish the program, apply for a waiver, and find a life with structure. ”
“You chose the Army.”
“After I finished everything the court required. It took time to qualify.”
“Military police seems like an interesting choice for someone who had recently been arrested.”
“That was mentioned during the application process.”
A soft laugh escapes me. This time, his mouth moves with it.
“Why that specialty?” I ask.
“Because I knew what it was like to be the person making the situation worse. I wanted to become the one who stopped it from getting worse.”
The answer reaches into me before I can protect myself from it.
It explains more than his occupation. Rocco does not merely look for danger. He looks for the moment when one decision turns into another, when foolishness becomes harm, and when someone must step between the two.
“Eight years is a long time to devote to correcting mistakes made at eighteen.”
“It wasn’t all correction.”
“No?”
“The Army gave me work I was good at. People I trusted. A reason to pay attention.”
“And the accident?”
His fingers tighten around the cup.
I regret the question immediately. “You don’t have to answer that.”
“I know. We were returning to base after transporting a detainee,” he says. “The road was wet. Another vehicle crossed the center line, and our driver swerved. We went down an embankment and rolled.”
The images he did not give me fit themselves around the fragments I saw beneath my hands. Metal folding. Dirt and glass. His body held in a position it could not escape.
“Were you driving?”
“No.”
“But you blame yourself.”
His eyes harden. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The silence between us changes. I have crossed too close to the place he guards.
I could reach for him with the part of me that senses bruised things. Once, I would have done it automatically, believing care gave me the right to enter any wound I thought I could soothe. I know better now.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That wasn’t mine to interpret aloud.”
“Most people would keep going.”
“I used to.”
“What stopped you?”
“A relationship with someone who wanted everything I could give him until he decided the way I gave it was embarrassing. He asked for readings when he wanted reassurance,” I continue.
“He asked what I sensed about business decisions, friendships, people he didn’t trust. He liked my intuition when it served him.
In front of other people, he called it nonsense. ”
Rocco’s jaw tightens.
“I kept trying to prove it was real,” I say. “Then I realized the larger problem wasn’t whether he believed in my gift. It was that I had allowed him to use parts of me he refused to respect.”
“He sounds like an asshole.”
The blunt judgment startles a laugh out of me.
“That is not the most spiritually generous assessment.”
“It doesn’t need to be generous to be accurate.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not physically.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
My fingers curve around the warm cup. “Yes.”
Rocco does not offer empty reassurance or tell me the man was a fool to lose me. He simply looks at me as though the answer matters and stores it among the other things he notices.
“Is that why you needed me to leave?” he asks.
“No.” I consider the question more carefully. “But it may be why I needed to know you would.”
His gaze holds mine.
“I like being near you,” I admit. “That complicates the way I restore myself. Being with someone and recovering from other people’s energy are usually opposite things for me.”
“And with me?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Rocco rises to clear the remains of our meal. I stand with my cup and carry it toward the sink. When I reach beside him, he turns at the same moment. The kitchen is too small for both of us to occupy the space without touching.
My arm brushes his chest. Heat moves through me, startling after the cold emptiness left by the vision. Rocco places one hand on the counter behind me rather than on my body, but the position brings him closer. His face is only inches from mine.
“You have more color,” he says.
“You make that sound like a security assessment.”
“It is an observation.”
“Your observations are becoming personal.”
“They became personal when you put your hands on my shoulder.”
“That was a professional massage.”
“Not all of it.”
Neither of us moves. I remember his hand closing around my wrist. The restraint that returned after instinct released me. His mouth almost touching mine in the quiet of my booth.
My body responds to the memory before good judgment can offer an opinion.
“Do you want me to move?” he asks.
The question matters. He could decide for both of us with half a step, but he waits.
“No.”
His attention drops to my mouth. I could kiss him. I want to. Yet my energy still feels fragile, recently gathered and not entirely secure. A kiss from Rocco would not be a small exchange. I know that with the same certainty that told me the blood in my vision belonged to him.
I place my hand against his chest. His heartbeat remains steady beneath my palm, but not slow.
“I’m not ready,” I whisper.
Rocco steps back immediately. The loss of his warmth feels sharper than it should.
“But I wanted to be,” I add.
His eyes darken. “That does not help.”
“It wasn’t intended to.”
“Still counts.”
The echo of his earlier words draws another smile from me. He steps away from the sink, giving both of us room for the tension to settle. His radio comes alive before it does.
“Blackridge, we have a possible sighting near the south service entrance.”
Rocco reaches for it. Every trace of warmth disappears from him.
“Description.”
The response crackles through the cabin. Male, dark jacket, baseball cap, lingering near the vendor vehicles.
The employee gives an estimated height and build matching the man who photographed my booth. Rocco looks at me.
“Do not approach,” he says into the radio. “Maintain visual contact and send your location.”
He collects his jacket from the peg and checks something beneath it before pulling it on. His movements are controlled, but urgency fills the room.
“You’re leaving,” I say.
“My team may have spotted him.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
The word arrives with all the authority he has been trying to temper.
My eyebrows lift in questioning disapproval. Rocco closes his eyes for one brief second.
“Will you remain here until I know whether he poses a threat?”
“That was not much better.”
“It is the best I can do right now.”
The radio reports movement toward the parking area.
I look at the man standing in front of me. Vigilance shaped by mistakes, military service, and an accident his body still remembers. He is already halfway out the door in his mind.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll stay.”
Relief flashes across his face. He crosses to me and grips the back of my chair. For one suspended second, I think he might kiss me after all. Instead, he bends until his forehead touches mine.
“Lock the door behind me.”
“I will.”
“And don’t open it unless you hear my voice.”
“Rocco.”
His eyes meet mine.
“Be careful.”
“I promised you.”
He walks out before I can remind him that promises do not stop bullets.
I lock the door and stand at the window, watching until the trees swallow him from view. The cabin feels emptier than it did when he left me alone before. This time, solitude gives nothing back.