CHAPTER SEVEN Stolen Warmth
Nadia's bar was nearly empty by the time Josie and Sawyer walked in together the following night, just a handful of regulars scattered along the counter and a jukebox playing something low and unhurried in the corner.
Nadia looked up from behind the bar, took in the sight of them arriving side by side, and to her credit said nothing at all beyond a knowing arch of one eyebrow before sliding two glasses across the counter without being asked.
"On the house," she said. "For surviving whatever this week's been."
They took the corner booth, the one with the cracked vinyl seat that Josie remembered from years ago as unofficially theirs, back when they were young enough to think a booth could belong to two people the way a song could.
Sawyer looked less wrecked than he had at the empty lot the night before, some color back in his face, though the tiredness around his eyes hadn't fully gone anywhere.
"Reeve give you anything new today," she asked, not quite a question, more an offering of space if he wanted to fill it.
"Not much. Says the contact's supposed to happen sometime this week. Until then, I'm in limbo." He turned his glass in a slow circle on the table, an old habit she remembered vividly. "I'm not great at limbo."
"You never were." She said it without heat, almost fond, and something in his face eased at the familiarity of being teased instead of interrogated.
They talked for a while about nothing that mattered, the framing inspector's notorious pickiness, a customer of hers who kept trying to pay in cash he clearly didn't have, a story from Sawyer about training a new prospect who couldn't tell a socket wrench from a torque wrench, and Josie found herself laughing more freely than she had in longer than she wanted to admit, the old rhythm of talking to him settling back into place like a language she'd never actually forgotten, only refused to speak.
"Do you remember," Sawyer said, quieter now, some of the ease draining out of his voice into something more careful, "the summer we drove out to the lake house your dad's friend owned. The one with the dock that was falling apart."
"I remember you almost drowning trying to fix it because you refused to admit you didn't know what you were doing with a circular saw near water."
"I remember you laughing so hard you fell off the dock trying to help me." His mouth curved, soft, unguarded in a way she hadn't seen from him all week. "I think about that summer more than I probably should."
"Sawyer."
"I know." He held up a hand, gentle, not pushing. "I'm not trying to make this heavier than it already is. I just wanted you to know I remember all of it. Not just the ending. The whole thing."
Something in her chest ached at that, an old wound and an old tenderness arriving at the same time, tangled together in a way she didn't fully know how to separate. She looked down at her drink instead of at him, giving herself a second to steady whatever was rising in her throat.
"I used to be so sure," she said quietly, "that I knew exactly what kind of man you were.
Before. I built my whole life around that certainty.
And then I found out I didn't know you at all, or I knew you and you hid the parts that mattered, and I still don't know which of those is true, and some days I think not knowing is worse than either answer would be. "
"I never stopped being the man you thought I was.
" His voice was low, steady, none of the careful evasiveness from the last week in it.
"I made one choice, for reasons I still can't fully explain to you yet, and that choice cost us everything, and I've spent three years hating myself for it in ways I don't think you'd even believe if I told you.
But I never stopped being him, Josie. I just got scared into hiding him from you at the exact moment you needed to see him the most."
The bar noise seemed to fall away around them, the jukebox and the low murmur of the other patrons receding into something distant and unimportant.
Josie found herself leaning in without deciding to, close enough now that she could see the small scar above his eyebrow she used to trace absently while he slept, close enough to catch the particular warmth of him that no amount of cologne or years apart had managed to erase from her memory.
"I don't know how to trust you again," she said, honest in a way that cost her something to admit out loud. "I want to. That terrifies me more than not wanting to ever did."
"I'm not asking you to trust me all at once.
" His hand moved across the table, not quite touching hers, close enough that she could feel the warmth of it.
"I'm asking you to let me earn it one day at a time, the way I should have earned it from the start instead of assuming silence would protect us both. "
She looked up at him, and for a moment the three years between them folded down to almost nothing, close enough that she could feel her own breath catch, close enough that some old, undeniable pull drew them both an inch nearer across the cracked vinyl booth, his hand finally covering hers, warm and careful, like he expected her to pull away and was giving her every chance to.
She didn't pull away.
"Order up, lovebirds," Nadia called from the bar, breaking the moment with the particular comic timing of a friend who either hadn't noticed the charge in the air or had noticed exactly and decided the moment needed defusing before it went somewhere neither of them was ready for in public.
"Kitchen's closing, and I'm not staying open all night just so you two can stare meaningfully at each other over cold fries. "
The spell broke, gently, both of them pulling back with something between embarrassment and relief, though Sawyer's hand lingered a beat longer over hers before he let go.
"I should get you home," he said, low.
"I can drive myself."
"I know you can." Something warm flickered across his face. "Doesn't mean I don't want the extra five minutes."
They walked out into the cold together, breath fogging in the streetlight, the near miss of the moment inside the bar still humming low under Josie's skin.
At her car, he stopped a respectful distance away, hands in his jacket pockets, watching her with an expression she hadn't seen from him in three years: open, uncertain, hopeful in a way he clearly wasn't fully allowing himself yet.
"Goodnight, Josie."
"Goodnight, Sawyer." She got into her car, started the engine, and sat there a moment longer than necessary watching him walk back toward his own truck, the ache in her chest equal parts fear and something far more dangerous than fear, something that felt, against every careful instinct she'd built over three years, a great deal like hope.