Chapter 10 #3
They brought the drinks back to the table and the evening kept going, the four of them falling into the easy rhythm of people who'd decided to enjoy each other's company without complication.
Will told a story about a deal that went sideways in Singapore that was genuinely funny.
Claire demolished Jake in a debate about courtroom strategy that Emily refereed with obvious delight.
Jake caught himself thinking that this was it.
This was the thing people built. Not the missions or the cases or the career milestones.
This. A booth in a loud club with people who were becoming his people.
Emily leaned up and pressed her lips against his ear. "Take me home."
Emily sat sideways in the passenger seat, her back against the door, her feet kicked up on the center console, her shoes discarded on the floor.
Her hair was wrecked and her makeup had migrated and she was looking at him with an expression that made driving in a straight line require genuine effort.
"You danced," she said.
"You made me dance."
"I didn't make you do anything. You could have said no."
"No, I couldn't have."
She smiled. The smile that was only his, the one that started slow and arrived like sunrise, and Jake Walsh felt the power of being in love with someone who was looking at him like he was the answer to a question she'd been afraid to ask.
"I had the best night," she said. "The best night I've had since I can't remember when."
"Better than law school Claire?"
"Better than everything." She was watching the city lights pass. "I forgot I could feel like that. Happy. Really happy. Not accomplishment-happy or case-closed-happy. Body-happy. The kind where you don't have to think about it, you just feel it."
"Body-happy," Jake repeated. "I'm stealing that."
"You can have it. You earned it."
He pulled up in front of her building. Killed the engine. The sudden absence of road noise left a silence that felt intimate and complete.
Emily unbuckled her seatbelt but didn't move to open the door. She was looking at him again with that expression, the one that was bravery and desire and several drinks' worth of lowered inhibitions all fused together into a single, devastating invitation.
"Come up with me," she said.
Jake looked at her. Not with want, though the want was there, had been there all night, had been there since she'd walked down those steps in those jeans and those heels and that top that left her shoulders bare.
He looked at her with care. With the concentration of a man who understood that some moments determined everything that came after.
She was beautiful. She was willing. She'd had the best night of her life and she wanted to extend it into a night neither of them would forget.
Every signal she was giving him said yes, and every part of him that was male and alive and desperately in love with this woman wanted to follow her through that door and into whatever came next.
He took her hand. Pulled her gently across the console toward him. Pressed a soft kiss to her lips, unhurried, tender, the kind of kiss that carried a promise rather than a demand.
"I'm coming up to tuck you in," he said. "Kiss you goodnight. And lock your door on my way out."
Emily's face underwent a transformation that any other night would have made him laugh. The softness dissolved into a pout that was somehow both adorable and threatening, her brow furrowing, frustration and near-outrage competing for control of her features.
"Damn you, Jake Walsh."
"I'm sorry."
"No, you're not."
"I'm a little sorry."
She fell into him. The fight went out of her all at once, replaced by the accumulated preeminence of the evening.
The drinks, the dancing, the emotional expenditure of being a version of herself she hadn't accessed in years.
She pressed her face against his neck and he felt her body go heavy against his, fatigue arriving like a wave she'd been outrunning since the dance floor.
"Why do you have to be so perfect?" The words were muffled against his collar, soft and tired, the voice of a woman who'd spent her life expecting people to disappoint her.
Jake held her. One arm around her back, one hand cradling the base of her skull, the way you'd hold a thing so valuable it didn't know its own worth yet.
He let the question sit unanswered because the answer was that he wasn't perfect.
He was a man who had nightmares and kept people at arm's length and had spent twelve years avoiding exactly this kind of vulnerability.
But he was also a man who knew, with certainty that lived in his bones, that if he followed her upstairs tonight it would mean less in the morning than if he didn't.
She deserved a first time that she'd chosen with clear eyes. Not a night she'd have to wonder about.
"Let's get you upstairs," he said.
Her apartment was tidy in the way that revealed her personality more than any conversation ever had.
Books organized by subject. A coffeemaker that cost more than some of his firearms. A single framed photo on the bookshelf of Emily and Claire, younger, arms around each other, grinning at the camera with the unguarded confidence of women who hadn't yet learned what the world would ask of them.
Emily leaned on him through the hallway, her heels dangling from one hand, her other arm looped through his. She directed him to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him with heavy eyes.
"Stay," she said.
"You know I can't."
"I know you won't. There's a difference."
He knelt in front of her. Pulled the blanket back. Helped her swing her legs onto the mattress and spread the covers over her with the care of someone performing an act he intended to remember.
She was asleep before he finished tucking the blanket around her shoulders.
Or nearly. Her eyes had closed and her breathing had found the slow cadence of surrender, and Jake pressed his lips to her forehead and held them there.
Memorizing. The warmth of her skin. The faint smell of perfume and sweat and the scent that was only her.
The significance of this night, of this woman, of this life he was building one decision at a time.
He straightened. Crossed to the door. Took one last look at her, curled on her side, hair spread across the pillow, face finally, completely, at peace.
He was pulling the bedroom door closed when he heard it.
Barely a whisper. Wrapped in sleep and fading even as it reached him, the words dissolving at their edges like smoke in still air. He froze with his hand on the doorknob, not breathing, straining to hear what might not have been there at all.
"I love you..."
The last syllable trailed into silence. Into the deep, even breathing of a woman who'd fallen asleep before the words had fully left her mouth.
Jake stood in the doorway of Emily Callahan's bedroom and let the words find its place inside him.
It sat next to the morning at his kitchen table.
Next to the weight of her head on his lap.
Next to every small, terrifying, irreversible thing that had happened since she'd walked into Ray's office and looked at him like she was deciding whether to trust him or arrest him.
He closed the door. Locked the front door on his way out. Tested the deadbolt.
The night air hit him on the steps and he stopped. Looked up. Her window was dark. The city hummed around him, distant and unimportant.
Three words. Maybe. Possibly. He couldn't be sure.
Jake Walsh walked to his car. Sat behind the wheel. Let the engine stay cold.
Three words. Maybe.
He drove home slow.