Chapter 26
She'd spent forty minutes deciding between two dresses and then putting on jeans and a white top because that was who she wanted to be tonight.
Not the prosecutor. Not the woman who'd been navigating federal scrutiny and Marchand's choreographed disapproval. Just Emily, on a Saturday, going out with Jake.
He was waiting in the kitchen when she came downstairs, leaning against the counter with Ranger at his feet. Jeans, a navy button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, no hat. He'd cleaned up without overdoing it, like the effort was there but would deny it under oath.
"You look incredible," he said.
"You're biased."
"Doesn't make it less true."
She crossed to him and kissed him, because she could, because she wanted to, because six weeks ago she wouldn't have and tonight she didn't think twice. His hand found the small of her back, anchoring her as it always did, and she let herself be steadied.
"Where are we going?"
"Dinner first. Then wherever you want."
"That's dangerous. I could want anything."
"That's the idea."
He took her to a place on the water she hadn't been, small and unassuming, the kind of restaurant that survived on locals who didn't tell anyone about it. The host knew him by name and seated them at a corner table where the window framed the last of the sunset burning itself out over the harbor.
They ordered without deliberation, wine for her and bourbon for him, appetizers they'd share because somewhere in the last month they'd stopped pretending they weren't the kind of couple who ate off each other's plates.
"How's Claire?" Jake asked.
"Suspicious."
"Of what?"
"Of everything. She thinks we're moving too fast. She also thinks you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. She holds both opinions simultaneously and sees no contradiction."
Jake's mouth curved. "I like Claire."
"Everyone likes Claire. It's her most dangerous quality."
The food came, and they talked how Jake and Emily had learned to talk, which was to say about everything and nothing, the conversation moving without effort between the serious and the trivial.
He told her about a call from a buddy in Virginia who wanted to open a training facility, how he'd spent twenty minutes explaining why Northern Virginia real estate was going to eat the man alive.
She told him about a motion she'd filed that morning that was going to make opposing counsel's week thoroughly miserable, and Jake laughed at the right parts and asked questions that proved he'd been listening to every detail she'd shared over the past month about the case's procedural infrastructure.
She caught herself thinking, halfway through the appetizer course, that this was the thing she'd been most afraid of.
Not the danger. Not the job complications. Not Marchand or the office or the arithmetic of professional risk. This. The ordinary excellence of being with someone who made a Saturday night feel like enough.
Dinner lasted two hours, and neither of them rushed it.
The shopping center was her idea. She'd mentioned needing to replace a bag that had finally given up, and Jake had turned the car without a word, like errands were a perfectly acceptable second act to a date.
"You don't have to come in," she said as they walked from the parking lot.
"Try and stop me."
"Men hate shopping."
"Men hate shopping with people they don't want to be around." He held the door. "Different situation."
She gave him a look. He returned it with the expression of a man who was telling the truth and knew it.
The store was bright, the kind of place where the staff recognized money without being rude about it.
Emily moved through it like she moved through evidence, methodical but open to being surprised.
Jake followed without hovering, close enough to be present, far enough to give her room.
He carried what she handed him without complaint, offered opinions when asked, and kept his unsolicited ones to observations that actually helped.
"That one," he said, when she held up two bags.
"Why that one?"
"Because you keep touching it. You've picked it up three times. The other one you're evaluating. That one you like."
She bought the bag.
They drifted. Past a window display that caught her eye, into a store she wouldn't have entered alone because it felt indulgent, the kind of place where you tried things on for the pleasure of it rather than the need.
But Jake was there, sitting in a chair near the fitting rooms with the patience of a man who'd waited in far worse places for far worse reasons, and his presence made indulgence feel permissible.
She tried on a dress she didn't need. Came out to show him.
His expression was the review.
"We're getting that," he said.
"I don't need it."
"Em."
"It's not practical."
"Buy the dress."
She bought the dress.
They were leaving the store when she stopped at a display near the entrance. Men's shirts, arranged by color. She pulled one from the rack without thinking, a soft gray henley, heavy enough it would work through fall, and held it against him before he could object.
"No," he said.
"It'd look good on you."
"I have shirts."
"You have t-shirts and one button-down you wear to every meeting." She turned the tag over. "This is a shirt. There's a difference."
"The difference is about sixty dollars."
"I'm buying it."
"You're not buying me a shirt."
"I'm absolutely buying you a shirt." She was already walking toward the register. "You'd look good in it. That's all the justification required."
Jake stood there, watching her go, carrying the bag she'd chosen and the dress she didn't need and every piece of evidence that Emily Callahan had decided to stop being careful about wanting things.
He followed her to the register. Didn't argue again.
The night had cooled by the time they walked back to the Range Rover, the Florida humidity backed off to a temperature that almost qualified as pleasant.
Emily carried her bags and Jake carried the rest, and the distance between them had closed to nothing, her shoulder brushing his arm every few steps.
He opened her door. She set the bags in the back seat and turned to him.
The parking lot was nearly empty, the stores closing around them one by one.
A streetlight cast long shadows across the asphalt, and beyond the shopping center the city hummed with the energy of a weekend winding down, the hour when Tampa stopped performing and became the place where people actually lived.
"Thank you for tonight," she said.
"Don't thank me for a Saturday."
"I'm thanking you for letting me be a person tonight. Not a prosecutor. Not someone managing a case or navigating office politics. Just a woman who tried on a dress and bought a bag and made you stand in a fitting room area for twenty minutes."
"Twelve."
"It was at least fifteen."
"Twelve. I counted."
She laughed. The real one, the one that came from somewhere deep and unguarded, the one she'd been giving him more and more often and still couldn't quite believe was hers.
"Take me home, Jake."
He didn't ask for clarification. Just nodded, and the smile that started in his eyes told her he'd heard exactly what she meant.
Ranger met them with the contained enthusiasm of a dog who'd been waiting but wouldn't admit to urgency, his tail moving in broad strokes as he pressed against Emily's legs first, then Jake's.
Jake let him out, filled his bowl, went through the small rituals of coming home that Emily had memorized without trying.
She set her bags by the stairs. Watched him move through his kitchen, his house, the space that had started to feel like hers in ways she'd stopped resisting. He poured them both water. Checked the locks. Stood at the counter, looking at her with an expression that held everything he wasn't saying.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing." But the word was full. "Just this."
She crossed to him. Set her hands on his chest and let herself lean in, forehead against his collarbone, and felt his arms close around her.
They stood like that in his kitchen, the overhead light casting them in warm amber, Ranger's tags jingling as he came back inside, and she thought about how many versions of herself she'd been today.
The prosecutor who filed a motion. The woman who bought a dress.
The person standing in this kitchen, choosing to be here.
All of them were her. That was what Jake had taught her without trying. She didn't have to pick one.
Later, in the bedroom, with the windows dark and Ranger somewhere downstairs, she traced the scar on his ribs with her fingertips. The knife wound she'd seen that first Sunday morning, the evidence of a life lived in places where scars were the receipts.
He didn't flinch. Didn't redirect her hand. Let her map what his service had written on him.
"Does it bother you?" he asked.
"No." The truth of it was immediate. "It tells me you came back."
He kissed her forehead. She pressed closer. And the last thing she registered before sleep took her was the weight of his arm across her waist, the sound of the house settling around them, and the absolute certainty that she had never been safer in her life.
Something pulled her out of sleep. Not a sound. Not Ranger, not the house. A shift in the bed beside her, a change in the rhythm of Jake's breathing that her body registered before her mind caught up.
She opened her eyes.
The room was dark, the only light a thin line of moon through the gap in the curtains. Jake was on his back, his head turned slightly away from her. His breathing had gone shallow, faster than sleep allowed, and there was a fine sheen on his forehead that caught the pale light.