Chapter 30
Emily came to the park to think. She loved the bench overlooking the water was where she'd been coming since her first week in Tampa when she needed to stop being a prosecutor for ten minutes and just be a person.
She'd sat here after depositions that went sideways and victories that felt hollow and the kind of Tuesday afternoon when the work wasn't enough and she couldn't name what was missing.
She knew what was missing now.
She'd left the federal building an hour ago.
Told Winters she needed until tomorrow. Watched the woman from Main Justice nod with the patient calculation of someone who'd recruited enough talent to know that hesitation wasn't rejection, it was the decision sharpening itself into focus.
Ray had walked Winters to the elevator, and Emily had stood in the hallway alone, and then she'd gotten in the Yukon and driven here because this was where she came when she needed to be honest with herself.
The bench was warm from the afternoon sun.
The water moved in its slow, permanent way, the kind of movement that didn't care about deadlines or career decisions or the chaos of a woman who'd spent the morning being offered everything she'd ever wanted and discovering she wanted something else entirely.
She was staying.
She'd known it in Ray's office when Winters said "all in.
" She'd known it in the hallway when Ray found her crying and said because it's not what you want anymore.
She'd known it when Jake sat across from her in her glass-walled office and smiled the wrong smile and told her she deserved this, and she'd watched his heart break behind his eyes while he said all the right words in the wrong order.
She needed to find him. She needed to tell him that the answer was no, that it had always been no, that the woman who would have said yes to Katherine Winters didn't exist anymore because she'd fallen in love with a man who made breakfast on Sunday mornings and showed up for a little boys baseball games and carried a dog's tennis ball in his jacket pocket like it was mission-essential gear.
She pulled out her phone to call him.
That was when Ranger came across the grass.
Ears up, tail moving, aimed directly at her, and behind him, Jake. Walking toward the bench from the parking lot with his leash in his hand and sawdust on his jeans and an expression on his face she'd never seen before.
Not the easy warmth. Not the operator's calm. Not even the composure he'd worn in her office two hours ago when he'd sat there and lied to her with love in his voice.
This was a man with his armor off. Open. A man who'd made a decision and hadn't figured out the words for it yet but was walking toward her anyway because the decision couldn't wait for language.
Ranger reached her first. She put her hands in his fur and felt his weight press against her knees, the solid, uncomplicated greeting of a dog who didn't know that the two people he loved most were about to rearrange their lives on a park bench.
She looked up at Jake standing three feet away in the golden afternoon light with sawdust in his hair and his heart on his face.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey."
He sat beside her. Close. Not the distance he'd kept in her office. His thigh against hers on the bench, his shoulder touching hers, his body making a statement his mouth hadn't caught up to yet.
"I was about to call you," she said.
He looked at her. Then at the phone in her hand. Something shifted behind his eyes that she couldn't read, and he nodded once, like he was filing that away for later.
"I need to go first," he said.
"Jake—"
"Please." Not desperate.. "Let me get this out."
She waited. Ranger laying at their feet, chin on his paws, watching them both.
"I lied to you today." He was looking at the water. "In your office. When I told you to take the job and said we'd figure it out." He shook his head. "We wouldn't figure it out. I know that. You know that."
He turned to face her.
"I sat there and I smiled and I said all the right things because that's what I do. That's what I've always done. Someone leaves, I hold the door." He paused. "My whole life, Em. Every time."
His arm against hers on the bench. Warm and solid and not letting go.
"I went home and I was working on the deck. The one you asked for. And I was kneeling there with a drill telling Ranger we'd still use it, and I—" He stopped. Took a breath. "Claire showed up."
Emily blinked. "Claire?"
"She gave me hell." The corner of his mouth moved. "Told me I was full of it. And she was right. I was hiding. Calling it respect, calling it love, but it was hiding."
His grip tightened.
"I'm not letting you go."
The words detonated.
"I don't know how to say this right. I'm not—" He exhaled. "I've never asked anyone to stay. I don't know what that sounds like. But I'm asking you. I'm asking because I can't do it again. I can't hold the door and smile and watch you walk through it and pretend that's okay."
Emily was crying. She didn't know when it started. The tears were there, running down her face, and she was holding onto him and looking at this man who had finally stopped letting people leave.
"I love you," he said. "And I want you here. And I know what that job means and I know what you gave up to get this far and I'm asking you to stay anyway because I can't—"
His voice quit on him. She watched it happen. Watched the words run out and the rawness underneath take over, and Jake Walsh sat on a park bench in the late afternoon sun and couldn't finish a sentence because the feeling was bigger than the language he had for it.
"Jake."
"No." The word came out hard. One syllable representing every door he'd ever held open and every goodbye he'd ever swallowed. "No. I'm done."
She took his face in her hands.
"I'm not going," she said.
He went still. Completely, absolutely still, like he'd gone once before, the night she'd said I love you with her eyes open and watched the words reach him.
"I'm not going. I knew before you sat down in my office.
I knew when Winters made the offer. I knew when she said I'd have to go all in, because that's not what all in means anymore.
" Her thumbs traced the line of his jaw, holding him there, making him see her.
"All in is here. All in is you and Ranger and The Anchor and Claire and Ray and Jacob's terrible swing on Saturday mornings.
All in is showing up for the people you love.
All in is watching you have nightmares and loving you through them and arguing about curtains the next morning. "
"Em—"
"I don't want Washington. I don't want Deputy Chief of anything.
I want this. I want us." Her voice was steady, the steadiest it had been all day, the voice of a woman who'd stopped arguing with herself.
"I want to come home to you every night and wake up with you every morning and build a life that actually means something instead of just looking impressive on paper. "
"You already knew." His voice was barely there. "When I was in your office. Telling you to take it."
"Yes."
"Then why did you let me—" He stopped. She watched the realization land. "You needed me to fight."
"I needed you to want me to stay. Not because I couldn't decide. Because for the first time in my life, someone else's voice mattered, and that voice sat in my office and told me to go."
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were bright, and she watched a tear escape down his cheek, catching the afternoon light, the first tear she'd ever seen Jake Walsh shed.
"I was on that deck," he said. "I'd already let you go in my head. I was going to finish the boards and buy a bigger grill and tell myself it was fine."
"What changed?"
"I ran out of places to hide."
She kissed him. Leaned across the bench and kissed him how she'd wanted to in her office when he'd given her that broken performance and she'd let him walk out. She kissed him like she was never going to let him hold another door open for anyone ever again.
When she pulled back, Ranger had given up on dignity and was trying to insert himself between their legs, tail wagging hard enough to throw off his balance.
Jake laughed. The real one. The one that started in his eyes, except those eyes were red-rimmed and wet and the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
"You're sure?" he asked.
"I've never been more sure of anything."
"It's a big job, Em. The kind of job you don't get offered twice."
"Then they'll offer it to someone else. Someone who doesn't have what I have. Someone who doesn't know what all in actually means."
He pulled her close, his chin resting on top of her head, his arms around her like he was learning how to hold on instead of letting go. She breathed him in. Sawdust and sun and the solid warmth of a man who'd left a half-finished deck to come find her.
"We'll finish it this weekend," she said.
"You hate power tools."
"I'll supervise."
Ranger flopped in the grass at their feet with a martyred sigh, and the world went on around them, and none of it mattered.