Chapter 2
The Sound was doing what it always did at night—sitting there, dark and vast and completely indifferent to the fact that Noah Chase was turning thirty-nine on its doorstep.
He appreciated that about the water. It didn't care who he was.
The noise from inside carried through the glass—Henrietta Bowie's voice cutting through everything, someone's kid shrieking in that high-register way that meant either genuine distress or pure joy, and with the Bowie family, it was usually the latter.
He'd learned that. He'd learned a lot about how a family actually functioned from watching this one, which was both the best and strangest education he'd ever gotten.
He took a sip of Casamigos and looked at the darkness.
He'd spent twenty-five years building a life that had nothing to do with the one he'd been born into, and he'd done it.
By any reasonable measure, he'd done it.
The show. The house. The view. The awards on the shelf that he looked at approximately twice a year because the work was the point, not the recognition, though the recognition didn't hurt.
He'd built something real and from the wreckage of his early life.
He just hadn't realized how lonely that climb would be.
The door opened behind him.
"There he is." Reid Carson, Ziggy’s one and only brother-in-law, came out first, an empty glass in one hand and the unhurried ease of a man who'd made his peace with the world. Troy Bowie, Ziggy’s younger brother, followed, already reaching for the Casamigos bottle on the rail without asking, which Noah had long since stopped minding.
Jag Bowie, the oldest brother, came last, closing the door behind him with the deliberateness of a man who'd spent enough years as a cop that he always knew where the exits were.
"Hiding already," Troy said. "It's your party."
"It's Ziggy's party," Noah said. "I'm just the excuse."
"That's accurate," Jag said.
Reid poured himself two fingers and leaned on the rail beside Noah. “Your view is better than ours.”
“You tell me that every time you come over.”
“Yeah, well, at least I know what furniture looks like." Reid shook his head. "Commit to the house, man."
“I pay the bills. That’s commitment.”
"You've got a couch and a TV and a view," Troy said. "That's a very expensive campsite."
“It’s called living with what you need, and I have more things than that.”
"The desk in your office doesn't count."
Noah glared. "I have a bed."
"Allegedly," Troy said.
Jag smiled into his drink, which was his version of a laugh.
Noah had learned that too—the Bowie family had their own language, their own frequencies, the shorthand of people who'd grown up in the same house and never entirely left it, even when they’d scattered.
He'd been adjacent to it long enough to read most of it.
Long enough that sometimes he forgot he wasn't actually part of it.
Then he remembered.
"Thirty-nine," Troy said, with the cheerfulness of someone who wasn't thirty-nine yet. "How's that feel?"
"Exactly like thirty-eight."
"That's what they all say." Troy smiled.
"Because it's true." Ried raised his drink. "Nobody actually feels different on their birthday. That's a myth perpetuated by people who need a reason to throw parties."
"Ziggy needed a reason?" Jag raised an eyebrow. "She organized a coordinated family event on a Thursday night. She didn't need a reason. She needed an outlet."
Noah looked back at the water. Inside, he could hear Henrietta's laugh, big and warm and utterly unselfconscious, and under it the lower register of Albert Morning’s voice, a Seattle detective, telling some story that his wife, Crystal, was probably already editing for length and accuracy.
The kids would be doing whatever kids did when there were too many of them in a room together—building or destroying something, he'd never been able to tell the difference.
This was what a birthday looked like, apparently. He'd spent enough of them alone to know the difference between alone and this, and this was better by every objective measure.
He just hadn't figured out how to process better, yet.
"Can I ask you something?" Jag said.
Noah glanced at him. Jag had the look he got when he was going to ask something directly, which was the only way Jag asked anything. He'd been a homicide detective before he was a police chief, and it showed in how he approached a question.
"You're going to ask it either way," Noah said.
"True." Jag turned and leaned his back against the rail, facing the house. "Why aren't you and Ziggy together?"
Reid looked at the sky. Troy suddenly found something interesting about his drink. But they weren’t fooling anyone. Noah knew an ambush when he saw one.
"We work together," Noah said. “And she’s my best friend.”
"That's not an answer. It’s an excuse, and for the life of me, I don’t get it.” Jag tapped his finger against his drink.
"It's the only answer I’ve got.” Or rather, the only one he was going to give to her family.
"We've known each other for years, and I've watched you and my sister dance around each other like there's something there, but neither one of you is willing to cut a rug.” Jag shifted. "It's obvious to everyone. I'd like to know what you’re so afraid of.”
The acid hit the back of Noah's throat before Jag finished the sentence.
Seattle had called Noah the Truth-Seeker for years.
He'd built an entire career—a life—on the idea that honest answers mattered, that the why behind a story was just as important as the what, that you couldn't expose someone else's lies without doing it with some level of integrity.
Verification over speed. Context over sensation. He'd lived by that.
And he was the biggest hypocrite on the planet.
"Ziggy's going to kill me for this," Noah said. "But we tried. A few years back. It was complicated. And obviously, it didn’t work.”
Ziggy wasn’t going to be mad. She was going to push him into Puget Sound.
She’d wanted their relationship five years ago to be private too, though for very different reasons.
And he understood. Now, it was more because her family liked to play matchmaker, and this wasn’t the first time he’d had to dodge this question.
Only, instead of denying it, he admitted it, which would make for some sticky conversations in the future. But since he was the man who sought the truth, he had to ask himself why he answered the question with some honesty.
Part of him knew the reason. He’d fought it for years.
Reid made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Complicated."
"Something funny?" Noah asked.
"No." Reid took a sip of his drink. "Just that complicated is a word I've used before. About Darcie and me. Before we figured our stuff out."
“Not sure complicated is a strong enough word for what happened to Callie and me,” Jag said.
Noah looked between them. He knew enough about both their histories to understand what wasn't being said—that Reid and Darcie had their own version of this, that Jag and Callie had theirs, that both of those stories had endings that currently involved kids eating cake and ice cream at his counter in the kitchen.
Noah looked back at the water.
The thing was, it wasn't complicated. Complicated, he could navigate—he did it for a living. It was about the weight of what Ziggy carried for him. She didn't even know what she'd signed up for the night he handed her that envelope.
“No offense, but this isn’t the same.” And it wasn’t, but considering Jag was the lead detective on a serial killer case—the same killer that had murdered Callie's sister—it wasn’t that much different. And he and Callie turned out just fine.
“It never is,” Reid said. “I used age and Darcie’s career to push her away, while she used my late girlfriend. It was like we had decided we weren’t going to work before we were even out of the gate.”
There was no way Noah could explain this.
It wasn't about fear of commitment, bad timing, or the difficulty of loving someone you worked with.
It was about the fact that Ziggy had already paid a price for knowing him, and every day she stayed in his orbit was another day she carried something that could detonate her career the same way it would detonate his.
He couldn't say any of that standing on this patio with her brothers.
“For what it’s worth,” Troy started. “The best things in life are the ones we have to fight for. The things that don’t come easy.” He leaned closer. “You know, the complicated things. Like my sister.”
Noah couldn’t help it. He laughed. Ziggy was a complex woman, and he loved everything about her.
It was selfish of him to want her around so that he could be near her.
Even more selfish than being grateful every day that she hadn’t found someone who could love her the way she deserved, even though he hoped she would.
He brought his drink to his lips, remembering the short kiss in his dressing room. He’d wanted to desperately slip his tongue between her lips and take the risk.
For the last five years, she’d stood next to him. Stayed through every bimbo he paraded through his dressing room. Through every bad decision. She never walked away.
And she continued to help him navigate the decision that ultimately dictated their future. Burying the story had been the right thing. But letting it decide his fate with Ziggy? He had doubts about that now.
“You know—” Jag started, but his father stepped through the sliders.
“So, this is where most of the men ran off to,” Harold said. “While I don’t ever mind spending time with all my grandchildren, sometimes being around all those women can be a bit much.” He held a small package with a balloon attached.
“I’m going to tell Mom you said that.” Troy laughed, raising his drink. “And then I’m gonna tell my wife, who then won’t cook this Sunday.”
“That’s blackmail, son.” Harold slapped Troy on the back. “But Priela should be taking it easy.”