Chapter 14
Kenzi
We drive for almost an hour before I say anything real.
It takes me that long to compose my thoughts, lower the speed of my heartrate and analyze how it felt to have him touching me.
I want more of his touch and somehow it doesn’t feel wrong.
It should feel wrong, it should feel forbidden, but it doesn’t…
it feels, right. I finally find my voice again.
Small talk first, because that's who I am, even after being chased through a train station by men in shoes that apparently give away the whole lie, something I would have never noticed. Well, maybe I would have, I notice things, but I wouldn’t have known to notice that because it’s outside my area of expertise.
I’m grateful it’s not outside of Dozer’s or we might be dead right now.
I start with a comment about the radio and how a playlist would be better than musical Russian Roulette.
Then a comment about a fast-food taco sign we pass that promises regret in four different fonts.
He’s definitely not amused by my analysis of the cheaper the food the more expensive the effects on the body.
I make an offhanded comment about the coffee in the cup holder being legally classified as a weapon in at least three states.
It’s entirely too thick and bitter to be considered coffee.
It’s verbal clutter that I throw into the space between us because silence has never been something I trust for long.
Dozer lets me have it. He refrains from commenting on the fact that I'm talking too much. He doesn’t do that thing people do when they know exactly what you're doing and think pointing it out makes them insightful. He just drives, occasionally commenting in the appropriate places to let me know he’s listening, which, annoyingly, makes me feel safer.
Somewhere past a green highway sign I don't bother reading, the noise runs out anyway, and what comes up instead is just true. "I've never been that scared in my life."
The words surprise me as soon as they're out.
I look out the window instead of at him, because apparently there are still limits to my bravery, and making eye contact while admitting fear is one of them.
"Not at the motel or the ambush. This." I swallow.
"Men in badly fitted costumes, chasing us through a station full of people who had no idea any of it was real.
" How often do things like this happen and I don’t even notice?
Will I pay more attention the next time I hop on a train at a crowded metro station?
Dozer doesn't answer right away. By now, I understand what that means.
He's not ignoring me. He's deciding how to answer honestly instead of just quickly.
I've learned to appreciate the distinction.
He is careful what he says, thinking before he speaks, something people have been telling me for years I need to do more of.
"I know," he says eventually. "I saw it on you."
"I was that obvious?"
"You didn't hesitate." I turn my head to look at him. He keeps his eyes on the road. "That's not the same as not being scared," he says. "Good operators are scared the whole time. The ones who aren't are the ones you don't want next to you."
I stare at him for a second. There's something about that sentence that has me considering things a different way.
I've spent most of my adult life learning how to hide fear instead of understanding that having it doesn't make me less capable. At the DOD, competence was measured by confidence and certainty. At crime scenes, composure was supposed to look like detachment. After my brother died, people seemed to think strength meant getting back to normal as quickly as possible. Nobody ever explained that fear and competence could occupy the same body. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
You can be terrified and at the same time, get the job done. No one has said that to me before.
Nobody except him.
"I also—" I stop. "I also felt more looked-after than I think I've felt in years."
His hands tighten slightly on the steering wheel. I notice. Which makes it worse. Am I saying too much? Does he feel the same way? In true Kenzi fashion, I can’t stop myself from continuing to babble.
"That's a weird thing to feel in the middle of being chased by fake FBI agents," I continue, quieter.
"But there it was, this feeling..." He doesn't interrupt.
"Your hand on my back." I glance down at my own hand resting near the center console, remembering the pressure of his palm through my jacket.
"I just went. I did what you said without thinking or calculating. It didn’t cross my mind to hesitate or argue with you.
I trusted you completely." I let out a breath that almost becomes a laugh.
"I don't know what to do with both of those feelings happening at the same time. "
"What feelings?"
"Terrified and safe." I look at him. "They're not supposed to fit in the same sentence. I was terrified of what was happening but because you were beside me, I also felt safe."
I expect him to deflect. That's the pattern I've catalogued by now with conversations.
Normally when a big feeling is offered, a small factual answer is returned.
It comes as a flat, but true sentence that closes the topic gently instead of engaging.
I've made a kind of peace with that pattern. I’m not ready for what he says next.
"They fit."
I wait. He glances at me, and for once there's nothing guarded in his expression. "Scared and safe. Most people who've been in real danger know both at once. It's not a contradiction. It's just what it actually feels like underneath all the movies that pretend it's simpler than that."
My throat tightens. "That's uncharacteristically forthcoming of you."
"Don't get used to it."
"Too late."
His mouth twitches. The man doesn’t smile, he just… twitches as if he’s considering it before putting the mask back on.
"Thank you," I say.
"For what?"
"For not just handing me four words and calling it a conversation, for actually engaging this time."
His eyes flick toward me again. "You gave me something real." He pauses. "Felt wrong giving you less back."
I stop breathing for approximately one second.
It's ridiculous. It’s only one sentence, it's not even particularly romantic.
Except it is. At least to me. Because Dozer doesn't say things he doesn't mean.
I've learned that. He doesn't throw words around to make people comfortable.
He doesn't offer reassurance he can't stand behind.
So, if he gives me something real because I gave him something real, then he is telling me, in the only language he seems to trust, that this matters.
I look down at my hands. "I don't have a joke for this."
"I noticed. You would have said it by now.”
I laugh softly. "Don't ruin the moment."
"I wasn't."
"No, you were. You were getting dangerously close to being emotionally available."
"Wouldn't want that." His mouth twitches again.
"Terrifying."
His hand shifts on the console. For a second, our fingers are close enough that the smallest movement would make them touch.
Neither of us moves, which somehow makes me more aware of the space between us than I was when he was holding my hand in the train station.
It’s a charged, deliberate nothing, both of us pretending we haven't clocked exactly how little distance separates his hand from mine.
Both of us wanting to close the space and neither moving.
I finally let my little finger brush his.
Barely. An accident I could blame on the road.
Except neither of us is fooled. His finger moves against mine.
Just once. A quiet acknowledgment, deliberate in a way an accident never could be.
My pulse does something profoundly unhelpful, a small traitorous lurch.
How are our pinkies touching causing me this reaction?
I look out the window before my face can betray me.
"For what it's worth," I say after a minute, because eventually I always find something to say, "I trust you more than I've trusted anyone in longer than I want to admit."
He says nothing. I keep going because stopping now would require me to acknowledge how much courage it takes to say the next part.
"Not just with the case. With—" I gesture vaguely at the space between us. "This."
His jaw tightens. "Same."
One word. That's it. From him, I understand by now, that's practically a speech. And somehow the one singular word feels huge.
I let my hand stay where it is. So does he.
For the next few miles, neither of us says anything, and the silence doesn't bother me.
That's new for me. The highway slides beneath us, the landscape blurring past, and my mind finally has enough room to catch up with everything that has happened since Hunter's briefing room.
So much has happened in such a short amount of time. Finding the evidence on the body, being ambushed on the road and Reyes’ death, the door of the motel room being kicked in, fake FBI agents… And Dozer. Especially Dozer.
This job was supposed to be about escorting a body, that we aren’t even escorting, anymore.
Now it’s getting evidence, what’s left of it, to D.C.
Now, it’s about survival and taking down someone powerful.
I hadn't planned on it also becoming about the man beside me.
The man who doesn't talk much but notices everything, the man who sees fear and doesn't mistake it for weakness, the man whose hand at my back makes me feel safe.
The attraction I have to him is dangerous. Probably more dangerous than the men hunting us. Because bullets are easy to understand. This… there’s nothing easy to understand about what is developing between us.
I turn my hand slightly on the console, letting my fingers settle more fully against his. His hand closes around mine. I don't look at him. He doesn't look at me. Neither of us needs to. I just sit there and let him hold my hand while the highway carries us toward whatever comes next.
I'm not examining what that means yet, I’m just sitting in the moment.