Chapter 2 #2
Something in his tone made me go still.
"About us. About the future." He straightened, turned to face me, and I saw it—the careful rehearsal behind his eyes, the way he'd been working up to this all night. "I think we should get married."
The words hung in the air between us.
I should have been happy. This was what people did—dated, got engaged, built lives together. Pierce was offering stability. Partnership. A future with someone solid and reliable, someone who would be there every morning with salmon and quinoa and genuine concern for my well-being.
So why did it feel like a door closing?
Because he's not—
I shut that thought down. Hard.
"Pierce..."
"When we get married," he continued, and something about when instead of if made my chest tighten, "you won't have to work anymore."
For a moment, I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly.
"Excuse me?"
"You won't have to work." He said it like he was offering a gift. Like this was something I should want. "I make enough for both of us. You can focus on other things. The house. Starting a family."
He smiled. "You wouldn't have to chase these dangerous stories anymore."
I stared at him.
This man I'd spent two years with. This man, who had a drawer full of carefully folded undershirts in my bedroom.
This man, who had apparently been waiting for the right moment to tell me that my entire career—the thing I'd built from nothing, the work that defined me—was just something to occupy me until I could be a wife and mother instead.
"And if I don't want to stop working?"
Pierce took a breath. The kind that said he'd been preparing for this.
"Sloane, you know how I feel about your job."
"No." My voice was flat. "Apparently, I don't."
"The Lang investigation." His voice was patient, reasonable—the voice he used in negotiations, I realized. The voice he used when closing a deal. "You received death threats."
The Lang threats.
I'd never told anyone about those. Not my family, not my colleagues, not even Marianne.
Just Pierce, in a moment of weakness after a particularly graphic letter, arrived at my apartment.
I'd kept it quiet because I didn't want to worry anyone—and because, honestly, the threats had felt like validation.
I was close to something. Powerful people wanted me to stop.
"I'm still alive," I said flatly.
"You can't be like this when we have children."
Something in me went very quiet.
Not angry. Not defensive. Just... clear.
I thought about my job. The late nights. The difficult sources. The doors slammed in my face.
The stories that mattered. The people I'd helped. The truth I'd uncovered because I was willing to dig where no one else would.
I thought about having children.
And the grief surfaced like a creature from deep water—unexpected, devastating, impossible to push back down.
The baby I'd lost. The blood on the bathroom floor. The hospital. White walls. Cold hands. A voice saying We'll get through this together while something inside me was quietly dying.
Children.
The word alone made my chest cave in. I'd wanted them once. Wanted them so badly I could picture the nursery, the tiny clothes, the future we'd build. That wanting had nearly killed me when it was taken away.
I didn't know if I had it in me to want like that again. And if I ever did—if I ever found the courage—it wouldn't be with a man who needed me smaller to feel safe.
Pierce could not be the father of my children.
The certainty was absolute.
"Children we won't have," I said quietly.
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"This won't work out, Pierce." I met his eyes. Held steady. "I'm sorry."
For a moment, he just looked at me. Confusion cycling into disbelief, disbelief into something harder.
"You're serious." His voice was flat now. "You're ending a two-year relationship because I want to keep you safe."
"I'm ending it because you want to change me."
"I want to give you a better life."
"This is my life." I gestured at the apartment around us—the books, the framed front pages, the corkboard covered in strings and index cards. "This is who I am. And you just asked me to give it up."
Pierce stood very still. Then he nodded, once, and something in his face closed off.
"I hope you find whatever you're looking for, Sloane." His voice was cold now. Wounded pride hardening into something that would curdle into resentment by morning. "I hope the job keeps you warm at night."
He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. His keys from the counter.
He didn't slam the door on his way out. The quiet click of the latch was somehow worse.
I sat alone at the table. Surrounded by the remnants of dinner and the relationship I'd known wasn't right for months—maybe from the beginning—but had stayed in anyway.
Because it was easier than being alone.
The apartment was very quiet.
I thought about calling my sister. My mother. Anyone who could tell me I'd done the right thing—that I deserved better than someone who wanted to shrink me down to fit his idea of a wife.
But I knew what they'd say. What they'd been saying for years, in different ways, with varying degrees of patience.
Why do you always find a reason to leave?
Two years with Pierce. Safe, stable Pierce, who looked good on paper but never made my heart catch. I'd thought it might work—stable career, steady hands, a man who came home at the same time every night.
But Pierce flinched at the parts of my life that mattered most. The late-night stakeouts. The threats from people I'd exposed.
He wanted a woman who played it safe. I'd never been her.
Before him, David—eighteen months of something that was never going to work, but I'd tried anyway. Before David, a string of first dates and second dates and relationships that fizzled before they started.
Because I was always comparing. Always measuring. Always finding everyone lacking against a standard I refused to name.
I'd built a pattern. Men who were available. Men who were suitable. Men who didn't make me feel too much, want too much, risk too much.
Men I could leave without it destroying me.
Because the last time I'd let myself fall completely, I'd nearly drowned in the aftermath.
And I'd hurt him in a way I still couldn't forgive myself for.
Some people didn't get second chances. Some people didn't deserve them.
I believed I didn't.
I pulled the arson files from my bag and spread them across the table.
Engine 295.
The words sat there, waiting.
Shane would help me. Brian would help me. Captain Rodriguez had always been cordial.
I had options. I'd worked cases connected to Engine 295 twice now without having to deal with Garrett directly.
Except once.
You publish now, the target moves to you. We don't want that.
He'd said that during the Lang investigation. Shane had arranged a meeting—him, Brian, Ava, the people I'd been coordinating with. I hadn't expected Garrett to be there.
But there he was. Sitting across from me in that Astoria diner, silent through the entire briefing until he wasn't. Voice flat and controlled. I'd met his eyes and saw something underneath.
Something that looked like care. For me.
I'd told myself I was imagining it. Took two sleepless nights to make myself believe it.
I shook the thought away.
Looked back at the crime scene photos. The charred buildings. The devastation.
Someone was setting these fires for a reason. There was a story here—maybe a big one. The kind of story that changed things. That mattered. That reminded me why I'd chosen this life even when it cost me everything else.
I could do this.
Call Captain Rodriguez. Work through Shane and Brian like I had before. Keep my distance. Keep it professional.
I pulled a legal pad toward me and started making notes.
The work would keep me warm at night.
It always had before.