Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Sid's New Year's Eve party was not what Ronan had expected.
He'd imagined something small—a few people, some drinks, maybe fireworks on the television. Instead, the house was packed. Grace had strung lights across the back porch and set up tables in the yard, and it seemed like half of Blossom Springs had shown up with covered dishes and bottles of wine.
"You look like you're planning an exit route," Lila said, appearing at his elbow with two glasses of champagne.
"Three. The back gate, the side yard, and through the garage."
"Sid would be impressed."
He chuckled and took the champagne but didn't drink it. "How many people live in this town?"
"About four thousand. Why?"
"Because I think most of them are here."
"Grace knows everyone. And everyone loves Grace." Lila clinked her glass against his. "Relax. It's a party. You're allowed to enjoy yourself."
"I'm not sure I remember how."
"Then fake it. That's what I've been doing for years."
She said it lightly, but something in her voice made him look at her more closely. She was smiling, her shoulders loose, her body language open and easy. To anyone else, she would have looked perfectly comfortable.
Ronan knew better.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Everything's fine."
"Lila."
She glanced around, checking who was nearby. Hanna and Quinn were talking to Jace by the grill. Mitch and Izzy were laughing at something Patricia had said. No one was paying attention to them.
"Sarah called this afternoon," she said quietly. "The defense filed another motion. They're claiming prosecutorial misconduct—something about how the FBI obtained Caleb's surveillance footage."
"That's a reach."
"Maybe. But it means more delays. More hearings. More time for Warren's lawyers to find something that sticks." She took a long drink of champagne. "I'm tired, Ronan. I've been tired for five years. And every time I think it's almost over, something else happens."
"It will end."
"Will it? Or will this just go on forever? Appeals and motions and procedural challenges until everyone forgets why we're even doing this."
He didn't have an answer for that. The legal system moved at its own pace, indifferent to the people caught in its machinery. He'd seen it before—cases that dragged on for years, justice delayed until it barely resembled justice at all.
"Hey." He set down his champagne and turned to face her fully. "Whatever happens with the trial, Warren Caldwell is finished. His reputation is destroyed. His business is gone. His allies have scattered. Even if some technicality gets him off—"
"It won't be enough." Her voice was flat. "I need him convicted. I need a jury to say, out loud, that he murdered my father. I need it on the record. Otherwise, it's just—" She gestured vaguely. "Rumors. Accusations. Things that might have happened."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
"Yes." He held her gaze. "When my father died, there was no one to blame.
No trial, no justice, just a heart attack in a parking lot.
One minute he was there, the next he wasn't. And for years I was angry at—" He stopped.
"I don't know. The universe. The randomness of it.
The fact that there was no enemy to fight, no wrong to right.
Just loss, with nothing on the other side of it. "
Lila was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"You never talk about your father."
"There's not much to say. He worked. He read.
He died." Ronan picked up his champagne again, more for something to do with his hands than because he wanted it.
"But my point is—you have something I didn't. You have a target.
You have a fight. And even if the fight takes longer than it should, even if it doesn't end the way you want, at least you're not raging against nothing. "
"That's a bleak kind of comfort."
"I'm not good at comfort. I'm good at bleak."
She laughed, startled. "That's the most honest thing you've ever said."
"I have my moments."
At eleven-thirty, Grace gathered everyone on the back porch for a toast.
She stood on the top step, Sid beside her, a glass of champagne in her hand. The string lights caught the silver in her hair, and her face was flushed from the cold and the wine.
"I'm not going to make a speech," she said. "I know, I know—everyone's shocked. Grace, not making a speech?"
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
"But I just wanted to say—" She paused, looking out at the faces gathered in her yard. "This year was hard. For all of us. We found out things about our town that we didn't want to know. We lost people we thought we could trust. And we're still figuring out what comes next."
Ronan felt Lila's hand slip into his.
"But we're still here," Grace continued. "We're still showing up for each other. And that's what matters. Not the people who let us down—the people who didn't. The ones who stayed."
She raised her glass.
"To the ones who stayed."
"To the ones who stayed," the crowd echoed.
Ronan drank. The champagne was cold and sharp, and he was surprised to find that he meant it—the toast, the sentiment, all of it. He'd spent most of his life leaving. Moving on to the next mission, the next assignment, the next place that needed him for a while before he disappeared again.
He'd never been one of the ones who stayed.
But he was here now. In this yard, in this town, with this woman's hand in his. And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he didn't want to be anywhere else.
They counted down with everyone else—the traditional shouting, the champagne corks popping, the distant sound of fireworks from somewhere across town.
When the clock struck midnight, Lila turned to him.
"Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year."
She kissed him, quick and soft, and then pulled back with a look that was somewhere between hopeful and terrified.
"I've never started a year like this," she said. "With someone. In a way that felt like it might actually last."
"Neither have I."
"That's either very romantic or very sad."
"Probably both."
Around them, people were hugging and laughing and making the kinds of promises that midnight on New Year's Eve always seemed to inspire. Resolutions that would be forgotten by February. Commitments that would fade with the hangover.
Ronan didn't make resolutions. He'd learned a long time ago that promises to yourself were the easiest ones to break.
But standing in Sid and Grace's backyard, watching Lila smile at something Izzy had said, he found himself thinking about the future in a way he hadn't before.
Not as a series of missions and objectives, but as something slower.
Quieter. A life measured in ordinary days rather than operational timelines.
It terrified him.
It also felt like the only thing worth wanting.
They walked home along Beach Road, the sounds of the party fading behind them.
The night was cold for Florida—low forties, maybe—and Lila had borrowed one of Sid's jackets, the sleeves hanging past her fingertips. She looked younger in the dark, less burdened.
"I used to hate New Year's Eve," she said.
"After my dad died, my mom went to the nursing home.
Everyone is celebrating, making plans for the future, and I couldn't imagine one.
A future, I mean. Everything just felt like—" She shrugged.
"More of the same. More getting through.
More surviving without actually living."
"And now?"
"Now I don't know." She kicked a pebble, watched it skitter across the pavement. "I can imagine a future. I just can't see it clearly. It's like looking through fog—shapes and outlines, but nothing solid."
"That's more than I could do six months ago."
"What could you see six months ago?"
"The next mission. That's it." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "My whole life was structured around objectives. Accomplish this, move to that. No gaps, no downtime. Because if I stopped moving—"
"You'd have to think about what you were moving toward."
"Or whether I was moving toward anything at all."
They turned onto Lake Road. The cottage was visible through the trees, the porch light glowing, the Christmas tree still lit in the window. They'd have to take it down soon. The holidays were over.
"The hearing is in three days," Lila said. "Friday. Sarah thinks the judge will rule in our favor, but she's been wrong before."
"What do you think?"
"I think I've stopped trying to predict anything." She stopped walking and turned to face him. "But I want to testify. I want to look Warren Caldwell in the eye and tell him exactly what he took from me. And I want a jury to hold him accountable."
"Then that's what we work toward."
"And if it doesn't happen?"
"Then we figure out what comes next." He reached out and tugged the collar of Sid's jacket higher around her neck. "But we do it together. That's the only thing I'm certain about anymore."
She studied his face in the dim light.
"You mean that."
"I don't say things I don't mean. It's inefficient."
"God, you're strange."
"I've been told."
She rose on her toes and kissed him again, longer this time, her cold fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
"Take me home," she said against his mouth.
"We're almost there."
"Then walk faster."
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
It wasn’t a sweet kiss like the first time.
It was heated, passionate, and delightful.
But her response to it was better. She held him tightly, her hips ground against his; if she weren’t careful, he’d take her right now.
Wouldn’t that be something for the gossip about town?
Later, lying in the dark with Lila asleep beside him, Ronan stared at the ceiling and listened to the quiet.
The cottage settled around them—small creaks and sighs, the old bones of a house that had seen decades of Florida weather. Outside, an owl called somewhere in the trees. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen.
Ordinary sounds. The kind of sounds he'd never noticed before because he'd never stayed anywhere long enough to learn them.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He reached for it carefully, trying not to wake Lila.
Caleb.
Happy New Year. Heard about the new motion. Don't worry—it's a Hail Mary. They've got nothing.
Ronan typed back one-handed.
You're up late.
Time zones. I'm in Singapore.
New assignment?
Something like that. Tell Lila to breathe. The evidence is solid. Holloway knows what she's doing.
I'll tell her.
And Ronan? You made the right call. Staying.
He looked at Lila, her face soft in sleep, her hair spread across the pillow. The crooked Christmas tree was visible through the bedroom doorway, the chipped angel catching the faint light from the window.
He set the phone back on the nightstand and closed his eyes.
Three days until the hearing. Two weeks until the trial, if everything goes according to schedule. Months of testimony, evidence, and legal maneuvering ahead.
But right now, there was just this. A woman beside him. A house that was starting to feel like home. A future that was uncertain and terrifying and, against all odds, something he wanted to see.
The owl called again in the darkness.
Ronan listened until he fell asleep.