Chapter 3 #2
He says it matter of fact. Like it's obvious. Like deciding I'd been through enough was basic situational awareness, no different from any other assessment.
I don't know what to do with that, so I say: "Fine. I'll make lunch."
"You don't have to?—"
"I know."
There is pasta. And it’s new pasta, the good kind.
There is also garlic and olive oil.
And a lemon that has no business being in a mountain safe house but is here and I intend to use it.
"You're making aglio e olio," he says from the table.
I turn around. "You know what aglio e olio is."
"I've been to Italy."
"For work?"
"Yes."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"Parts of it."
"Which parts?"
"The parts that didn't involve the job."
I turn back to the garlic. "So, there were good parts."
"There are good parts to most places. If you have time to find them."
"Do you usually have time?"
"No."
"That's sad."
"It's the job."
"That doesn't make it less sad."
A pause. "What are the good parts of this place?"
I look around the cabin at the old floors, the east facing window and the porch beam from which a certain person does pull-ups at an ungodly hour.
"The coffee."
"I made the coffee."
"I know. It's the best thing about the place, so far."
The sound that signals a small smile again.
I smile at the garlic and don't turn around.
The pasta comes out well.
He eats all of it and pours me more water without being asked.
I decide that counts as a compliment and file it accordingly.
It rains after the debrief.
The debrief takes two hours and it covers everything I remember, in the kind of precise detail that requires me to close my eyes and go back there.
I don't want to go back there.
I do it because he asks.
Because having something useful to contribute steadies me.
Because the way he listens, completely, without filling the space, without reaching for the next question before I've finished answering the current one, makes the going back less terrible than it would otherwise be.
Halfway through I think of something else.
Not from last night, but from years ago.
"Can I tell you a thing that probably isn't useful?"
"Yes."
"I have a contact. Local PD. Detective Danny Park. I treated him off the books a few years ago. GSW to the thigh, his partner brought him in through the loading dock at three in the morning, no paperwork, no questions. He's been answering favors ever since."
Kaden goes still in the way he goes still when something becomes useful.
"Why isn't that useful?"
"Because I have no idea whether anything tonight has anything to do with the kind of thing Danny would know."
"Park."
"Yes."
He files the name. I see him do it.
"It's good to know. Keep going."
I keep going.
When it's done the rain has started and becomes hard and immediate, the kind that intensifies without warning.
I'm on the couch with anatomy notes I downloaded before Torres cut my full access, keeping the brain moving.
He's at the table. We haven't spoken since the debrief ended, and the quiet has settled into something comfortable.
Neither of us fighting it.
"Why emergency medicine?"
I look up. He's not on his phone. He's looking at me like the question has been sitting in him for a while.
"You've been wondering that since the truck."
"Since you described your specialty the way I'd describe my own work. Before I knew what it was."
The rain on the roof gets louder as a branch slap against the glass.
I tell him all of it. The chaos and the clarifying.
The way every other problem falls away when there's a life or death one in front of you.
The way you stop wondering if you're enough because there's no time and no room.
You just are or you aren't, and you find out in real time.
He listens, completely. The same way he listened during the debrief.
"What about you?" I say when I'm done. "Why Special Forces?"
He looks at the window. The rain is blurring the glass.
"Same reason."
Two words.
But they land like a full sentence. Like he's told me something true that cost something to say, and he knows it would, and said it anyway.
I don't push. Some things need space before they can be said properly.
"I'm making dinner," I say instead.
He looks back at me. "You've cooked twice today."
"I like cooking. The heat management, timing, confidence, t's the same logic as medicine. Food even responds to fear?"
"Are you saying it’s sentient?"
A quieter silence than the others.
“No, but everything responds to fear.”
"What are you making?"
"Chicken. And there's rosemary on that’s great quality and I’m not letting it go to waste."
"Eagle doesn't?—"
"Doesn’t cut corners on provisions, yes." I stand up. "It's becoming clear that Eagle's priorities are significantly better calibrated than I initially assumed."
He watches me move to the kitchen. "High praise."
"Don't push it."
The ghost sound. I'm starting to listen for it because I know it accompanies the fractional smile.
The chicken smells extraordinary. The rosemary and lemon and garlic and the alchemy of fat in a hot pan.
He has moved to the table with his tablet.
I can see his reflection in the kitchen window. His eyes are not on the screen.
"You're watching me cook."
"I'm reviewing a threat assessment."
"Your tablet is dark."
"The screen saver activated."
I turn around and look at him.
He looks back with his aggressively neutral face, and I feel something loosen in my chest.
Something that's been braced since the parking structure.
Because this man, this contained, careful, impossible man, is watching me make chicken in a mountain safe house and trying to pretend he isn't.
"You can just say you were watching."
"I was reviewing a threat assessment."
"The dark-screened tablet assessment."
"Correct."
I turn back to the pan. I am smiling at the chicken. I am not letting him see that.
We eat at the table listening to the rain hard on the roof.
The cabin is warm around us.
He eats everything on his plate and half of what's left in the pan without comment.
I’ll take that as the highest possible compliment.
Afterwards, I move to the window.
I need to see outside. I need to remember the world exists past the tree line.
He comes to stand beside me.
He’s checking the perimeter and I know that.
But he's close. Close enough that I'm aware of the warmth of him. Close enough that half an inch of charged air separates our arms.
I stare at the rain.
He watches the tree line.
The cabin is very quiet.
I turn to say something light.
Something to break whatever this is before it becomes something I can't unfeel.
But he's closer than I realized, and the words evaporate.
He looks at my mouth.
Just once. An unhurried second.
Then back to my eyes.
I think about this morning. The impulse and the stillness and the word he said after.
Don't.
Not don't do that. Not this can't happen.
Just: don't apologize for it.
I close the distance.
This time he meets me halfway.
That's the difference.
This morning was mine, made of impulse and poor timing.
This is something else. It’s deliberate and mutual.
Both of us knowing exactly what we're doing.
The kiss starts slowly.
Like we've both had all day to arrive here, because we have.
Then his hands find my waist and pulls me in and slowly becomes something else entirely.
I grab his shirt and he walks me back until my shoulders find the wall.
The cold comes through my shirt from behind while every part of me pressed against him is not cold at all.
He makes a sound low in his throat.
Something is coming loose.
I pull him closer and forget about the wall
His mouth moves to my jaw, my neck, the place just below my ear that I didn't know about until this exact moment.
I tilt my head back and enjoy the feeling of his lips on my skin.
My hands find his hair, and I feel him exhale against my skin and my knees get wobbly.
He says my name.
He says it once, low. Like it's been waiting there all day.
His forehead comes to rest against mine.
Both of us are breathing hard.
His hands still on my waist, mine still in his hair, neither of us moving.
The rain still taps on the roof, and the cabin is dark except for the kitchen light behind us,
I can feel his pulse is in his wrists where they press against me.
It’s not steady, it’s racing.
Good, so is mine.
I want this.
He wants this.
His phone buzzes on the counter.
We both go still.
It buzzes again. He doesn't move. His eyes stay on mine.
A third time.
He closes his eyes. Then he opens them and steps back.
"Torres," he says, reading the screen. "Routine check-in."
He turns away to respond.
The warmth in him locks down. Not gradually, but all at once.
It’s replaced by something flat and operational.
I watch his shoulders settle into it.
The transition is practiced. Probably necessary. That doesn't make it easier to watch.
And I can’t help but desperately hope we can continue where we left off.
He finishes in under a minute and sets the phone down.
He doesn't turn around immediately.
The cabin is quiet. Just rain.
"Kaden."
He turns and his face is controlled. His hands, at his sides, are not entirely steady.
He notices me noticing. Puts them in his pockets.
"That was?—"
"Yes."
"We should?—"
"Probably."
"The situation is?—"
"I know what the situation is."
We look at each other. Both of us saying the sensible thing. Neither of us moving away.
"It's late," he says finally.
"It is."
"Get some sleep."
"You should too."
"I'll take the couch."
"You always take the couch."
"That's the arrangement."
I look at him. At the hands in his pockets and the controlled face and the pulse I can still feel in his wrists from a few seconds ago.
I turn and walk to the bedroom without another word. I close the door and stand with my back against it.
I hear him in the kitchen.
I hear the sound of running water.
He’s closing a cabinet.
The small precise movements of a man trying very hard to act like nothing happened.
The rain comes down harder.