Chapter Twenty Seven
Twenty Seven
Erin had spent Wednesday morning with her elbows on her desk and her chin balanced on one hand, the glow of her monitor tinting her skin a cold gray.
The cursor blinked at the top of a Word document labeled “Press Release – Draft.” The title header she’d typed three times already was bland but necessary: Boston Police Department to Announce New Community Safety Initiative.
It was the kind of work that lived in the margins of her job.
No flashing lights, no crime scenes, no late-night calls about shootings.
Instead, she was the voice behind the department’s curtain, writing lines that would later be spoken by someone else at a podium.
That morning her task was to finalize a release about the department’s new partnership with the Massachusetts State Police, a collaboration meant to crack down on organized theft crews that had been hitting retail corridors in the suburbs and bleeding into the city.
She typed a sentence, deleted it, and typed another.
“The Boston Police Department, in partnership with the Massachusetts State Police, will announce a joint task force to address organized retail crime during a press conference at headquarters on Friday, October 24, at 2:00 PM.”
The line was fine. Neutral. Unimaginative.
But she still hesitated before moving on.
She wanted to find a way to make it less sterile without giving anyone more than they needed.
The public would see “organized theft,” but Erin knew the internal memos described entire crews operating across state lines, using stolen vehicles and burner phones, their reach stretching into half a dozen cities. That part could not go in the release.
Her phone buzzed against the desk. She didn’t look right away, but when the vibration stopped and the screen went dark again, curiosity pulled her hand toward it. Jamie’s name sat at the top of the screen.
How many cups of terrible coffee have you had so far today?
Erin felt the corner of her mouth tip upward. She set the phone flat on the desk and typed a response with one thumb.
Two. Both tasted like melted shoe leather. Your newsroom coffee is contagious.
The reply came back almost instantly.
Don’t pin this on me. Ours is bad, but I think yours has the edge. We should start a contest.
Erin huffed softly through her nose and let herself smile. She set the phone beside her keyboard, eyes flicking back to the draft. Her fingers hovered over the keys, but instead of typing she whispered the first sentence of the release under her breath, testing how it sounded out loud.
That was her mistake.
She reached for her phone again and typed half a thought before she caught it.
Working on something big. It’s about a new task force cracking down on—
Her thumb froze over the screen. Her stomach tightened. That sentence was a line she could not send. Not to Jamie. Not to anyone. The banner on the draft might as well have been flashing red. She backspaced until the message field was blank again.
The realization rattled her more than she wanted to admit.
She hadn’t been careless with embargoed information in years.
But it had taken her exactly one text exchange to almost put something in writing that would have set the phones at her desk ringing nonstop with complaints from reporters who hadn’t been given the same courtesy.
She could picture her captain’s face if that happened, the tight disapproval, the long silence before a lecture that would leave her sitting straighter in her chair.
Jamie wasn’t the type to abuse it. Erin knew that. But knowing didn’t make it safe.
She exhaled slowly, forced her fingers back onto the keyboard, and tried again. This time she typed something safe.
I’m staring at the most boring document you can imagine. You would fall asleep before you got through the first paragraph.
Jamie’s reply came back with a line that made Erin laugh before she could stop herself.
Bold of you to assume I haven’t fallen asleep mid-paragraph before. Show me a release and I’ll show you a nap.
Erin typed back, careful but light.
Exactly why you’re not getting this one. Embargoed. I’d have to arrest you for violating it.
The dots appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again.
Wow. Threatening me with handcuffs already? Bold move, Calhoun.
Erin blinked, heat creeping into her neck before she could stop it. She typed slower this time.
That’s not how I meant it.
Another bubble appeared almost immediately.
Didn’t say I was complaining.
Erin stared at the screen, pulse jumping in her throat. For once she had no clever reply. She set the phone down, face warm, and went back to the release, but the words blurred until she forced herself to refocus.
Heat crept up Erin’s neck. She set the phone down, shook her head, then picked it right back up.
Careful, Garrison. That sounds like entrapment.
Only if you fall for it.
Erin exhaled, half amused and half rattled, then forced herself to look at the release again. She knocked out a second paragraph, though every few sentences her eyes flicked back to the phone.
Another buzz.
Anyway, thanks for humoring me. Makes editing feel less like I’m screaming into the void.
Erin typed slowly, deliberately.
Writing these feels the same. The void just has different stationery. But glad I could keep you company in it for a minute.
She lingered longer before replying this time.
More than a minute. But I’ll take it.
Erin put the phone down again, deliberately this time, face warm but steady. She finished the draft, hit save, and emailed it to her captain. The watermark still blared across the page, but the document was done.
She sat back in her chair and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, aware of how close she’d come to blurting out something she wasn’t supposed to. One almost-slip was bad enough. The fact that it had been for Jamie made it worse. Or better. She wasn’t sure.
When she finally stood and pulled on her jacket, the weight in her chest had shifted. She should have felt heavier for carrying the secret. Instead, she felt lighter for carrying the conversation.
* * *
Erin let herself into the apartment with her shoulder, the door catching on the rug the way it always did.
Leo’s nails clicked on the hardwood as he rounded the corner at a trot, tail swaying like a slow metronome.
He bumped his head into her thigh, then leaned his full weight there as if he could anchor her to the spot.
“Hi, handsome,” she said, rubbing the soft place behind his ears. “I’m late. I owe you a walk.”
She hung her keys on the hook by the door and shed her jacket in one smooth motion, dropping it over the back of the narrow bench.
The place smelled faintly of laundry soap and the last coffee she’d made at home, the good kind that didn’t taste like a crime scene.
She toed off her boots, lined them up beside the bench, and shrugged into a hoodie from the peg on the wall.
Leo danced two small circles when he saw her reach for the leash.
She clipped it to his harness, then paused long enough to tuck her phone into the pocket of her joggers.
The weight of it was familiar and distracting at the same time.
Outside, the evening had settled into that blue hour that made every window look warmer than the air.
The sidewalk held a shallow sheen from a sprinkler that had run too long.
Leo kept a steady pace beside her, ears pricking at each sound that rose out of the neighborhood.
A mailbox creaked shut two doors down. A kid bounced a basketball with lazy effort, the rhythm uneven but determined.
Someone’s television carried a laugh track through their open window.
Erin breathed in through her nose and let it out slowly.
Her body liked the routine of walking at this time, when the day’s edges softened and the impulse to check her inbox finally lost its hold.
She let Leo set the route, which meant they reached the park without either of them deciding it out loud.
At the edge of the path she unclipped his leash with a practiced flick.
He sprang forward into a rolling canter, then glanced back to check that she was following.
She jogged after him. The air bit a little when it reached the back of her throat. She welcomed the bite.
They did two laps around the small field, Leo’s gait smoothing into a happy lope while Erin settled into a pace that made her mind quiet for the first time since the desk.
The texts kept trying to replay themselves anyway.
Handcuffs already. She felt heat creep along the column of her neck and shook her head once with a rueful smile, as if she could dislodge the memory by force.
When Leo slowed and circled back, she clipped the leash and they made their way home.
The stairwell smelled like dust and a neighbor’s garlic bread.
Inside, she filled Leo’s bowl, then leaned against the counter while he ate, the soft sound of kibble against porcelain oddly soothing.
Her phone was still in her pocket, heavier than it should have been.
She pulled it out, turned it over in her hand, then set it facedown on the counter without unlocking it.
The temptation to check for Jamie’s name felt like picking at the corner of a bandage just to see if it still hurt.
The counter edge dug into her palms. She still didn’t move. The apartment felt too quiet, too taut, like it was holding its breath with her. That pressure, the mix of guilt and old mistakes and the heat of what she almost texted, had nowhere to go.
She pushed away from the counter.
“Be good,” she told Leo, brushing his head as she grabbed her keys again. He blinked at her like he knew she needed to leave, even if only for twenty minutes.
Outside, the evening air was cool enough to sting. Erin zipped her hoodie up and walked without a plan until her feet chose one for her.
The sidewalk between the precinct and the news station glowed under the streetlamps, neutral ground. Not the newsroom, not the precinct. Not Boston, not Washington, DC. Just a place where neither of them had home court advantage.
A familiar figure sat on the low brick planter that separated the two lots. Camera bag at their feet. Shoulders hunched. Hood up. The picture of someone trying not to be noticed.
“Tilly,” she said softly.
Tilly didn’t startle. They looked up slowly, expression unreadable. “Erin.”
The air hummed with the streetlamp above them.
Erin stayed standing for a beat, then sat on the opposite edge of the planter. Not too close. Not too far. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Didn’t really want to go home yet,” Tilly said, eyes fixed on their sneakers. “Can’t edit anymore. Can’t think anymore. So I came here to not do either.”
Erin nodded. She understood that kind of limbo. She folded her hands in her lap. Her thumbs rubbed a nervous pattern she forced herself to stop.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “A real one.”
Tilly huffed a humorless breath. “For which part.”
“For all of it,” Erin said, her voice steady even as her chest tightened. “For how things ended in Washington. For how I acted. For pretending we weren’t something. And then running when it scared me.”
That made Tilly look up in a way that reached her. Their eyes were tired and sharp and wounded in a way that still held weight.
“You didn’t just run,” they said quietly. “You shut me out completely. One day we were together. The next day you were gone. No explanation. No conversation. Just a wall.”
Erin felt the words hit with the precision she deserved. “I know.”
“You treated me like I didn’t matter,” Tilly continued, not cruelly. They were simply naming the truth. “And then I left because I didn’t know what else to do except get out of the way.”
Erin swallowed, her throat tight. “You did matter. I need you to know that. You mattered a lot. Maybe too much.” She exhaled.
“You were kind to me. You were patient. You were the one person who saw I was burning out and tried to pull me back from it. Instead of letting you help me, I treated you like a threat.”
Tilly blinked hard. A small flinch of pain crossed their eyes.
Erin kept going. “I handled everything like a coward. I didn’t talk to you. I didn’t let you talk to me. I acted like we hadn’t been whatever we were. You didn’t deserve that. Not then. Not ever.”
Silence pressed in around them, cool and heavy.
Tilly rubbed their palms against their jeans. “I kept trying to figure out what I did wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Erin said immediately. “I did. All of it was me.”
Tilly nodded once, their jaw tight. “Good to hear you say it.”
They weren’t forgiving her, but they weren’t pushing her away either.
Erin shifted, turning to face them more fully. “I’m not asking to go back. I’m not asking for anything. I just can’t walk into something new while I’m still carrying the shape of old damage behind me.”
Tilly raised an eyebrow. “Jamie.”
Erin didn’t deny it. She didn’t have the right to. “Yes. Jamie.”
Tilly studied her for a moment, long enough that Erin felt something inside her brace. Finally they nodded.
“You like her.”
“I do.”
“And it’s not like before.”
“No,” Erin said softly. “It’s not.”
Tilly exhaled, and some of the tension left their shoulders. “Then you should go into it clean. Not with ghosts hanging off you.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Erin said. “Because you deserved a conversation I never gave you. And because you deserve not to carry the weight of how I treated you.”
Another long, quiet beat passed.
Then Tilly’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile but something gentler than anything she expected.
“Thank you,” they said. “For saying it. For finally saying it.”
Erin nodded, relief settling in her chest like a warm stone. “You didn’t deserve the way I ended things.”
“No,” Tilly agreed, plain and simple. “But I’m glad you said it.”
They didn’t hug. They didn’t need to. Something steadier settled between them. Not friendship yet. Not forgiveness. Just clean ground.
As Erin stood to leave, Tilly spoke again.
“She’s good for you,” they said quietly. “I can tell.”
Erin felt herself soften. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I think she is.”
Tilly looked away and then back. “Then don’t screw it up.”
“I’m trying not to,” Erin said, a small, rueful smile forming.
“Good.”
When she turned to go, Tilly added one last, softer note.
“Good night, Erin.”
Erin paused, meeting their eyes. “Good night.”
She walked home with a feeling she hadn’t expected. Not healed. Not fixed. But honest for the first time in years.