Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
“Translation,” Rae says, “he likes the sunshine but refuses to admit he needs SPF.”
Dean slaps the file once. “Flight tomorrow. Your advance pack is done. We already pinged local PDs and did venue sweeps. You’ll be primary. Rae’s your remote. Don’t make me regret splitting you two again.”
Riggs takes the folder like it weighs a hundred pounds and a feather. “If she calls me Beard-Mountain in public, I’m going to—”
“—smile,” I say, “and move her three inches left to give the camera a better line of sight.”
“Go away,” he mutters.
I clap his shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”
“Tell that to my blood pressure.” But when he turns, I catch the reluctant spark. The big man likes a challenge. He always has.
As if conjured by complaint, the office door bangs open and Vanessa breezes in trailing citrus perfume and a storm of scarves.
“There he is!” she says, pointing at Riggs as if selecting a prize on a game show. “My favorite monolith. Ready to live on planes and eat mini-pretzels while glaring at millionaires?”
“No,” Riggs says, deadpan.
She beams. “Perfect.”
Dean’s mouth twitches. Rae bites her knuckle. I press my lips together to keep from grinning.
Vanessa spots me, kisses my cheek, then plants a more decorous one on Dean’s airspace out of respect for rank. “Cam says you’re bringing dessert tonight to celebrate my imminent martyrdom.”
“Croissants,” I say. “And earplugs for Riggs.”
“I don’t need earplugs,” Riggs rumbles.
She pats his biceps. “You will.”
They square off for a heartbeat—her spark to his flint—and then, like a physics trick, both edges soften by a degree. Dean meets my eyes over their heads: see? I nod: Oh, I see.
When they leave to “discuss itineraries” (Vanessa’s phrasing; Riggs’s phrasing involves verbs like assess and secure), Dean leans back and exhales.
“That one’s going to be interesting,” he says.
“Understatement of the year,” Rae mutters.
I text Cam Grumpy face unlocked with a stealth photo of Riggs scowling at a color-coded calendar Vanessa has already taken possession of. Cam replies with a heart and a paint emoji. Then: Dinner at seven? I have a surprise.
The surprise is an outdoor table under the wisteria, Edison bulbs strung low, Edgar’s pot roast making the whole block consider crashing. HarborShield nods when we pass; they feel like cousins now, not guards ghosting the edges.
Cam emerges from the kitchen carrying a small cake—pale blue icing, a thin white line piped across the top like a river. My throat gets tight in a way I don’t mind.
“Happy ‘first day we met without a ticking thing between us’ day,” she says. “It’s a bit arbitrary, but anniversaries should be about feel, not calendars.”
“It’s perfect,” I tell her, because it is. We slice it, we eat too much, we laugh when frosting streaks her lip and I insist on removing it with my mouth. Sometime between second helpings and leaning back to look at the stars, my phone buzzes with a text from Riggs: Plane wheels up 0900. If Vanessa drowns me in scarves, bury me with my boots on. I send him a thumbs-up and a prayer hands, and Cam grins, toasting the sky.
“To the monolith and the hurricane,” she says. “May they meet in the middle.”
After dinner we dance without music, just sway where we are, her cheek on my chest, my mouth in her hair. The city throws us a breeze; the wisteria throws us a blessing.
“I want kids,” she says into my shirt, quiet and certain. “Not tomorrow. Someday. Paint-under-their-nails kids. A dog that sheds on everything. A life that looks like the morning after a good party.”
No bomb in the world could make my heartbeat louder. “Copy,” I say, voice rough. “We’ll teach them knees and noise and how to find the way out of any room.”
“And to draw white lines,” she adds. “Always.”
We move through the house like people who finally believe it won’t disappear if they blink. In the studio we stand before Never Cover and hold hands without talking. In the stairwell we kiss like the first time and the last time and the thousand in between. In our bedroom, where the window has learned our names, we fold into each other with the easy hunger of two people who remember what it cost to earn this ease.
Heat flares, deep and steady. I lay her back in the blue linen and worship with hands that learned restraint long before they learned joy. She laughs into my mouth when I say something dumb and tender; she answers with a roll of hips that turns vows into fireworks. We take our time because we can, because time finally belongs to us. When we crest, it’s not a flood but a tide—inevitable, clean, the kind that leaves shells where rocks used to be. We stay tangled, and afterward I fall asleep with her leg over mine and her hand on my heart like she’s the one guarding it now. She is.