Page 13 of Shattered Salvation
That lands because Reyes doesn’t waste worry. She can be blunt, dry, and painfully allergic to encouraging my worst habits, but she knows when I’m circling something instead of working it. I save the file, lock the drive, and grab my coat from the back of the chair. On the way out, I lift the coffee she brought, smell it one more time, and set it down with care. “Tell the machine I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed and chemically afraid.”
Reyes’s mouth twitches. “I’ll tell it you were dramatic.”
I just shake my head and head out of the building, jogging down the steps with no particular destination. My mood sours a little, finding Ansdale to be gray, wet, and determined to soak through the seams of my coat. Rain falls in thin, steady lines, turning the sidewalk dark and slick under passing shoes.
“Fucking weather showed sunny. I guess that was bullshit,” I mutter to myself, stuffing my hands in my pockets, my badgetucked out of sight for once. A courier swears at a bike chain near the curb.
I take a sharp turn toward the small bakery the scent of butter, yeast, honey, cardamom, and something citrus reaching my nose. My stomach tightens, and I remember that half a stale mint from Reyes’s desk isn’t breakfast no matter how many times I tell my body we’re being efficient. Ardor sits on the corner with fogged windows and gold lettering across the glass, warm light spilling over the wet sidewalk. I know the address from the case file. I didn’t forget it. I also didn’t leave the station with a plan to come here, which is the kind of technicality I’d mock if someone tried it on me during an interview.
I stop under the awning and look at the door. “Coffee,” I say under my breath. “Just here for coffee and maybe a bagel.”
The bell above the door gives me away the second I step inside. Warmth wraps around me first, followed by the rich smell of bread and sugar and espresso. Ardor is narrow but bright, with dark wood shelves, a glass case full of rolls and loaves, and small tables tucked along rain-streaked windows. A girl with pink hair stands behind the counter, stacking paper bags with the grim focus of someone one bad fold away from violence. She looks up, asks what she can get me, and I order coffee before my eyes betray me toward the honey-cardamom rolls.
Before she can reach for the tongs, the kitchen door swings open. Emrys comes through carrying a tray of lemon loaves dusted with sugar. He stops when he sees me, the tray dipping a fraction before he steadies it with both hands. The bruise along his cheek has darkened into purple-red beneath his golden-brown skin, and the small bandage by his lip makes my jaw tighten before I can stop it. His curls are pushed back beneath a hair net, his apron is dusted with flour, and he looks like someone who should only ever have to worry about ovens and whether the glaze is too thin.
His scent reaches me through butter and warm bread, softer than it was in the station because fear isn’t choking it now. Emrys glances at me, a smile spreading across his lips as recognition takes over, then at the cup the girl has ready. “Black coffee?”
I lift my eyebrow. “That obvious?”
A little color rises beneath the edge of his bruise. He looks down at the tray as he sets it on the counter. “You look like someone who drinks coffee like punishment. Which means black with no cream and sugar.”
The pink-haired girl tries and fails to hide a laugh. Emrys looks briefly horrified that he said it out loud, which makes it harder not to smile.
“That’s fair,” I say. “I’ve made it part of my personality, so I can’t complain when strangers notice.”
“You’re not really a stranger.” He says it quietly, then seems to realize how that sounds. His fingers tighten on the edge of the tray. “I mean, you are. Sort of. But not in the same way.”
There’s a soft stumble in the words and I have to bite back a laugh of my own to keep from further embarrassing him. “I know what you mean.”
The girl with pink hair slides the coffee toward me and adds a honey-cardamom roll without asking, which either means she’s good at sales or I look easier to read than I’d prefer. Emrys watches me pay, then glances toward the table by the window where rain keeps hitting the glass. “I have a break in a minute. If you’re staying for the coffee, I can sit for a second. That’s not me being weird. Priya said if I keep rearranging the same tray, she’s going to make me sit down anyway, so technically this is me avoiding management intervention.”
“I’d hate to interfere with bakery discipline,” I muse, keeping the answer easy because his blush deepens when he offers the explanation. “I’ll be by the window.”
I take the table with my back to the wall and the cup warming both hands. Emrys disappears into the kitchen long enough for me to tell myself leaving would be better. Then he comes back with his own mug and sits across from me, angled slightly toward the window instead of directly facing me.
“How are you?” I ask before anything else can get between us.
He looks down at the mug in his hands, his thumb rubbing slowly along the rim. The color under his bruise returns, softer this time, like being asked directly has made him unsure what to do with his face. “I’m okay. Or I’m doing a very convincing impression of okay, which feels almost as good. I came in for a short shift because staying home felt worse, and Priya is watching me like I’m one wrong blink away from being wrapped in bubble wrap. She might be right, but I’m trying not to give her the satisfaction.”
“Being somewhere familiar makes sense after what happened. So does letting someone watch you for a while, even if she’s being smug about it.” I tilt my head to the side, studying the Omega, realizing how much softer his features are up close. He’s kind of... cute.Fuck.
“She is being very smug. Kindly smug, which is worse because then I can’t even be mad without looking ungrateful.” Emrys takes a careful sip of his drink, winces when the heat touches his lip, and sets the mug down with a small breath through his nose. “I’m sore. My head feels weird if I move too fast, and I keep thinking I’m fine until something normal makes me feel insane. The front door stuck when I got home, and I stood there like an idiot because my keys caught in my pocket.”
“You’re not an idiot for reacting to the same setup after someone attacked you there.”
“I know that when someone else says it.” He looks toward the window, the rain reflected in his eyes. “It’s harder when it’s my own brain being dramatic in public.”
I let that sit instead of rushing to soften it. He doesn’t need me to turn everything into comfort before it has a chance to be true. The bakery moves around us, cups sliding across the counter, a low laugh near the case, someone’s voice from the kitchen giving someone instructions with the calm authority of a woman no one should test.
Emrys wraps both hands around his mug again. “I keep wanting to ask about Kade, and I know there are rules now. He told me about the protective order when I called him, and I know I shouldn’t have called, but nobody would tell me anything straight. His door was dark, and I panicked. He answered, which he probably shouldn’t have done either, so if there’s a lecture, I think we both deserve part of it.”
There’s the official answer, and there’s the human one. I have to give him both because pretending one cancels the other would be cruel. “The order is active, and you shouldn’t contact him again while it is. That’s the clean answer, and I need you to hear it because I don’t want anything making this harder for either of you. The rest of the answer is that he’s out, he’s cooperating through his lawyer, and he isn’t sitting in a cell. I can’t tell you everything, but I can tell you I’m looking at the timing, the footage, and the call that came in before the scene made sense.”
Emrys’ shoulders loosen at the part about Kade being out, but his mouth tightens around the rest. “He said he wanted to stand outside my door and couldn’t. I hated that he sounded like he was trying to make himself obey something that made no sense, and I hated that I understood why he had to.” His gaze returns to mine, steadier than I expect. “He didn’t hurt me.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that like it’s easy.”
