Page 92 of Silent Watch
“Early.The heron’s still hunting.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh.“You use a bird as a clock.”
“It’s more reliable than your phone.You left it in the kitchen.”
“On purpose.”
She rolled over to face him.His eyes were half-open, his hair pressed flat on one side, and he had a crease from the pillowcase running across his cheek.He looked, she thought, like a man who had actually slept.Not the guarded half-rest she’d seen from him over the past weeks—head on the couch, one ear on the security feeds, always ready to move.This was different.This was someone who’d let go of the perimeter for a few hours.
“You slept,” she said.
“I did.”
“The whole night.I didn’t hear you get up once.”
“First time in a while.”His hand found the curve of her hip under the sheet.Not reaching for anything.Just touching.“You?”
“Same.”She studied his face.The crease.The stubble.The way he was looking at her like she was the first thing worth focusing on.“I haven’t slept through the night without checking exits since Bradenton.”
He didn’t say anything to that.He didn’t need to.He understood what it meant to sleep lightly in a world that didn’t take breaks.
She madecoffee while he showered.The kitchen was small and functional, and she’d learned where everything lived over the past weeks—mugs in the cabinet above the stove, coffee in the canister by the window, sugar in the ceramic jar with the cracked lid that he claimed to have no sentimental attachment to despite refusing to replace it.
She poured two cups and took them to the deck.
The morning was already warm.Florida warm, the kind that settled into your skin before you’d finished your first cup.The inlet caught the light and held it, and a pair of pelicans cruised low over the surface, their wingbeats lazy and synchronized.
She sat in the chair on the left—her chair, the one closest to the railing—and set his cup on the arm of the other one.The clean phone buzzed on the table.Diana.
Follow-up numbers are strong.Kellerman piece draft by Wednesday?And call your mother.
Harper set the phone down.She’d call Diana back after coffee.She’d call her mother after that.One thing at a time.That was the new protocol.One thing at a time, and the first thing was coffee, and the second thing was the inlet, and the third thing was the sound of the shower cutting off inside the cottage.
Caleb came out with his hair wet and a towel slung over his shoulder.He picked up the coffee, sat down, and didn’t speak.They’d gotten good at that—the sitting without speaking.The comfortable absence of noise that came from having already said the hard things.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“About?”
“What comes next.”She wrapped both hands around the mug.“I spent fourteen months running.Hiding.Telling myself that staying invisible was the only way to survive.And somewhere in there, I stopped being able to tell the difference between surviving and disappearing.”
He was watching her.Not the analytical assessment she’d gotten used to—the one where he cataloged her expressions and filed them for future reference.This was something else.This was just a man looking at a woman and paying attention.
“The story is out,” she said.“My name is on it.People know I’m alive, know where I am, know what I’m working on.I can’t go back underground even if I wanted to.And I don’t want to.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want to stay.Here.In Blossom Springs.”She said it plainly, without decoration.“Not forever—I don’t know what forever looks like.But for now.For as long as the work takes.Diana can route assignments through the secure channels you set up.There’s still the Kellerman story to write.The hospital.Whatever Graham finds.Montgomery.”
“That’s the professional case.”
“That’s the easy case.”She took a drink of coffee.“The other case is that I like it here.I like the bakery, the thrift shop, and the ridiculous park with the gazebo that nobody uses.I like Lila.I like that Quinn knows everyone’s business and doesn’t apologize for it.”She paused.“And I like you.In case that wasn’t clear.”
“It was getting there.”
“Good.Because I’m not going to say it with flowers and a speech.This is what you get.”
He set his coffee down and turned to face her.His expression was careful, the way it always was when something mattered too much for him to be careless with it.
