Page 68 of Falling For You

Date Night

WYATT

Barb and Birdie were on the porch when I came out of my room.

Barb looked me over. The shirt, the shoes, the haircut I'd gotten that afternoon. She adjusted my collar without asking.

"You look handsome." She winked. "Have a good time."

Birdie tugged my sleeve. "Tell her the flowers were my idea."

She'd picked the bouquet herself at Daphne's shop that afternoon, spent twenty minutes rejecting every option until she found the ones she approved of. The result was sitting on the porch table in brown paper and twine, and she was very serious about getting credit.

"I'll make sure she knows."

I took the bouquet and walked down the steps. Birdie waved.

I crossed the street. Twenty feet of sidewalk I'd walked a hundred times. It felt different tonight.

I went up her steps. Knocked.

The door opened.

I forgot the flowers.

She was wearing a black dress. Fitted, simple, the fabric pulling at her waist and her hips in a way that made my brain go blank. Her hair was down, but not the way it looked when she pulled the elastic out after a shift. Dark waves falling past her bare shoulders. She'd done something to her lashes that made her eyes look wider. A touch of color on her lips. A slight flush across her cheeks that might have been makeup or might have been her.

"You're gorgeous."

She smiled. The flush deepened, and she didn't look away.

"You brought me flowers."

I looked down. I was still holding them. "Birdie picked them out. She wanted me to tell you that."

Andy took the bouquet and brought it to her face. She closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she blinked hard.

"Tell her they're perfect."

I took her to a small Italian place off Flamingo. Close tables, low lighting, bread on the table before we'd opened the menus.

I don't remember what I ordered. I remember her across the table. Relaxed, laughing, her hair falling forward when she leaned in to tell me something. She told me stories about Doug's early days as her partner, the ones she saved for people she trusted. I told her about the time Travis set off the smoke alarm in the firehouse kitchen trying to make a grilled cheese and the entire crew responded in full gear before realizing what happened. She laughed so hard she put her napkin over her face and couldn't stop.

She talked about her dad. How they used to watch crime shows and murder mysteries together on the couch. They'd try to guess the killer before the reveal. Her dad would shake his head at the screen whenever the detective got the answer with just one look. "That's not how it goes," he'd say. Or: "It's never that easy." But he never changed the channel. It was their thing. I told her about Birdie's first day of school and how I sat in the truck for twenty minutes after drop-off because I wasn't ready to go home to an empty house. She stole a bite off my plate without asking and looked at me like she dared me to say something about it.

She wasn't Officer Walsh. I wasn't the annoying firefighter. We were two people at a table in a restaurant.

After dinner, we walked to my truck. She stopped beside the passenger door and turned to face me.

"Thank you for tonight." She was looking at the ground. "Elliot never took me anywhere anyone could see us. I know that sounds pathetic⁠—"

"It doesn't."

"I just wanted to say thank you. For not making it weird. For making it feel normal."

She looked up at me. The porch light from the restaurant was catching her hair and the color on her lips and the line of her neck above the dress. She was thanking me for a dinner date. Like it was a gift.

How does a man have four years with this woman and hide her?