Chapter Text
The room filled with the shuffle of boots, low voices trading quick jokes, the scrape of chairs as everyone found their spot. Up front, the rookies lined the first row, backs straight, eyes sharp, like posture alone might keep them from screwing up. Miles already carried himself with that cocky ease, like two days at mid-wilshire made him an expert. Seth, on the other hand, couldn’t keep still, tapping his pen against his leg until Celina shot him a quick smile. He almost dropped it.
Lucy slid into her seat a few rows back, next to Nolan, who was annoyingly bright-eyed for the hour. Tim took his place next to them, silent, composed, same as always. She didn’t need to look at him to know it.
Grey started roll call, his voice carrying across the room. A handful of burglaries, car thefts, heat warnings. No speeches, no wasted air. By the time he dismissed them, the rookies were already on their feet, heading for the lot.
Lucy stayed seated for a moment, letting the room move around her. She hadn’t planned to be a TO. This wasn’t the direction she’d imagined. But Grey had needed her, and when Lucy took something on, she gave it everything. If she was doing this, she was going to be the best. Better than expected. And, if she had anything to say about it, better than Tim.
—
Out in the lot, the heat was already pressing down, promising a long day. Seth struggled with the trunk, shoving the bag inside without securing it.
Lucy leaned against the car, watching.
“Try again,” she said evenly.
He froze, then quickly adjusted, strapping the bag down tight.
“Good. Always secure your gear. Chaos is going to come at you from all directions. You don’t add to it.”
Seth nodded, a little stiff.
A few cars down, Tim was watching Miles run through the checklist. Miles moved efficiently, crisp, no hesitation. Tim still found something.
“Radio check again,” he said, tone flat but edged.
Miles obeyed instantly, and Tim gave a single, satisfied nod. No praise. Just expectation.
Lucy rolled her eyes internally. Of course. Tim didn’t hand out wins. Not easily.
—
The first calls of the day were routine: traffic stop, noise complaint. Seth tripped over his radio code, and Lucy corrected him on the spot, voice firm enough to make him swallow hard.
“You don’t guess,” she said once they were back in the car. “You know. Say it again.”
He repeated it, cleaner this time.
Her phone buzzed on the console.
Tim: Yours just blanked on a ten code?
Lucy: First week jitters. At least he didn’t call it a nine-one-one.
Tim: Small victories.
Lucy: Don’t get cocky. He’ll get there.
She smirked, locking the screen before Seth could notice.
They rolled through streets already shimmering with heat. Sun punching straight through the windshield. Lucy cracked her window for the breath of moving air that smelled like dust. Seth kept glancing at the side mirror as if it could quiz him.
They cleared a false alarm at a strip mall, took a complaint about skateboards on shiny concrete. Seth almost apologized to the property manager for existing.
Late morning brought coffee. Seth hovered by the counter like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to order. Lucy ordered for them both.
“Black,” she told him, handing it over. “No cream, no sugar. Get used to it. Patrol doesn’t stop for frappes.”
Seth nodded, grateful but uneasy.
Across the room, Miles stood next to Tim, posture perfect even waiting for a cup. Tim looked exactly the same as he had in roll call: arms crossed, a wall of expectation.
Lucy’s screen lit up.
Tim: Yours looks like he’s never seen caffeine before.
Lucy: Yours looks like he thinks he invented it.
Tim: Better than fumbling with the lid.
Lucy: Relax, Bradford. Dinner’s going to taste great when I win.
Tim: Dinner? That’s optimistic.
Lucy: Don’t tell me you’re already planning excuses.
She slipped the phone away, and the corner of her mouth betrayed her before she could stop it. She looked down at her coffee until it passed.
Outside, the bell over the door gave a tired ring behind them. Seth held it without being told. He was learning the tiny things; sometimes that’s where the real learning starts.
—
The afternoon tested Seth harder. A domestic dispute call turned into a shouting match on the sidewalk. Seth tried to calm the husband with a too-casual, “Hey, you just need to take it easy, man.”
Lucy stepped in immediately, her voice sharp, commanding.
“Sir, step back. Now.”
The shift in tone worked. The man froze, then retreated, grumbling but under control.
Once the scene was clear, Lucy pulled Seth aside.
“Never minimize. You set the tone. They don’t listen? You escalate. Your voice is your first tool. Use it.”
Seth swallowed hard, nodding.
Her phone pinged as she wrote the report.
Tim: Yours try to play therapist?
Lucy: He’ll learn. Not everyone’s born a bulldozer.
Tim: Some rookies toughen up. Some wash out.
Lucy: Mine’s tougher than you think. Dinner’s still mine.
Tim: Debateable. And it’s drinks. That was the bet.
Lucy: Dinner. Winner upgrades.
Tim: You’re impossible.
Lucy: And still winning.
Back in the car, Seth stared at his notes like they might arrange themselves. Lucy let the silence work for a minute, the kind of quiet that sits a person up straight.
“Walk me through it,” she said. “What you saw first, not what you felt.”
He started with the wrong detail. She let him finish, then guided him back, tight and simple: eyes, hands, distance, doors. He corrected himself, pen moving. The page got cleaner.
They hit a fender-bender. Three drivers, one intersection. Seth tried to talk all three at once. Lucy put a palm up.
“One at a time,” she said. “You listen twice as much as you talk. Learn who tells the story and who tells the truth.”
By the end of the fender-bender, tempers sagged in the heat. Papers got signed, drivers went their way. Seth leaned back in the passenger seat for a beat, eyes shut. Rookie move, but Lucy let it slide. Two seconds wasn’t going to kill anyone. Then she tapped the computer mounted in the dash.
“Report,” she said. “Facts first. Keep it clean.”
He straightened and got to it.
Back at the station, the bullpen hummed low: printers, phones, the hum that means people are tired but not done. Celina moved between desks with quiet steadiness, dropping a sticky note on Nolan’s stack, catching Seth’s eye as she passed and giving him a small nod that said keep going. Nolan grinned at Lucy as he sat, too chipper for the hour as usual.
“How’s your guy?” he asked.
“Alive. Working on the rest.”
“Progress.”
Across the room, Tim stood over Miles like a storm cloud. Miles typed fast and neat, correcting without being told. Tim didn’t praise him. He didn’t have to. He only said, “Again,” when a sentence wandered. Miles trimmed it on the fly.
Lucy remembered that tone. The flat patience that wasn’t patience at all. She hated it when she was under it. And learned more from it than she wanted to admit.
—
Evening softened the room. The hum of the building got quieter, like the station was finally remembering how to breathe. Seth printed the last report and brought it to her, shoulders a fraction higher than this morning.
“Walk me through the noise complaint,” Lucy said. “Out loud. Clean.”
He did. He missed one detail, they both knew it, and he found it himself on the second pass. That mattered.
She signed what needed signing. He gathered the pages without dropping them. That mattered too.
Her phone pinged one last time.
Tim: Day’s over. Admit you’re behind.
Lucy: Cute that you think that.
Tim: Drinks. End of the week. Don’t forget.
Lucy: Wrong. It’s dinner now.
Tim: That’s not what we said.
Lucy: It’s what I said. Try to keep up.
Tim: You’re unbelievable.
Lucy: And still winning.
Lucy dropped the phone into her bag, not bothering to hide the grin this time. Tomorrow would come fast. The game had only just started.
—
Morning again. New heat, same city. The smell of burnt coffee tried to pass for breakfast.
Rookies in the front row. Miles sat like a textbook diagram. Seth sat like a spring. Celina split the difference, steady as always. Nolan whispered something to Lucy that sounded like optimism and caffeine. She pretended to scowl. He pretended to be offended. Grey walked in and no one pretended anything anymore.
Assignments. Warnings about the heat index. A quick note on a string of break-ins that looked lazy and desperate. Dismissed.
In the lot, Seth secured the bag right the first time. Lucy didn’t say “good.” She took it in and got in the driver’s seat.
“Today,” she said, “you fix one thing: questions under five words.”
He nodded. “Yes, Officer.”
They rolled.
A shop owner waved them down about a kid lingering too long outside. It smelled like nothing, but nothing can turn into something if you don’t look at it right. Lucy looked at it right. The kid was waiting for his sister. Seth wrote the time and the outcome without adding adjectives. Lucy let that small win stand.
The radio asked for a welfare check; they found an elderly man who’d fallen asleep with his TV up too loud and forgot dinner in the oven. Lucy killed the burner, Seth wrote the form, and she slipped two oranges from the counter into his fridge while the man told them he used to be fast. On the walk back to the car, Seth stared at his notebook.
“What did you miss?” Lucy said, unlocking the door.
“Smoke alarm.”
“And?”
“Neighbor’s name. I’ll go ask.”
He went. He asked. He came back. He wrote it without flourish. The line on Lucy’s mouth loosened.
Her phone lit up at the light.
Tim: Yours stall on radio codes again?
Lucy: Once. He recovered.
Tim: Sloppy.
Lucy: It's the first week, Bradford. Not SWAT tryouts.
Tim: Lower the bar and they’ll trip over it anyway.
Lucy: Raise it too high and they’ll break their necks.
Tim: Then they don’t belong.
Lucy: Always inspirational.
She set the phone down, eyeing the crosswalk. A woman with a stroller and a grocery bag too full for one hand. Seth watched the stroller. Good.
—
Back at the station,Nolan perched on a desk corner. “Ridley is trying,” he told Lucy, like she didn’t know. She only lifted an eyebrow. “He’ll get there,” Nolan said, softer.
Across the room, Miles hovered while Tim reviewed. The same rhythm as yesterday: Miles adjusting on command, Tim not giving him the compliment he wanted. Tim didn’t train with compliments. He trained with standards. Lucy remembered how that felt. She also remembered why it worked.
Seth’s report had fewer extra words. Lucy tapped a clean box with one finger. He didn’t glow. He nodded and kept typing. Better and better.
Afternoon again. Heat again. They took a stop on a broken taillight. Seth did the talk. Five-word questions. No speeches. The driver promised to fix it and didn’t feel bullied into it. That’s the sweet spot.
“Don’t relax,” Lucy said when they got back in the car. “Consistency beats charm.”
“Was I—” he started.
“No,” she said. “You were fine. Now be consistent.”
He wrote that down too.
Her phone buzzed against the console.
Tim: Still feeling confident?
Lucy: I was born confident.
Tim: Debatable.
Lucy: You keep using that word.
Tim: Because it keeps being true.
Lucy: No.
Tim: We’ll settle it at the end of the week.
Lucy: We’ll settle it at dinner.
The pause on the screen made her smirk. She knew exactly how long it would take him to answer. It took that long.
Tim: We said drinks.
Lucy: We upgraded.
Tim: You upgraded.
Lucy: Correct.
Tim: Noted.
Lucy slid the phone away and watched the street clean itself with evening light. She could map Tim’s reactions without looking. That used to save her life. In quieter ways, it still did.
They wrapped near sunset, the city rounding off its edges. Seth brought the last report without being prompted. He stayed standing while she read. He didn’t fidget. He breathed.
“Again from the top,” she said. “The domestic from yesterday. Every detail. Keep the lines clean. Leave out what you don’t need.”
He did. He was better. She could work with better. Better, she knew, is the part of the job no one posts about. It’s the thing that gets you home.
The bullpen’s noise slid down a notch. Somewhere, Angela laughed and then stopped and then laughed again. Harper walked past, quiet but certain, dropping a file on a desk before moving on.
Lucy stacked the reports and slid them into the tray. She stood. Seth stood with her.
“Review the report section at home,” she said. “Sleep. Be on time.”
“Yes, Officer Chen.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
They headed for the lot. Air still hot from the day. Engines turning over in uneven rhythm. Radios clicking once and going quiet.
Seth drifted off toward his beat-up sedan with a little wave. She nodded back.
Tim was by his truck, Miles still chattering in quick, precise sentences. Tim listened with that unreadable face, gave a single nod, and the rookie shut it down neat. Lucy leaned on her car door, watching for a second before Tim’s eyes found hers across the lot.
He dismissed Miles with a wave, then crossed a few steps closer. Not all the way. Just enough.
“Your guy still breathing?” he asked.
Lucy folded her arms. “Barely. But breathing better than this morning.”
Tim smirked. “Low bar.”
“He’ll clear it.” She tilted her head. “Yours looks like he wants to teach the class already.”
Tim exhaled through his nose. “He listens. Sometimes.”
“Sounds familiar.”
That earned her the quick flick of his eyes, half amused, half warning.
“End of week,” he said. “Loser buys.”
Lucy shot back instantly. “Dinner. Don’t cheap out.”
“That’s not what we said.”
“It’s what we’re saying now.”
He shook his head, the faintest twitch of a grin tugging at his mouth. “Unbelievable.”
She opened her door. “You know me.”
Tim started toward his truck, then paused. “Hey. Not bad… for your first week as a TO.”
Lucy arched a brow. “Was that a compliment?”
He gave the smallest shrug. “Don’t push it.”
She smirked, but let it drop there. He wasn’t generous with praise, but when he gave it, even sideways, it landed. It always had.
Sliding behind the wheel, Lucy thought of Seth’s small wins today, of the way he’d straightened under her voice, how he’d caught his own mistake and fixed it. She remembered being in that seat once, trying to survive Tim’s impossible standards. She’d cursed him for it back then, but later she’d realized those standards were what kept her sharp. What made her better. Now here she was, passing pieces of that same pressure forward, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
The engine hummed as she pulled out of the lot, headlights cutting into the dark.
Behind her, Tim’s truck rumbled to life, steady, predictable, just like always. And if she didn’t look over, it wasn’t because she didn’t know he was there. It was because she did.
___
She slept light, heat pressing the apartment like a hand. Twice she woke to the stutter of a radio code that wouldn’t finish and once to a dream where Tim was on the other end of a hallway you could never reach, like the floor stretched while you ran. When the alarm finally went, she sat up already tired, tied her hair tight, and told the mirror to be useful.
At the station, the roll call room felt smaller. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the week. Rookies held the front row like they were guarding a line. Seth’s knee bounced once, then he pinned it with his hand. Miles didn’t move.
. When the alarm finally went, she tied her hair tight and told the mirror to be useful.
At the station, the roll call room felt smaller. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the week. Rookies held the front row like they were guarding a line. Seth’s knee bounced once, then he pinned it with his hand. Miles didn’t move.
Lucy slid into the third row with Nolan, Tim down at the end. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t have to. You can share a language without speaking it.
Grey came in and carved the morning into clean pieces. A burglary pattern hugging side streets near Crenshaw. Watch the corners. Heat advisory. Hydrate or suffer. No jokes. Dismissed.
In the lot, Seth strapped the bag right the first time. He didn’t look for her praise, which was better than earning it. Across the way, Miles finished his checklist and still waited for Tim to find something wrong. Tim did. He always did. That wasn’t cruelty. It was insurance.
The city sagged under the heat. Calls felt sticky. People with tempers that didn’t fit their bodies. A false alarm that stayed false. A welfare check that turned out to be a man with his TV too loud and soup burning in a pot. Seth read off the address twice, slow, to get the cadence right. He caught the neighbor’s name on his own and wrote it in the right box. Lucy didn’t say good. She took in air and let it go, which for her meant the same thing.
Back at the bullpen, the overhead lights hummed in that way that makes people hiss at nothing. Celina ghosted by and slid a bottle of water to Seth with a small nod. He drank like she’d saved him from drowning and then tried to hide it.
Nolan leaned in. “He’s getting better.” He said it softly, like it might break.
“Mm.”
“He is,” Nolan insisted, like she’d argued.
“I heard you,” Lucy said, but there was no sting. Nolan was a person you let be himself. He didn’t know how to be other people.
Across the room, Tim stood behind Miles while the rookie typed a report that looked like a lawyer had eaten it. Miles cut a paragraph when Tim told him to and then cut another before being told. He was learning Bradford speed: one line that carried the weight of five.
The shift slid into afternoon. The radio burned hot. Lucy checked her mirror and clocked the number of people out walking who should have been inside. Summer made bad choices and called them errands.
Her phone buzzed on the console at a long light.
Tim: Status.
Lucy: Functional. Learning.
Tim: Which part.
Lucy: Listening.
Tim: Finally.
She typed and erased twice. Then sent:
Lucy: What about yours?
Tim: Coachable. When he remembers he isn’t the coach.
She let the smile touch and go. Then:
Lucy: You practice losing yet.
Tim: No.
Lucy: Dinner then.
Tim: Drinks.
Lucy: Dinner.
The dots blinked. Stopped. Blinked again. Stopped.
She put the phone face down and pulled into the shade like it could count as mercy.
____
The call that mattered came late.
“Two-eighteen shop disturbance, possible weapon, corner market on Thirty-Seventh and Denker,” dispatch said, voice flat to keep everyone else calm.
Lucy and Seth were three blocks out. Tim and Miles were four..
They hit the curb fast and clean. The front window of the market was a hairline web, not shattered, not yet. Inside: a clerk red-faced and loud, a teenager with a backpack in one hand and a gun clutched too loose in the other, two customers pretending they were invisible.
Seth’s breath shortened. He shifted forward like he wanted to fix everything with hands.
“Stop,” Lucy said, quiet. He froze. “Eyes first. Feet second. Hands third.”
The kid’s grip was bad. Finger flat along the frame, wrist trembling, but the gun was still a gun. His feet were angled toward the back exit. His eyes flitted in fractions. Bolt or break.
“Police,” Lucy said, voice steady. “We’re going to talk.”
Tim and Miles came through the door on the other side, the room adjusting to their weight without knowing that’s what it was doing.
The clerk jabbed a finger at the backpack and called the kid a thief. The kid’s jaw worked like he was chewing panic and pride at the same time.
“Look at me,” Lucy told him. “Not him. Me.”
His eyes snapped to hers like she’d pulled a string.
“Drop it.” Her voice didn’t rise. It just left him no place to stand.
The gun hit the ground with a hollow clatter. The kid’s breath caught, chest heaving.
“Bag too,” Tim said from behind her, not loud, not soft.
The backpack slid down next. Candy bars spilled out, one already half-melted.
The clerk was suddenly all adrenaline and no target, voice rising about thieves and punishment.
Lucy cut him clean. “You almost had a shooting over two candy bars,” she said. “You’ll get your statement for the report. That’s it.”
The clerk sputtered, but his voice dropped fast. It always did once the danger was gone.
___
Seth wrote the basics with fewer extra words than yesterday. Miles stood without fidgeting, and Tim let him stand there, which was its own kind of training.
They cleared. No cuffs. No damage. The air felt punctured and then patched.
Outside, the sun gave up pretending it was helping. Lucy shaded her eyes with her hand and watched Tim talk Miles through angles, distance, footwork, the calculus you do without math when rooms turn bad. He didn’t have to look at her to know she was doing her own after-action two cars over. She didn’t have to look at him to know he saw it.
Back at the station, the bullpen moved quieter, like everyone had remembered to breathe.
When the clock made it official, the day let go.
___
In the lot, engines cooled with that slow tick, radios hissed and died. Lucy leaned on her door. Tim leaned on his truck. The space between them felt like a kind of table where you set things down without naming them.
He crossed it. Not close enough to be a mistake. Close enough for the truth to reach.
“You were a half-step too far inside,” he said.
“Or a half-step ahead.”
“You took his exit.”
“I gave him another.” She held his eyes. “It worked.”
“It did,” he said, and the admission cost him. “Don’t make it your habit.”
“You taught me the habit,” she said, no heat. “Read the feet. Own the corners.”
His jaw flexed like a muscle had a memory of an argument. He let it pass.
They watched two officers climb into a unit and laugh at something too far away to hear. The sound rose and fell. It didn’t touch them.
He cleared his throat. “End of the week.”
“Drinks,” she said.
“Drinks,” he agreed, then because he couldn’t help himself, “Not dinner.”
She smiled slow. “You keep saying that.”
He didn’t smile back, not really. The almost came and went. He looked like a man building a sentence and vetoing it twice.
“Lucy,” he said, and dropped it.
She saved him and didn’t. “Good night, Tim.”
He nodded. It wasn’t enough. It was what they had. “Night, Lucy.”
She got in the car. The phone lit the passenger seat like a small square moon. She didn’t touch it.
The headlights dragged a white line across the pavement. She pulled out. In the mirror, his truck followed two cars back and then turned another way, like a promise to himself he hadn’t decided to keep.
At the first light, it buzzed.
Tim: Sleep.
She let the screen go black. The light turned green. She drove.
___
She dreamed again. Not of the hallway. Of the market. Of the backpack in her hand heavier than candy. Of Tim behind her, too quiet. She woke before the alarm, lay still, and counted her own heartbeat.
Roll call was a copy of every roll call with different names on the board. Rookies in front. The back row keeping angles. Lopez slid in with a coffee and a grin like she knew something you didn’t. She probably did.
On the way out, Lopez matched Lucy’s pace in the corridor. “So,” she said. Nothing else. She could do damage with two letters.
“So what,” Lucy said.
“The market,” Lopez said, casual only if you didn’t know her. “Saw the report. You talk him down?”
“Other options were bad.”
Lopez hummed. “Bradford almost had a heart attack.”
“Bradford can speak for himself.”
“Please don’t encourage him,” Lopez said. “Listen. You’re good at this. Don’t burn yourself proving it to a man who already knows.”
Lucy looked at her. “You mean Tim.”
“I mean my friend who looks like he sleeps with a checklist,” Lopez said. “And my other friend who pretends she doesn’t care about that.”
Lucy gave her a look that meant stop. Lopez grinned like yes and then waved like later.
The day started slow, which made people reckless. Seth took longer to tighten his chin strap and didn’t know why. Lucy pointed and he fixed it.
At lunch, Nolan tried to get Lucy to admit she liked being a TO. She didn’t. He took her silence as a complex admission. She let him.
Mid-afternoon, dispatch pinged both units to the same call. Suspicious vehicle. Alley behind a strip of pawn shops. No heat note. No “escalating.” It sounded like paperwork in waiting.
They hit the mouth of the alley from opposite ends without planning it. That’s old habit. That’s what people call chemistry when they don’t want to admit the years it takes to build it.
The car was a faded blue sedan, bumper dented. Two men in the front. The driver watched his own hands. The passenger watched everything else.
Lucy kept her voice level. “Afternoon. We’re gonna keep this simple.”
Seth stayed half a step back, not enough to be useless. Miles mirrored him on Tim’s side, a clean shadow.
“IDs,” Tim said.
The driver’s hands went where they should. The passenger’s didn’t. He stared at the open mouth of the alley behind Lucy like it was asking him a question. His knee bounced once.
Lucy noticed the slip, the kind of detail drilled into her to never miss. “Stay with me,” she said to him, “Hands where I can see them.”
“Let me just—” the passenger said, and reached down.
“No,” three voices said at once. Tim’s. Lucy’s. The rookie chorus under them.
The passenger flinched and grabbed for the gear shift anyway. The engine coughed, jumped.
For one bright second the sedan lurched backward toward Lucy’s leg.
A palm hit the back of her belt and pulled hard enough to bruise. Her body cleared the bumper by less than a shoe length. Seth swore. Miles froze, then moved.
“Out of the car,” Tim said, voice ice. No shout. Stone.
The driver obeyed too fast. The passenger obeyed too slow. Hands were shown. Bodies were moved. The suddenness bled out of the air and left that shaky quiet that comes after almost.
Lucy didn’t look at Tim. She knew exactly where he was by the heat from his anger. It wasn’t at her. That made it worse.
They cleared the men. No warrants. No gun. One folding knife under the seat that belonged in a hardware store. The driver’s story was boring and likely true. The passenger’s panic was not criminal. It was human.
“Next time you grind the car into reverse with cops behind you,” Lucy said, calm as a brick, “you might end up dead. Think about that before you do it again.”
The man nodded like he had been granted a future. Sometimes that’s all people hear.
They wrote it up in the patchy shade of the wall. Seth’s hands still shook. Miles hovered near Tim, like standing close might steady him too.
No one mentioned the pull on Lucy’s belt. No one had to. She could still feel the ghost of his hand there.
___
Back at the station the hum was wrong for an hour after. People do that in heat: they act like nothing happened because if they say it out loud the air changes shape.
Seth read his narrative and didn’t trip. Lucy gave a short nod that meant yes, that order. Miles caught Tim’s eye and straightened because he couldn’t help it.
When night landed, the lot felt like a room with the windows open to a storm that hadn’t started yet.
Lucy leaned against her car. Tim stayed by his truck, arms crossed. The silence stretched until one of them finally looked up.
He crossed the space. Not close enough to corner her. Close enough to be the point.
“You alright?” he asked, meaning more than one thing.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“That’s not the question.”
She let that sit. Then: “You pulled me.”
“You were about to take the hit.”
“I was clear.”
“You weren’t.”
Silence stretched, and neither of them tried to make it polite.
“Thank you,” she said finally, like the words had edges. “For the pull.”
He took that without softening. “Don’t make me do it again.”
“You don’t get to make that call,” she said, and it was almost a joke, except it wasn’t. “Not anymore.”
He breathed out through his nose. “I know.”
They let the word sit there until it had weight.
“End of the week,” he said, like going back to the game could save them from the part that wasn’t a game. “Loser buys.”
“Dinner,” she said.
“Drinks.”
“Dinner.”
“You’re not getting dinner out of me.”
“You keep saying that.”
He almost smiled. Didn’t. The muscles tried and failed. That honesty was louder than a grin.
“Lucy,” he said, lower now, “I’m not trying to control you.”
“I know,” she said. “You want me alive. Same goal.”
He nodded once. “Yeah.”
She looked at him for a long beat. “It doesn’t change that you don’t get to decide where I stand.”
“I know,” he said again. “I didn’t like watching you almost get hurt.”
She let that in. “I didn’t like it either.”
He nodded. It landed in both of them, uneven and true.
She opened her door. Closed it again with her hip, not ready to get in.
“Do me a favor,” she said.
“What.”
“If I’m too far forward, say it then. Not later. Not in a parking lot. Not after the report. Say it in the room.”
“I did.”
“Louder,” she said. “I can hear you quieter than anyone. But in there, when it turns fast, be louder.”
He swallowed like that scraped something raw on the way down. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she echoed, and left it.
____
Lucy drove off first, headlights carving the dark. She didn’t look back, but she felt him still there, like a weight in her rearview.
At the next stoplight, her phone buzzed on the console. She almost let it ring into silence, then glanced down.
Tim: Don’t make me grab you like that again.
Her fingers tapped back before she could overthink it.
Lucy: Then trust me to see it.
The dots blinked once, then disappeared. Lucy stared at the screen, the silence louder than any words he might’ve sent. She set the phone down without answering.
She set the phone face-down and let the screen go black. The light changed. She rolled forward, chest tight, lips pressed against a smile that wasn’t really a smile.
At home, she left the phone on the counter and leaned into the kitchen’s stillness. The fridge kicked on. Pipes groaned in the wall. Life carried on indifferent.
But the echo of his hand on her, the speed of it, the steadiness, stayed. So did his words. Don’t make me grab you like that again.
She stood there longer than she meant to, breathing in the quiet, letting it land.
And when she finally stretched out under the covers, the city humming steady outside her window, sleep came easier than it had in weeks.