Chapter 190: Reid
She’s out cold—cheek to the window, Jake’s hoodie bunched up as a makeshift pillow, breath fogging a tiny oval on the glass. The road throws light and shadow across her face; freckles like a constellation. Copper hair loose at her temple.
I huff a laugh. “Told you.”
Jake’s boot nudges the back of my seat. “Shut up. You cheated. We asked her a million questions. If we’d just put music on, she’d’ve been gone so much quicker.”
“My bet was two hours,” I say. “Yours was one.”
“And it would’ve been one,” he mutters, “if you two hadn’t discovered you both have opinions about toast.”
“Fair.” I glance over again, can’t help it. The shape of her mouth soft, lashes dark against skin. Fuck, she’s beautiful.
“Eyes on the road,” Jake says, amused.
I drag my gaze back where it belongs; the asphalt snakes into another S, cliff falling away to slate water. Wipers thrum. Heater hums.
“She wants to be our girlfriend,” I say. It comes out more like fact than question.
“Yeah.” Pride threads his voice. “She does.”
“How do you see this moving forward?” I ask. “Because I don’t want to picture a future without her.”
“Same,” he says. A beat. “We’ve got the apartment in the city. Condo’s empty half the year when we’re not traveling or in Northhaven.”
“She’s terrified of the city,” I say, checking the passenger seat—still asleep, still soft. “I don’t know if she’ll ever want to go back.”
He waits.
“I don’t care,” I say, and mean it. “If she wants Northhaven, we buy something here. If she likes the city but there’s something in it that scares her… we take the something out.”
“Agreed,” Jake says, voice gone quiet and mean in a way I recognize. “I'll be damn glad to take that something out.”
I take the next curve clean. She shifts in her sleep and sighs, then settles. My hand lifts off the gearshift like it wants to touch her and doesn’t.
“I want to tell Charlie,” Jake adds after a while.
“Me too.” I can see Charlie’s face in my head: the quick, bright smile, the don’t-you-dare-hurt-her that would ride under it. “She’ll be supportive even if it’s… unconventional. She’ll love that for us.”
“For her,” he says with a smirk.
“For her, definitely,” I echo, and the car keeps eating miles, the ocean on our right, the road in our hands, the future feeling suddenly, stupidly possible.
The road settles into a rhythm and my head slips back to the boulder.
Cold salt on the air, after she ran away from that unknown call, her shoulders tight enough to cut, her eyes full of tears. “Tell me something real,” she’d said—like it cost her to ask, like she needed a truth that wasn’t going to move under her feet.
I told her about the blueberry place. A scrappy patch past the old quarry, low to the ground and mean with thorns, where the bushes go heavy in late July and the gulls scream like they discovered it first. Not far from Northhaven. Not important to anyone but me. I gave it to her anyway.
She’s had a way through my defenses since day one. The day she showed up—face I didn’t know yet but felt like a memory, voice too soft for this town, smile that hit like weather breaking. Hair catching whatever light there was; body swallowed in too many layers like armor she didn’t trust. And immediately, before I had a right, the thought slammed home: keep this girl safe.
The boat wasn’t that. Not for her. Not then. I wanted the peace of mind of knowing she was at the diner, warm, visible, harmless to herself, out of the teeth of everything I know can go wrong at sea. I mistook control for care, built safety like a box and shoved her in it, and pretended the lock was a kindness.
She got angry. With me. With Jake when she thought he was me. After our birthday, when she lit into me with her voice shaking and her hands trying not to, it should’ve pissed me off. It didn’t. I wanted her to. Wanted the sunshine to burn. Wanted the nervous, giggling little thing to drop her shoulders and show teeth, to throw the sweet off and rage, to push and push and know I wouldn’t move.
Be the rock. Unfaltering, steady, safe. Let her break against me and not move an inch. That’s what I’ve wanted since the second I laid eyes on her—long before I earned any part of it, before I deserved to hear my name in her mouth in the dark.
Jake leans in between the seats, voice low so he doesn’t wake her.
“So for tonight. Motel by seven,” he says. “Gate at ten tomorrow. New place to us—assume they like badges and locked doors.”
“Cool,” I say.
“MOU first. We hand them the drives. I'll smile at funding and partnerships; Iyoutalk boats and QA.”
“Copy.”
He watches her for a beat, softer than he means to be. “Then we shut up and let her run it. If they ask who found the pattern—”
“Her full name,” I say.
“Exactly.” He tips his head toward the glove box. “And we feed her after. She won’t remember.”
I huff. “She never does.”
“Lab tour in the afternoon. Whatever they’ll show.” He taps my shoulder, grin in his voice. “If they push timeline, I push back. If they get territorial, you do the big boss thing.”
“The one that moves goalposts,” I say.
“Yeah. That one.”
The road writes another S. She sighs in her sleep and burrows deeper into the hoodie. I ease the wheel around the curve like it’s made of glass.
“Dinner,” Jake goes on, quieter now. “Sleep. Day two we outline and get out. Day 3 water. Then we'll see.”
I don’t answer right away. Her freckles are a constellation. My chest feels too tight for the size of the car.
“She’s gonna love it,” he says.
“Yeah,” I tell him, and it lands like a vow. “We’ll make sure she does.”