Page 28 of The Reckless Rookie

That’s the real crossing. Not the body, not the barn, not any of the stuff that’d void the deal. Just this. Betting she means it.

She opens the door before I knock.

She heard the truck, read the walk, knew what it was before I was halfway across the yard, because she reads everything and saw this coming maybe before I did. She’s in the doorway with the one light behind her and her arms not quite crossed, and she looks at me the way she looks at a horse deciding whether to bolt, patient and unhurried and completely aware.

“You didn’t have to come up here,” she says. Quiet. Not a rejection. A last off-ramp, offered honestly, one more chance for both of us to be smart.

“I know.”

“That’s not why you came.”

“No.”

Not her leash, though. Not anymore. Vicente told me last week, flat: my check-ins go through the county now, not the house. Took me a day to understand what it meant. She took her own name off my file. She gave up the one thing that could’ve kept her safe if this went sideways, the power to end me, and she did it quiet, without telling me, before I’d even worked up the nerve to cross a yard.

So the last step isn’t mine to take. Not because she outranks me, she made sure she doesn’t, but because she’s already risked more standing here unarmed than I have, and she’s the one who gets to choose the man instead of the placement.

Now it’s hers.

Then she reaches out and takes a fistful of my shirt.

Chapter sixteen

Catalina

Itake a fistful of his shirt because I am done waiting for a better time. There isn’t one.

The felony isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the contract. My mother certainly isn’t waking up tomorrow with a sudden appreciation for questionable decisions and twenty-three-year-old hockey players.

I have spent thirty-two years calling caution patience, and it isn’t. I want him. So I pull Finn through my door.

He comes at me fast, one hand catching my waist, the other sliding into my hair, his mouth finding mine with three weeks of restraint behind it. My back hits the door. His body follows, hot and hard against mine, and for one dangerous second I let him.

Then I put my palm against his chest. “Slow.”

He stops. Not gracefully. His chest rises beneath my hand, every muscle tight with the effort of holding himself exactly where I put him. His eyes find mine, and then it clicks.

I almost smile. “What?”

“I remember.”

Three weeks ago in my kitchen. His hand at my back, his feet fighting mine. Despacio. I go. You wait. You feel where I’m going, half a second after me.

“I’m not telling you to stop.”

“I know.” His voice is rough enough to scrape. “I’ve wanted this too long to fuck it up.”

“Finn.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do slow?”

His eyes close for a second. “You know that’s not exactly my natural setting.”

“You learned.”

He looks at me again. “Yeah.” His fingers flex against my waist. “I did.”