Page 176 of Only the Hunter

We clink bottles. The Doberman relocates to Scott’s feet. Somewhere in the house, Evie is rearranging her father’s birthday seating chart with the focused authority of someone who once reorganized a federal case from a hotel conference room, and I think about how thoroughly, delightfully incapable she is of doing anything halfway—a seating chart gets the same relentless precision as a federal indictment.

I find I don’t mind at all.

We’re twenty minutes away from her father’s house when she asks, “How’d things go with my dad?”

I flip my hand palm-up on the console. She fits hers into it without looking—a habit now, easy and without thought. I wait until her fingers have settled.

“I asked for your hand in marriage.”

The silence lasts approximately two seconds.

“You what?”

She’s smiling. Her grip tightens. Both good signs.

“He needed to know my intentions.”

“And your intention is to marry me.”

“One day. When you’re ready.”

“You didn’t think to ask me first? Before my father?” The annoyance is real—I can hear it threading through, even as she’s fighting a smile—but it’s competing with something else and losing. “Gabe. I’m not even religious.”

“Neither am I.” I keep my voice at the register that usually works. “But your father loves you. And because I love you, I love him. Tradition is important to him.”

I watch her process it. The slight tilt of her head. The moment she moves from reaction to analysis.

“If you don’t want to get married,” I say, “I can live with that. As long as you commit to spending the rest of your life with me. That’s what I need.” I squeeze her hand once. “What do you need?”

She’s quiet long enough that I know she’ll give me a real answer.

“The same,” she says.

Two words.

I’ve been trained to run calculations—threat assessments, extraction routes, the arithmetic of every situation I walk into. But this is a variable I could’ve never accounted for correctly: the specific weight of her choosing this, choosing me, in the same quiet and certain way she decides everything that actually matters to her.

We drive in silence for a while, and it’s the kind of silence that doesn’t need anything added to it.

“Do you remember Palisades Park?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Can you drive there?”

I glance at the navigation. It’s between her father’s house and my mother’s. “It’s not out of the way.”

“Did you ever go there? Back then?”

“No.”

“Neither did I.” Her knee jiggles, like her foot is patting in time to the music on the radio. “Let’s go.”

I’ve no problem with a detour, so I take the turn. The road narrows and darkens as the tree cover thickens, the traffic dropping behind us. I find a pull-off along the ridge, and locate a spot overlooking the river. The water catches the moonlight, and the skylines low and soft on the far bank.

I kill the engine.

Evie is quiet beside me, looking at the view. Then she looks at the back of the SUV.