Page 80 of Code Name: Harbor

We find a spot near the pergola where he can put his back to a column and see the whole square, and only when he’s settled there does some of the tension come down out of his shoulders. “This okay?” he asks.

“This is perfect. Thank you.”

For a minute, we just stand there and watch a little boy chase a pigeon, shrieking with joy when it bursts up into the gray sky. A dog noses at the base of a tree, considers lifting his leg, then moves on. It’s so perfectly ordinary that I feel my whole nervous system unclench a notch. I lean into Finn’s side and let myself have it.

His arm comes around my waist and he presses his lips to my hair. For a moment, he relaxes into the hug, but then I feel a change.

Upon sensing a small pulse of tension, I lift my face to him. “What is it?”

“I saw Connie today.”

“And?”

“She came on board the boat, walked in like nothing happened.” His jaw works. “Easy. Light. Like the gallery was a fever dream.”

“That’s great, right?”

“If I believe it was authentic.”

“And you don’t?”

Finn sighs and I pull out of his embrace to face him.

“I don’t know what to believe.” He says it without hesitation, and then, slower, “That’s the problem. I had her pegged. I sat across from Marcus this morning before she showed and told him flat out she’d gone to Mikhail, that I knew it in my gut. And then she walked in and she was just… Connie. Hungover and apologetic and giving me grief, and I felt the certainty start to slide.”

“What did you do?”

“I tested her.” He lifts a shoulder. “Sort of, and she passed… sort of.”

“Tested?”

“I told her she was off an upcoming run we have.”

I can’t help but wince at the mention of something illegal he’ll be doing soon, but he doesn’t catch it.

“The Connie I know would have gotten pissed about it. I think if she was harboring guilt, she would have meekly accepted it, and she didn’t. She was an ass, and that sort of made me feel like things are okay.”

I don’t say anything right away. I think about how all of life is a performance and a person who knows you for eighteen years knows exactly which version of herself reads as innocent. A guilty Connie who understands Finn would not take the easy exit. A guilty Connie who understands Finn would fight him for the cut, because she’d know that the fight is what he’d read as proof.

The pushback isn’t evidence she’s clean.

The pushback is evidence she knows what clean looks like to him.

I don’t say that, though, because I’m sure Finn has already turned that over in his brain a million times.

“I have a piece of advice,” I say softly, my hand going to rest over his.

His eyes come to mine. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think you have to decide if she’s guilty. And I don’t think you have to decide she’s clean. You can just… not decide. Keep her close, keep watching. You don’t owe her the benefit of the doubt after what she said, but it’s also okay to hope she’s still the woman you want her to be.”

Finn’s quiet and his eyes scan the area again. Something in his face eases slightly, like I’ve said the thing he already knew but needed to hear from a person who isn’t him.

The corner of his mouth lifts, but it doesn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes. I imagine under all the analysis, under the testing and the watching and the careful not-deciding, there’s a simpler thing sitting in his gut… grief. He’s mourning her already. He’s standing in a park holding my hand and saying goodbye to a woman who isn’t even gone yet, just in case.

I reach up and put my palm against his jaw and turn his face to me. “Hey.”

“Yeah.”