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"Exactly like a date."

She looked at me for a long moment, and whatever she'd been carrying behind her eyes shifted to make room for this. She leaned up and kissed me again.

"Take me home, Captain Holloway."

I drove. She sat in the passenger seat with the flowers in her lap, her head tipped against the window. She told me about a caller who had phoned 911 because his neighbor's wind chimes were too loud and he wanted them arrested.

At the apartment, she disappeared into the bedroom. I unpacked the groceries I'd dropped off before heading to the precinct and started cooking. I could hear her moving around behind the closed door, the faucet running, a drawer opening and closing.

She came out twenty minutes later in a black dress I'd never seen before. I stopped chopping and looked at her.

"Hi." She smiled. "Is this okay?"

"You're asking me if that's okay?" I put the knife down, pulled her in by the waist, and held her against me. "Maybe I want to skip dinner entirely."

She laughed and pulled me down into a kiss. Her skin was warm from the shower, and she smelled like the perfume she saved for nights out.

"Feed me first," she said against my mouth.

I cooked. She sat at the counter and stole pieces of everything before it reached the plate. I let her because watching her eat off the cutting board with her fingers was worth more than a plated meal. We ate at the table with candles she'd found in the drawer by the sink.

The conversation was easy, and she was here. All the way here.

"Thank you for this," she said. "I didn't know how much I needed it."

I reached across the table and took her hand. She laced her fingers through mine.

"Janine." I rubbed my thumb across her knuckles. "You've been somewhere else lately. And I've been trying to figure out if I did something wrong and didn't know it."

Her smile faded.

"You didn't do anything wrong." She looked down at our hands. "I'm sorry, Alex. I know I've been distant. I've been trying to figure out how to say this and I couldn't find a way that didn't sound like I don't trust you. Because I do trust you."

"Then tell me what's wrong."

She took a breath. "At the rink. Declan said something to me before he left."

She turned her wine glass on the table.

"He told me your father was part of his world. That if I really didn't want Hazel growing up in that kind of life, I should know everything about the man I'm sleeping with." She met my eyes. "He said that's the reason your ex-wife left."

I sat up straighter. If that was the worst Declan Gallagher could say about me, I had an answer to every word of it. But the fact that he'd lied to get inside her head, that he'd twisted my life into something he could use against me, made me want to find him and finish the conversation myself.

Declan hadn't come to the rink to threaten her. He'd come to plant a seed, and the seed had done exactly what he'd designed it to do. Enough doubt, enough silence, enough distance to drive a wedge between me and Janine.

"That's not true," I said. "Cheryl didn't leave because of my past. She left because I failed her. I was never there for her. She found someone who was." I held Janine's eyes. "Declan lied about that."

"So it's all not true?"

"No. Some of it is."

I took a deep breath. I never did like talking about this, but Janine deserved to hear the truth from me.

"My father was a gambler. He bet on everything. Sports, cards, anything with a line.

"His gambling got so bad, he borrowed money from family, friends, anyone who'd float him a loan. And when those ran dry, he started borrowing from people who collected with violence. Loan sharks connected to organized gambling in Boston. The debts got too big, and when he couldn't pay, they came after us."

My grip tightened on Janine's hand.