Shades of Gray (KGI #6)(53)

“Tea or water is fine. I’m more focused on the steak anyway. I’m already drooling over it and it’s still raw.”

He grinned. “Girl after my own heart. I’m a big fan of cow.”

“Oh, I’m not particular. I’ll eat a chicken or a pig with as much enthusiasm.”

He glanced down at her bare leg and frowned. “That wound looks pretty nasty. We should get another bandage on it.”

“Yeah, I thought you could help once you got the steaks on. I wanted to clean it in the shower. Plus the hot water felt good on it.”

“Can you make it outside or you want me to go put the steaks on then come back for you?”

She took a hesitant step forward, gripping the countertop. “You lead and I’ll follow. I’ll do my very best not to take a header.”

He smiled and picked up the platter, placing the tongs on top. As he walked out of the kitchen to the French doors overlooking the patio, she followed slowly behind him. By the time she made it to the door, he was already putting the steaks on the fire.

She stepped outside and breathed in the honeysuckle-scented air. Crickets chirped in the distance and the low hum of tree locusts rose in the evening air. The sky was covered with the pale shade of dusk and the sun was barely clinging to the horizon as it slipped lower and lower.

It was a perfect evening for a cookout.

She took a seat at the table and stretched her leg out to its full length underneath. The pain medication was already dulling the vicious ache, turning it to a more tolerable hum.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said as Cole lowered the lid to the grill.

“I like it. It’s close to work but it’s still private. I don’t have to worry about tripping over anyone when I’m here. It’s kind of nice after coming off a mission to hole up away from the world for a few days.”

“Steele had been bugging me to move out this way. You know, before that last mission and all.”

Cole studied her intently. “And? Were you considering it?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Before, I would have likely given it thought but probably would have put it off or made an excuse. I was comfortable in my routine and I liked that work was a world away from where I lived.”

“And now? You said before like things have changed, or at least your thinking has.”

She gazed over the pond, watching as the first firefly popped and glowed a line over the water before blinking off again.

There was something mesmerizing about fireflies. Something that took her back to her childhood when things were simple and summer days were spent chasing dreams.

It was a wake-up call that so much of her adulthood had been spent being unsatisfied with herself, her relationships and her jobs.

When had she changed from a laughing little girl dreaming of changing the world to a cynical adult who believed the world wasn’t savable?

“P.J.?”

Cole broke softly into her thoughts, and she realized he was waiting for a response to his question.

“Now I’m not so sure. It was actually the night you came into the bar when I had this moment of realization that I was still living in the past by hanging around in Denver. There’s nothing for me there. No reason to stay. No ties. Nothing. At least here I’d be closer to work if nothing else.”

“You’d have me,” he said.

She lifted her gaze to his and their eyes locked. He didn’t flinch away. Didn’t try to hide anything from her.

“I don’t want to screw up our friendship. I can’t lose that, Cole. It’s too important to me. It’s why I reacted the way I did the morning after, because all I could think was how stupid I’d been to risk something that means so very much to me.”

“You aren’t going to lose me, P.J. Don’t doom us before we even give it a shot.”

She dropped her gaze and returned it to the pond again, counting the fireflies as they danced through the air. More and more were popping into view, and the sounds of night grew louder. In the distance, an owl hooted, sending an eerie shiver down her spine.

Was he right? Was she guilty of not even giving them a shot? Of shooting them down before they even gave it a chance?

She was being a total chickenshit and offering up lame excuses when at the heart of the matter she was just . . . afraid.

“What if it doesn’t work out?” she asked, voicing one of those fears. “What if things end badly between us? We still have to work as a team, and if we f**k things up, it creates tension for the entire team yet we have to work together. Our camaraderie is what makes us so damn good. We could f**k up not only ourselves, but the entire team. Worse, we could end up getting one of the others killed. I don’t think I could live with that.”

“If it ever comes down to that, I’d be the one to leave,” he said quietly. “I’d never force you out, P.J.”

“It would still devastate me,” she whispered.

“Don’t you believe in forever?” he asked. “What about all those romance novels you read? Don’t they preach the happily-ever-after message?”

His words put an ache in her heart. She wanted happily ever after more than he could possibly know. She wanted forever. Problem was, she just wasn’t sure she believed in it anymore. It was why she clung to her fiction so much. She immersed herself in books because there she could be anyone and it was easy to believe in love and happily ever after.