Page 44 of Crowe
Webb raised his hand. “What if you can’t disarm them?”
“Then you do what you have to do to go home at the end of the shift.” I looked at the group. “There’s no elegant solution to aknife. It’s ugly, and it hurts, and the best outcome is everybody comes out of it alive. Next best is that you live through it. Keep that as your focus.”
They paired up and worked it. Hawk and I moved through them, correcting, adjusting, watching. By four-thirty, I called it.
“Good work today,” I said, looking at the group. “All six of you. You came in here with skills, and you’re leaving with more. That’s what this is supposed to do.” I looked at Okafor specifically, for just a beat. “Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow morning we’re on the range at seven.”
They dispersed toward the cabins. Bobby started gathering the training gear with the efficient quiet he had when he was in work mode. Hawk dropped off the fence post and came to stand beside me.
“You’ve got a good group,” he said.
“Yeah.” I watched them go. “They are.”
Dinner at the farmhouse was good. We grilled some burgers, and the group ate with the easy sound of people who genuinely liked each other. The conversation ran from shop talk to stories to the ongoing debate between Garza and Castillo about the best breakfast tacos in East Texas that had apparently been running since before they arrived.
“We’ll have to get you out to visit, Jackson,” Garza said. “What you brought us today was good, but nothing compares to Santana’s breakfast burritos.”
“The Green Frogs are better,” Castillo insisted, refusing to let it go.
“Well, next time I’m out that way, I’ll have to try both and settle this debate for you,” I said, and everyone laughed.
“Good luck with that,” Webb said. “We’ve all tried.”
The conversation moved on, and I sat at the end of the table and ate, half listening, but at the same time, I thought about the apartment on the ninth floor of the Three Bears building, and the gray morning light through the window, and Noah in my t-shirt with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea.
I thought about Hawk’s face when I’d said I was figuring it out, which wasn’t really true, was it? Truth was, I’d already figured it out. Noah was mine. The problem was, I didn’t feel like it was fair to ask him to make decisions like that right now. Not with everything he had going on.
After dinner, I helped Bobby clear the table. He washed, and I dried, same as we always did when it was just the two of us.
He handed me a bowl without looking up. “I can stay out here tonight if you want me to. I can even cover breakfast if you need me to.”
“I’ll be up at seven.”
“I know you will.” He handed me another bowl. “I meant you could come from town instead of from here.”
I looked at him.
He kept his eyes on the sink. “I’m not blind, Crowe. Just sayin’.”
I dried the bowl and put it on the shelf. “Good work this week, Bobby.”
“Thanks, and drive safe.”
The building was quiet when I got there. I unlocked the door to the apartment carefully, the way you did when you were trying not to wake someone.
The apartment was dark except for the lamp in the bedroom, which he always left on.
I set my keys on the counter, shrugged out of my jacket, and crossed to the bedroom. He was asleep on his side, one hand loose on the pillow beside him. He’d left space on the other side for me without even realizing it.
I got ready for bed as quietly as possible and slid in beside him.
He stirred.
“Jackson?” His voice was low and blurred with sleep.
“Yeah,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he turned and curled into me, his forehead against my shoulder, his hand finding my arm in the dark.
