He took her to a restaurant she'd never been to — which was deliberate, she understood. No memories attached. No risk of her sitting across from him in a place they'd been together and having to navigate the ghost of who they were.
It was a small Italian place near the river. Candles on the table. Wine list on a chalkboard. The kind of place where the tables were close together and the noise was the comfortable noise of other people's conversations, which made it easier to have your own.
They were given menus and left alone.
"This is the longest I've sat across from you without either of us discussing evidence," Callum said.
"Is that strange?"
"Strangely not." He looked at the menu. "I realised yesterday that I don't know what you like to eat anymore. I used to know."
"You used to know everything I ordered anywhere," she said. "You once argued with a waiter on my behalf about a dish I hadn't even objected to."
He looked up. "Was I wrong?"
"About the dish? No. About the approach? Significantly."
He almost smiled. "Tell me what you order now."
"Depends on the restaurant."
"This one."
She looked at the menu. "The pasta with the truffle. And the burrata to start. And I'll steal whatever you order that looks better than mine."
Now he did smile. Fully. It landed on her with the weight of something she hadn't braced for.
"Some things don't change," he said.
"Some things do," she said. And looked back at the menu.
They ordered. They ate. They talked — actually talked, not about the case, not about the sessions, but about the company and his work and a documentary she'd watched recently and an opinion he had about architecture that she disagreed with and said so directly and he argued back with genuine enthusiasm and she felt, halfway through the main course, something that alarmed her slightly.
She was having a good time.
Not a cautiously tolerable time. Not a professionally productive time. An actual, genuine, I-forgot-to-be-guarded good time.
She reset herself quietly.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
"You just went somewhere," he said.
"I'm right here."
"You just remembered you weren't supposed to be enjoying yourself." He said it without accusation — just observation. "I do the same thing."
She looked at him.
"Every time something feels—" He paused, choosing the word. "Easy. Between us. I catch it and I think, you don't have the right to find this easy. You lost the right." He looked at his glass. "So I understand."
The table between them felt very small.
"Callum," she said. "What do you want? Not from the case. Not from the sessions. From—" She gestured between them. "This."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"I want to earn it," he said simply. "Whatever that looks like. However long it takes. I want the chance to earn back what I threw away without knowing what I was throwing."
She sat with that.
"I can't promise you anything," she said.
"I know."
"I'm not the same person."
"I know that too." He held her gaze. "I'm not asking for the same thing we had. I'm asking for the chance to find out what we could be now."
She looked at him across the candlelit table — this man who had been her husband and her wound and her greatest loss and who was now sitting across from her with his whole face open and honest in a way that the Callum she'd met in that hospital corridor a year after the accident never was.
She thought about Nathan's question. Five years from now.
She opened her mouth.
Her phone rang.
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at the screen.
Garrett.
She answered. "Not a good time—"
"I know. I'm sorry." His voice was wrong — tight, urgent. "Victoria Ashford was released from her travel restrictions an hour ago on a technicality her attorney found. She's not at her apartment. Her car is gone. Her assistant says she left in a hurry." A pause. "Elara. She knows where you live. She knows your routine. And after tonight's call and the blackmail attempt, I don't think she's finished."
Elara looked at Callum across the table.
He was already reading her face.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Victoria's gone," she said.
He
was on his feet before she finished the sentence.