Page 38 of The Witch & the Hound
He pulled out his phone, already calling the pizza place. "Any preferences?"
"Extra cheese. And those little hot peppers they have."
"Done."
We walked back to his car, hand in hand, past the jack-o'-lanterns and string lights and families still celebrating Halloween, past The Captain's Table with its ocean views and sanitized histories.
Toward my house, my workshop, my carefully built life that was becoming something bigger and stranger and infinitely better than anything I'd planned.
Chapter 14
Maggie
The pizza arrived twenty minutes after we did, which gave me just enough time to change out of the green dress that might never recover from the night's activities and into yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt that had seen better decades.
Comfort clothes. Home clothes. The kind of thing you wore when you'd just spent your fancy dinner date crawling under boats to rescue a six-year-old.
When I came back downstairs, Bram was standing in my living room, tie loosened, jacket draped over a chair, with a framed photo in his hand. It was the one of me and my dad, both of us in uniform.
"That was about a year before I quit."
He turned, taking in my transformation from date-ready to disaster-casual. His expression softened. "You look comfortable."
"I look like I've given up."
"You look like you," he corrected. "I prefer it."
My heart did that thing again. The complicated, dangerous thing.
The doorbell rang. Pizza.
I grabbed my wallet, but Bram was already at the door, paying the delivery driver and taking the box with a nod of thanks.
We settled on the couch, the same couch where I'd watchedThe Thing with him, where this whole impossible thing had started to feel possible.
I opened the pizza box. Steam rose, carrying the smell of cheese and garlic and oregano. My stomach reminded me I'd only had half a piece of compressed melon before the evening derailed.
"Heaven," I muttered, grabbing a slice.
Bram took one too, eating with careful precision. His tail settled along the couch cushion, relaxed.
"Do you ever regret it?" he asked. "Leaving the force?"
"Sometimes. Tonight, when I was organizing the search, when everything clicked into place like muscle memory, that felt good. Felt right. But it's not enough to make me go back."
"Why not?"
"Because being good at something isn't the same as it being good for you." I leaned against the window frame. "I was drowning, Bram. Every shift, every call, every domestic violencecase and car accident and overdose, it was pulling me under. I couldn't save everyone. Couldn't fix everything. And it was killing me to keep trying."
"So you make soap instead."
"So I make soap instead," I agreed. "It's simple. Predictable. I control the ingredients, the process, the outcome. No surprises. No tragedies. Just... creation."
We ate in comfortable silence for a while. Outside, I could hear distant fireworks, someone celebrating Halloween early, probably. The sound made me think of Lily, safe at home now with her family. Safe because Bram had tracked her through a crowded festival and found her hiding in the dark.
"You were amazing tonight," I said finally.
He paused mid-bite. "I just followed her scent."
