Author's note: Here we are, final chapter. The ride is slowly coming to an end. Thanks for hanging with me if you made it this far. I still don't own them, Universal Pictures does, but I had fun taking them out to play.

VIII

STEP TEN: HANG UP AND KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY

Eighteen months later (with good behavior)…

Jimmy kept up an incessant banter for most of the drive home, catching up Clyde on every little thing that had happened in town for the past year and a half. He'd been considerate enough to stop at the Shoney's Pit Stop to pick up a to-go box of their breakfast platter before picking up his brother at the prison, knowing Clyde was sick to death of the tasteless eggs, soy bacon, and powdered milk he'd had every morning in lock up.

The first thing Clyde had done upon release was tear into the envelope of his personal possessions to retrieve his horseshoe ring. Having the ring back, feeling the sun through the truck windows, breathing in the scent of mountain air instead of the stench of bodies in a confined space, and enjoying real food was beginning to make Clyde feel somewhat human again.

He was somewhat surprised the Jimmy had come to pick him up alone. "Where's Mellie?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Something about trying hairstyles for when Sadie goes on the Kids' Baking Championship. I heard them say something about tofu for your welcome home dinner tonight, so if you want to, we can stop at KFC after we head home from Duck Tape."

Clyde made a face at the notion of tofu. "Thank you."

"We got a postcard from Joe Bang. He and Fish and Sam opened up another cantina down in Ensenada. He calls it The Margarita Villa…they're still sorting that out with Buffet's people, copyright law and all, so I'm not sure how that's gonna turn out," Jimmy cheerfully his non-stop chatter. "He said the tourist business is real good, 'cept for all them hurricanes keep flooding him out. Probably not a good idea setting up shop right on the beach. They invited us to come visit, you know, once your parole is over and you can leave the country and all. And, hey, do we know who 'Bob' and 'Loretta' are and why they sent us an invitation to their wedding?"

Clyde grunted a vague affirmative. He had set aside the empty breakfast container and was looking through the duffel bag that Jimmy had brought. As he'd hoped, Clyde found a prosthetic arm in the bag. He was surprised to see that it was the prosthetic arm that the VA gave him, the one Duane had shot up. It had been carefully repaired, almost like the damage had never occurred.

"Where'd this come from?" he wanted to know. Clyde had given the device to Sarah. He'd figured her promise to get it repaired had been as phony as the rest of her undercover identity.

"Mellie found it on the porch a few weeks after the trial." Jimmy fidgeted a bit. "There's a note, if you wanna read it."

Clyde saw the envelope taped to the arm. His name was neatly printed in Sarah's handwriting. He recognized it from the two dozen letters she'd sent him while he was in prison.

Duane Dawson had visited during Clyde's first month in prison. He'd wanted to tell Clyde that Lindsey Dawson found a business card from Agent Sarah Grayson with a handwritten note on the back reading: "Call me if you need anything. Anytime." Lindsey had ended up asking Sarah for help with her father's case, since the judges, not too happy about the gun possession and PTSD episodes, had tried to have her moved into the foster system. Sarah had hired a shark of an attorney for Duane and Lindsey. In the end, Duane avoided a jail sentence and became an outpatient with the VA Hospital. He was granted the rights to visits with Lindsey under the supervision of her court-appointed guardians, Mike and Chloe Miller.

Clyde balled up the envelope and pitched it out the truck's window. He would have gladly thrown the prosthetic out the window, too, if he'd had any means to replace it. He wasn't interested in Sarah's guilt gifts.

He caught Jimmy giving him a strange look. "What?"

"Hey, I get it." Jimmy held up one hand defensively. He changed the subject. "The bar's doing real good. I opened a second one down in Charleston. It's making enough money that I could quit the Home Depot. Figure if we play our cards right, we can open a whole chain of Duck Tape lounges across West Virginia. What do you think? We could be the rich, C.O.O. types…"

Clyde was concentrating on the straps of his prosthetic. "I don't know anything about working in an office."

"What's to know? We just got to sit behind desks and be all boss-like. Let the employees do the rest. You know all there is to know about managing a bar," Jimmy encouraged him.

"That's not the same as running a corporation."

Jimmy shrugged. "The skills transfer over."

Clyde wasn't sure about that, but it was easier to humor Jimmy, at least until these big ideas of his started skewing towards the illegal. Clyde'd had enough of jail cells for one lifetime. "Sounds like Rudy's doing a good job."

He saw that same, odd look cross Jimmy's face. Jimmy leaned one arm on the driver's door, removing his cap to scratch the top of his head. Stalling. Clyde's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Yeah, uh, about that…" Jimmy took a breath and explained in a rush: "Rudy started stealing from us. In hindsight, we probably should have known that was a possibility."

Clyde gaped. How had Jimmy never mentioned that during any of their talks in the last year and a half? "What?! Who's been running the bar?"

Jimmy waved a hand again, but he still had that hesitant look in his eyes. There was definitely something he didn't want to tell Clyde. "Don't worry, now. I hired us someone I knew for sure wasn't the thieving kind."

"Who?"

"I just want you to keep an open mind, because, on the surface, this is going to seem like a bad idea…"

"Who?!"

It would be easier to just show him. Jimmy took the highway off ramp and headed for the lounge, Clyde glaring at him the whole way. As they turned into the bar's parking lot, the knot in Jimmy's stomach had grown into full-on acid reflux. There was no 'easy'. Clyde was going to kill him no matter what.

As they pulled into a parking space, the manager in question stepped out of the bar to wait for them on the porch.

Jimmy saw the twitch as Clyde clenched his jaw.

Clyde growled at Jimmy. "You. Rat. Bastard."

Fourteen months earlier…

Jimmy had once spent a week nursing Bobby Jo through a bought of norovirus (for which she blamed him, convinced he'd picked it up from the equipment at his gym) while taking care of a colicky baby Sadie, dodging a landlord who was determined to collect three months of back rent, and talking his angry employer at the coal mine out of firing him for missing work (as Jimmy was out of vacation days).

Life had been a lot less stressful then.

After Clyde began his a two-year prison sentence for the jail break, Jimmy's time was consumed by days spent working at Lowe's and evenings of trying to be manager, bookkeeper, and bartender at Duck Tape. Clyde had made it look easy, but most of the time he was so reticent that it was hard to tell what was going on in his mind. Clyde hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow at Max Chilblain's insults before he'd walked outside and torched the man's car. Maybe he was tearing his hair out as often as Jimmy when there was no one in the bar to see.

Hiring Rudy to manage Duck Tape had lasted all of six weeks. Jimmy knew enough about bookkeeping to tell that the man was skimming unsubtle amounts from the bar's profits. As Rudy was an accomplice to the speedway robbery, Jimmy felt it was best not to bring the law into the matter. He'd expressed his frustration with Rudy's betrayal of the code of 'honor among thieves' by tossing his final paycheck into the bar's dumpster and following up that gesture by chucking Rudy into the bin.

That left Jimmy to keep his brother's business running. It was the least he could do, after all. However, the long hours of walking at Lowe's and standing behind the bar was doing nothing to help Jimmy's bad knee and the commute was eating into what precious little time he had to spend with Sadie.

After two days of that frantic schedule, Jimmy had started searching in earnest for a new manager for the bar.

He was up to his elbows in chaos shipments and invoices when one of the hostesses had knocked on the office door: "You got a walk-in applicant, Jimmy. You got time to talk to her?"

"Not really…" Jimmy was playing phone tag with the wine vendor and the guy who was supposed to be repairing the soda machine but was in Nashville for some reason instead.

"She drove all the way down from Virginia," the hostess added.

Jimmy took a breath and exhaled, willing himself to find a reserve of patience. "Long way to come for a job interview," he conceded. "All right, fine, then, I got about ten minutes before I need to head out. Send her back."

He was quickly distracted by his phone conversation again, only half paying attention when the office door creaked open and the applicant stepped into the tiny room. Jimmy waved her to the chair next to Clyde's desk without looking up from the stack of files he was sorting until the whole tower of paper spilled onto the floor.

The applicant kneeled to help gather the scattered folders. Jimmy nodded thanks, finally looking up at her.

He forgot whatever he'd intended to say to the wine vendor, too shocked at the sight of person standing in front of him.

It was Agent Sarah Grayson…or Sarah Butler…whatever the hell her real name was. Jimmy couldn't care less. His vision went red.

"Ronnie, I'm gonna have to call you back, someone just walked into my office." Jimmy almost missed the cradle in his haste to hang up and kick Sarah to the curb (literally if she didn't get her skinny ass out of his sight quickly. He wasn't scared of her 'Vulcan neck pinch' thing.). "Oh, hell no! You need to get out of here before I forget you're a lady and get myself arresting for punching a Federal agent."

Jimmy attempted to catch her elbow and steer her towards the door, but Sarah effortlessly side-stepped his lunge. She settled herself into the plush guest chair as casually as if she were chatting with an old friend.

Sarah raised an eyebrow at his warning. "Well, considering I'm not a Federal agent anymore, hitting me wouldn't be illegal…but it would be bad manners. I've been told your mama would frown on bad manners."

Jimmy frowned in confusion, so she explained herself: "I figured you'd question my sincerity if I was still in the law enforcement field."

He tossed the application back into her lap. "Why'd you come here?"

"Clyde won't talk to me."

Jimmy made a derisive noise in the back of his throat, marveling that she'd had the nerve to even attempt to speak to Clyde much less show up at the bar. "I don't want to talk to you, either."

Sarah let his contempt roll off her. She hadn't expected a cordial greeting. In fact, she hadn't known what to expect. She pressed on: "I wrote to him, but he doesn't answer my letters."

"I would say he's smart enough to know that it's not a good idea for an inmate to accept letters from a Federal agent-"

"I'm not an agent anymore," Sarah repeated. "I'm actually teaching a couple courses on criminal justice at Mountwest College now."

"-and didn't I just say that I don't want to talk to you either? I don't need you here harassing me because you feel guilty, which you should, by the way. You can leave the same way you came in." Jimmy returned to his seat behind the desk and his stack of paperwork, waving to her towards the office door dismissively.

She didn't budge an inch. "I don't feel good about what happened, Jimmy, and normally I feel pretty okay about sending people to jail when they do something to earn it. I'm told I can be a little relentless."

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. "No kidding. Tell me-the whole spying on my family and pretending to be in love with my brother so you could dig up evidence, were you 'pretty okay' with that?"

He saw her wince. "I'll admit, a good lawyer could make an argument that I'm harassing your family. And I am in love with your brother."

"Bullshit."

She opened her mouth, but he slammed his hand on the desk. He'd heard enough of her crap. "No, no, no! You don't get to say you love him when you're the reason he's in jail!"

Her gaze narrowed and she turned the swivel chair so that he could get the full effect of his stare. The hair on the back of Jimmy's neck stood on end from the weight of her scrutiny. He'd been married long enough to recognize the gaze of a woman who was about to verbally rip off his balls and hand them to him.

"Presumably, you love him, and you sent him to jail. It doesn't seem fair to hold me to a different standard," Sarah fired her opening salvo.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

She paralyzed him with her unwavering stare. "It took me awhile to piece it all together, but I figure the reason Clyde decided to crash his car into that convenience store was because you asked him for one of those 'cauliflower' favors. He got three months for that as I understand it?"

Sarah might have been a retired Federal agent, but she still could spot the telltale signs of guilt in Jimmy's reaction to her words-the tension in his posture, the way he momentarily averted his gaze…the dumbfounded expression as his mouth fell open in surprise.

"I'm also guessing that breaking out of jail to rob the speedway fell under the umbrella of that 'cauliflower' favor, so I could argue that you sent him to jail twice whereas I only did it once. That's presuming we don't count the time he went to juvy because you stole a car." Sarah leaned forward, folded her hands on the desk in front of her. "So, it seems unfair that you get to send him to jail…repeatedly…and claim you love him, but I don't get the same privilege."

"I—what—he told you about the cauliflower thing? I don't-" Jimmy's head was starting to spin. He pulled a bottle of beer out of the office mini-fridge and took a healthy pull on it. Ignoring her smirk, he tried to collect his thoughts and come up with some kind of a rebuttal.

Nothing was springing to mind.

"God dang, talking to you is like talking to a lawyer." Jimmy leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk as well, mimicking her stance. "Okay, suppose we forget the jail thing for a minute. You've known Clyde all of a week, tops…"

"What's that got to do with it? How long did you know Bobbie Jo before you knew you loved her?" Sarah retorted.

"Bobbie Jo stabbed me with a meat fork at Paw-Paw's ninetieth birthday party, so you aren't going to win this argument if you use us as an example."

"Well, if you're anything like Clyde, I can sympathize with Bobbie Jo. To be honest, I never met anyone who could make me so damned crazy in my life." Sarah rubbed her eyes, recollecting her thoughts. "How many superstitions can one person have? I never seen anyone make such a project out of walking down a sidewalk avoiding stepping on lines and bricks. You can't drive directly from one place to the other with him because you need to change direction if there's a black cat. And not just crossing his path, I mean anywhere in sight, in case it crossed his path without him seeing it. He won't drive through a yellow light without touching the sun visor—"

Jimmy knew all this, of course he did, but he still couldn't help asking: "Right? Did he tell you what that's about? I never did figure it out."

"-and look at this." Sarah fished around her pockets and pulled out two acorns that Clyde had picked up at the Blue Blazes truck stop. "I don't even know how he got me convinced to keep these in my pockets, but I'm literally afraid to get rid of them."

Jimmy sheepishly reached into his own pocket and pulled out two acorns. He never left the house without them. "I know, I know. It's like one of them Jedi mind tricks or something."

Sarah produced a small notebook (standard F.B.I. issue, Jimmy guessed). Every page was full of notes in her neat handwriting. Her voice increased in intensity as she read through the tiny book. "I had to start keeping a list: 'Hold your breath when you drive across a bridge'. No, wait, it's hold your breath when you drive past a cemetery, lift your feet when you drive over a bridge. 'Don't bring bananas on a boat'."

"Don't ride on a boat if it has the letter 'A' in its name," Jimmy interjected.

"Crush the eggshells after you crack them'. And, they aren't my favorite fruits, but I had to get on the Internet to figure out what the man had against apricots. You can't even say the word if he's in the room." She dropped the book onto his desk. "This is not a level of crazy I need to invite into my life, Jimmy!"

"So why the hell would you think you're in love with him?!" he challenged her.

"Because I love all this…" She waved to the book. "…I read all this, and I smile because it's all him. I love that Clyde is still old-fashioned enough that he opens doors for me and wrenched Wayne's fingers because he touched my thigh. My ex would have pushed me under a bus for beer money and then complained about my hospital bill. I love that Clyde will drive three hundred miles in the middle of the night or crash his car through a convenience store just because someone says 'cauliflower'. Who the hell does that? I love competing with him over who's read the most books on any must-read list and debating alien existence with the drunks while he's taking care of the bar and the way he stares when he's thinking really hard about something you just said. I even love that he hates eating dessert, but he still orders it to make me happy. And it does. It makes me ridiculously happy! Seriously. I considered bragging on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter because I got him to eat a piece of cheesecake."

Jimmy blinked. "Clyde ate dessert for you?" Sarah wasn't wrong. Dessert—like apricots-had become strictly taboo since Clyde had returned from his tours of duty. Jimmy had chalked it off to some Marine superstition thing or Clyde's on-going fear of the 'Logan family curse'. He had pestered Clyde about the dessert thing once at a party at Moody Chapman's house (mainly just to be an asshole) until his brother had dunked Jimmy's head into a fish tank.

"You know, I have nightmares sometimes that the bomb takes off his head instead of his arm. I wake up and I want to call him, just to call him and hear for myself that he's all right and tell him all this instead of having to settle for telling you-but, I can't because he's in prison, and yes I put him there, and he won't take my fucking calls or answer my fucking letters, and I hate it! So, yes, Jimmy, I'm pretty sure I love your brother! But, please, tell me how I can satisfy your criteria so that you'll believe me?"

Sarah took a deep breath, reining in the tirade. Ranting like some dingbat in a rom-com wasn't her style. The whole conversation wasn't going anything like she'd rehearsed it in her mind; 'Hate' was too soft a word for the emotional maelstrom she'd gone through in the past four months. Sarah was a woman used to being in full control of her words, thoughts, and emotions. It was that self-control and precise focus that made her good at her job…good enough to unravel a robbery based on nothing but nail polish and put one of the thieves in jail. Problem was, she hadn't had a single moment of self-control or precise focus in the whole miserable time since then. She'd grudgingly had to accept that she had no control where Clyde Logan was concerned.

Jimmy stared at her in silence for what felt to her like an eternity...not unlike the way Clyde had studied her during their conversation at the Pig & Pancake, as if gleaning all he'd needed to know about her by evaluating her answers. Sarah shifted, her normal air of confidence faltering. She had laid it all out for Jimmy. If she couldn't convince him of her honesty, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell she'd convince Clyde.

"What was the apricot thing?" he asked.

"What?"

"You said you figured it out?" Jimmy prompted her.

It felt like a test, but Sarah went along with it. "It's a superstition left over from World War II-the common denominator for all the AAV's destroyed in combat was the apricots in their rations."

He picked up the tiny notebook that was filled with Sarah's sincere attempts to understand Clyde and his eccentricities. He stared at the woman, weighing everything she'd said. Jimmy shifted his gaze from Sarah to the application. She'd even gone to the trouble to complete the paperwork, right down to her (redacted) references for her lengthy career with the F.B.I. and her sham career with 'Cooper-Tyme Pharmaceuticals'. He had to work not to smile. The woman had a twisted sense of humor.

"And going from the Federal government to managing a bar isn't a career downturn?"

"I admit, I considered taking a leave of absence instead of resigning, but I couldn't figure a way to do that without having to arrest you all later if I found out I'm right about the robbery and the whole cauliflower theory. If you haven't noticed, I have issues with letting things go." Sarah was reasonably convinced that if she had to arrest Clyde again and see that look of betrayal in his eyes, she was going to go to the roof of the J. Edgar Hoover building and jump afterward.

"You're serious about this?"

She glared at him like it was a ridiculous question.

Despite his determination to bear a grudge, Jimmy felt his anger beginning to ebb…not that he was ready to fully forgive her. Not yet. Not by a longshot. He could see why Clyde had fallen for her.

Sarah leaned back in the chair. "I just want to talk to him."

Jimmy sighed. She was a difficult woman to refuse. "He's gonna be awhile."

"I can wait."

For a minute, Jimmy prepared to leap out of the truck and run, just in case Clyde actually did try to strange him. It was a nasty trick, springing Sarah Grayson on his brother like that, but Jimmy hadn't figured out a better way to do it. Mellie had flat out refused to be a part of the scheme. Saying their sister disagreed with Jimmy taking on Sarah as a business partner would have been un understatement. For the first five months following Sarah's reappearance, Jimmy had checked under his truck for punctured tires, slashed brake lines, or bombs (God knew Mellie could be vengeful when she was mad). Clyde's welcome home dinner was the first meal he'd been invited to share with Mellie in over a year.

Except that Jimmy was legitimately scared he wouldn't live to eat that dinner from the way Clyde was glaring at him now.

Jimmy felt behind his back for the door handle, not daring take his eyes off Clyde. He didn't truly think his brother would kill him, but, on the other hand, Jimmy didn't want to be wrong and be punched hard enough to shove the bones of his nose up into his brain.

He hurriedly explained: "She said she's been writing to you the whole time you've been in jail and you don't answer. She used her fake identity, too, so no one would find out it was a Fed writing to you."

Clyde fumed.

"She quit her Fed job just so we'd know she was serious," Jimmy added.

"Me not answering her letters WAS my answer." What the hell had possessed Jimmy to think Clyde was going to be okay with…this whole situation? Did his brother have no concept of loyalty? Clyde hoped the warden hadn't given away his cell yet, because he was going to strangle Jimmy. He wondered if Mellie was really off doing Sadie's hair or if she was staying away because she'd been part of the conspiracy.

Jimmy snatched up the duffel bag and dropped it on Clyde's lap, hoping Clyde couldn't punch him if his hands were full. "Look, you need to try and get things settled-at least so she leaves me alone about all this. She's been driving me crazy for a year. Woman's persistent as STDs at a cathouse."

When Clyde didn't budge, Jimmy risked leaning past him to push open the truck's passenger door. "Go on. Handle your business!" he ordered.

Clyde reluctantly climbed out of the truck, expecting Jimmy to follow, for moral support if nothing else. Instead, as soon as the passenger door closed, Jimmy hit the lock and put the vehicle in gear.

"Jimmy-" Clyde said.

"KFC. I'll go get some. But, I promise, we're gonna talk about all this later. You want KFC, Sarah?" Jimmy called to the woman on the porch.

"No, thank you," she said.

Jimmy quickly backed out of the parking space, calling to Sarah as he drove off: "He threw away the note!"

With that, he was gone, leaving Clyde alone there with Sarah.

Every curve of her face, her lips, her eyes, and every line of her body beneath the light tank top and jeans, was precisely as he remembered. Her hair was shorter, and it was fairly obvious that Mellie'd had a hand in styling it (that settled the question of whether his sister had been part of this scheme). There were the slightest beginnings of circles beneath her eyes, as if from many sleepless nights, but she was still as beautiful as Clyde remembered. Not that it mattered anymore.

Sarah was nervous as hell. She felt a small thrill of joy at the fact that he was standing there in front of her, finally, but she was nervous. One hundred rehearsals of what she would say when this moment arrived fled from her mind. All she could think was that Clyde was clearly not happy to see her. She hadn't expected that he would be, but the coldness in his gaze hurt her nonetheless.

"Told you I'd be here when you got out if you wanted," she greeted.

His eyes answered her without his saying a word.

Sarah swallowed around the tightness in her throat. She didn't dare approach him, much as she wanted nothing more than to touch him and to feel his arms around her. She hid the trembling of her hands by clinging to the porch railing. "You didn't answer my letters. That was rude."

"I thought maybe you're get the idea that I don't want to talk. It's not like I was too busy to write back," he shot back.

"Did you read them at least?" she wanted to know.

"Nope."

She was disappointed. He could see the slightest slump of her shoulders and the flash of hurt in her wide eyes as the simple rebuff wounded her. He clenched his fingers around the duffel bag, resisting the instinct to reach out, to touch her and take back the pain he'd inflicted. He was amazed that such an instinct was left anywhere inside of him.

Clyde maneuvered around her to duck into the bar, which was empty at this early hour. She followed him. "Well, glad I wasted my time putting all that thought into them. I'm going to tell you what they said..."

"I ain't interested."

"They said-"

Clyde stopped, mid-step, so abruptly that Sarah bumped into him. He moved to stand behind the bar, making the countertop a buffer between them. "'I'm sorry'? 'Please forgive me'? 'I was just doing my job'? 'It wasn't personal'? Does that about sum it up?"

She answered his questions in order. "First, I'm not apologizing. You and Jimmy broke the law, that's on you, not me. Second, I'm not begging for your forgiveness for doing my job. And third…and it was personal." Sarah slid onto one of the barstools. "I tried going back, Clyde. After you went to prison, I tried going back to my old life like nothing ever happened."

It was the truth. Sarah had tried going back to work as if everything was fine, to bury herself there until the feelings that were tearing her apart abated. Every deep cover operative knew that there was a period of readjustment after the assignment was finished as they transitioned back to their real lives. That was how Sarah viewed it: Her phase of readjustment.

"I solved cases for the F.B.I. I finished the Reader's Table list of books, and every time I crossed one off the list it made me miserable because all I wanted was to go ask you if you'd read it and what you thought about it. I went to visit my sister. She couldn't figure out why the hell I'd bothered, and you know what, neither could I. I would have been happier sitting in the kitchen arguing with your crazy sister and watching Sadie trying to teach Jimmy how to cook. My friends took me out to bars, and it sucked because it was all mixologists serving fussy drinks to a bunch of overdressed people who reeked of body spray and danced to synthesized crap music. I missed hearing Patsy Cline on the jukebox and talking with Floyd about aliens. I missed you."

She hoped her words were landing with him, but as usual his expression gave away nothing. "I did that for three months waiting for those feelings to go away, but they never did. That's what the letters said, Clyde! Do you think I've written to anyone else I put in prison? I damned sure didn't sleep with any of them or quit my job and move to another state just to get a chance to talk to them again. It meant something to me, what happened with us. All of it."

There it was…her cards were on the table. Not one word of it had come out like Sarah had rehearsed. Still, he said nothing. She could have screamed. If nothing else, did he have any idea what it took for someone with her sense of justice to admit that to herself she's in love with a thief?

"You know what my friends told me?" Sarah asked him.

He waited.

"They said I needed to get laid."

The corner of his mouth quirked almost imperceptibly.

"I just wanted to see if-"

Clyde interrupted: "What? If we could pick up where we left off like nothing happened? I don't even know you, Sarah Grayson, or whoever you really are."

"No, I don't expect you to act like nothing happened. I told you before, the only thing I lied about was being in pharmaceutical sales," she answered.

"You didn't tell me you were a Fed."

"And you didn't tell me you were a thief, so I guess that squares us. I'm the same person, Clyde. The night we talked at the bar, the drive to Pittsburgh, when we danced at the Palomino, when we…" Sarah felt herself blushing. "…that night. It was rotten of me, yes, I know it, but it was still real. No more secrets, now, everything's out in the open. We can't act like nothing happened, but we can start over honest this time."

There was genuine regret in his eyes. "You messed with my family. You lied to me. And you want me to trust you again?"

"I've been doing everything I can to make things right with Jimmy and with Mellie. I've been waiting eighteen months to talk to you. Could you just give me a chance? One lousy day? An hour? You won't do that for me?"

He broke what was left of her heart with a single word. "Sarah…"

She nodded, mostly to herself. "That's it, then? All right. I thought you might want-well, it was a longshot. How about one for the road?" She pointed to the bottles behind him.

Clyde reached for the José Cuervo. "Especial, was it?"

"Yes, it was. Bad luck to toast alone, remember?"

He obligingly poured shots for both of them. Sarah downed hers in one gulp, savoring the burn of the alcohol in her throat. "Then, I guess I've only got one thing left to say to you, Clyde."

He waited, steeling himself against whatever last ditch effort she might make to change his mind. Sarah just stared at him for a long minute, until Clyde could take it no more and prompted her. "Well?"

"Cauliflower."

Clyde looked a little shocked at first. Of every argument he'd anticipated, he hadn't counted on that one.

"Did you say 'cauliflower' to me?" he asked.

Sarah grinned at him in pure self-satisfaction, waiting for what felt like forever as he considered her answer and all it implied.

Very slowly, he smiled back at her.

Fin