6.

"You doing okay?" Griffin asks. He's got a hand on her shoulder. Sophia pulls his arm around her neck and leans back into him.

"Yeah, just thinking," she answers.

"What's on your mind?" he asks. She doesn't respond. He strokes her hair. "I wish I didn't have to go too."

"You ever think about maybe, you know, getting married and settling down?" she says. He snorts and kisses her. She loves him, Sophia's whole body remembers. How much she loves him has very little to do with how much he's here and how much he's gone, with who or what she does when he isn't here. She's lucky to have Griffin any way she can have him. He deepens the kiss, its tenderness, its completeness.

A phone buzzes on the coffee table, and both of them turn around, startled. "Mine," Sophia says.

"Don't answer."

"You're telling me not to answer work? You, honey, can't tell me not to answer work." Sophia disentangles herself from her husband's arms and reaches towards the coffee table.

"Touché," Griffin sighs, stroking his hand down her spine.

"Sophia Russo."

"Got a minute?"

It's been a while since Sophia's heard the voice, and it takes her a minute. "Just a second," she mouths to Griffin, who shrugs his shoulders and nods, then ducks into the bedroom to finish packing. "Kalinda?" Sophia says. "What's going on?"

"Um. I could be in trouble," Kalinda says. She sounds preternaturally calm, the version of herself that Sophia remembers from years ago.

"What kind of trouble?"

There's a pause, and Sophia swears she can see Kalinda pursing her lips. "The kind of trouble," Kalinda says finally, "that might require an investigator."

"Um … too bad there aren't any investigators in your apartment right now," says Sophia.

"Sophia, I think I need …" There's another pause. "I need help."

Sophia is not certain she's ever heard Kalinda refer to her own needs before, not even in bed. "Do you have a lawyer?"

Kalinda sighs. "In a manner of speaking," she says. "But it's a little more … complicated than that."

Sophia recognizes how closely she is listening, to whatever is behind Kalinda's voice, to any hint in the words of what's going on, what's needed. The inconvenient image of Kalinda naked, waiting on the bed for her, the signs of pleasure Sophia finally learned to see brushing across her face like breezes over still water. Sophia glances over her shoulder at Griffin, not wanting to acknowledge that she's already hooked.

"All right," she says, finally. "Tell me what I need to do."

She can hear Kalinda smiling. "Could I see you tonight?"

Griffin is folding a pair of socks together, stuffing them carefully inside his sneakers. The gesture sends a pulse through Sophia's nerves. "I can't tonight," she says.

"Oh."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's good," says Kalinda.

"That bar by your office? You are still with Lockhart/Gardner, right?"

"It's Lockhart and Associates now." Sophia opens her mouth, but Kalinda interrupts before she even gets a word out. "Complicated. But yeah. And yeah."

"Say eight?"

"With the case I'm working on? Make it nine." Kalinda's voice drops about an octave. "I'm really looking forward to it."

The blood rushes to Sophia's groin. Sophia hates, hates, hates that Kalinda can still make her do that. "Yes."

"Sophia? Thanks." She's hung up before Sophia can answer.

Sophia notices her breath is so quick she's almost panting, and she drops to the couch to gather her wits. It's been months, practically a year, and she hadn't thought Kalinda still had that kind of control.

"You all right?"

Sophia hadn't even noticed Griffin come in. "Yes, I'm fine."

"What's on your mind?" He strokes her hair and then leans his lips down into hers. Sophia sighs her frustration and confusion into his mouth, imagining the tiny plum lips and the delicate tongue that teases at her thighs and her pulse point, furious that she wishes Griffin were gone already.

"Nothing," she says, and kisses him back, not thinking about tomorrow.