The bar was crowded, but Riley found a little table where the two of them could sit and talk. He ordered a beer for himself and sat down to wait for Samantha. He’d had a hell of a day, but he wanted nothing more than to put that behind him and focus on what really mattered to him—his relationship with Samantha. He didn’t know if it was too soon to call it that, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t just casual dating. There was something special about her, something different about the way she looked at him, and something very different about how he felt when she did. And that kiss was like nothing he’d experienced before, and through all the craziness of the last 24 hours he’d thought about it almost constantly. 

He saw her from across the room. She was also coming from work, though he imagined that she’d had a much different day than he had, in a good way. As she walked through the sea of people, he caught himself staring again. She looked hot. Really fucking hot, and there was something about the bounce of her step that focused his attention on the rise and fall of her body. 

“Hey there,” she said, leaning in and kissing him as he stood up to greet her. “How are you doing?”

“Better now that you’re here. God that sounded. . .”

“Cheesy as hell? It’s okay, I kind of liked it.”

He smiled as they sat back down. “Yeah, I guess it really did. My day was meh,” he told her. “But I really did start to feel better knowing we’d be spending some time together.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, you look sad. I was just joking around. It’s great to see you, too. I had a less than perfect day also, but something tells me that yours was worse.”

“Why was yours bad?” Riley asked.

“Eh, nothing major. Business politics, nothing original. Just your run of the mill bad day, nothing to write home about.”

“Well at least you’re here now. You want a drink?”

“Absolutely,” Samantha said. 

Riley grabbed her a drink at the bar and took a few deep breaths while he was up there. Relax, he told himself, don’t fixate on the case. You’re here with her now, and that means something, don’t fuck it up, and tell her what you’re feeling. He went back to the table and handed her the drink. “Here you go,” he said. “And, look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to mope. I’m trying to put the day behind me.”

“What happened?”

“Emily and I met some of the sex workers of Staten Island. A lot of them, actually. That shit will break your heart.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

“I know it sounds stupid because, as a cop, I should know better, but I had this really stereotypical view of prostitutes when I went there this morning. I was imagining drug addicts, or runaways, or something I had in my mind from a movie. Instead I found young girls who were thrown out of their homes, or trafficked against their will by pimps. I wanted to save them all.” Samantha reached across the table and took his hands in hers. He felt lighter as soon as he felt her warm touch, and it made him keep going. Sometimes just being listened to was enough. “I know at this point I should know better, and that I should have a thicker skin, but it honesty threw me off knowing that one of those women. . .one of those girls might be the next victim.”

“I’m going to tell you something I used to hear my mom tell my dad, but it’s true: you can’t save everyone, but you’re a hero for wanting to. I know that’s not comforting, but it’s the truth.”

“I know,” he said. “And look, I’m going to do my best to help Emily stop this creep, but in the meantime. . .”

“In the meantime you’re here with me. Let’s toast.”

“To what?”

“To. . .to us.”

“Sounds perfect. To us.”

They touched their glasses together and each took a big swig of their drinks. As the night went on each of them had a few more drinks, and the troubles of the day started to fade away. Riley was learning to relax even more around her, and she’d taught him that expressing himself was a way to make the troubles of his job fade away, at least temporarily. A few drinks in, he wasn’t thinking about killers, or Staten Island, or solving any cases. Those things were still there, but they’d been pushed appropriately to the back of his mind, soon to be revisited, but right then the only focus he had was on the way that Samantha was looking at him. It was a different kind of look, more seductive, as though her eyes were pulling him in towards her, and he stared back, trying to read her expression. 

“I’m having a great time,” she said, holding his hands again. “But how about we get out of here?”

“You want to go somewhere else?”

“I do, actually. I want to go to your place.”

Riley hardly believed his own ears, but the look in her eye was unmistakable. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Like, right now. I wanna go right now.”

Riley didn’t need to hear any more, and there was no way that he was going to hesitate. 

She knew what she wanted and so did he. 

It was time to act.