Rhea called within minutes. "Where are you?"
"Cafeteria. Contemplating meat and moral injury."
"Come to the corridor site after work. The stretch by the old tire shop. We need to see each other in daylight while this is still hot."
He went. She was there in work boots and a city vest, hair braided back, clipboard under one arm, the October air sharp enough to make speech careful. Behind her, the muddy strip waited for a future that still existed mostly on paper. Declan told her about the resurrected offer without softening a number.
Rhea listened to the end. "Do you want it?"
"Part of me does. The part that keeps a private museum of almosts."
"And the rest?"
"The rest remembers coffee in the rain and my father's hammer and your face when you submitted the grant. The rest is louder today. Tomorrow the museum might renovate."
She nodded. "Then we don't pretend the apple isn't there. We also don't pretend we didn't already choose a table."
"If I say no again, I need you to know it costs me."
"If you say yes, it costs me. Cost is not the villain. Hiding cost is."
They stood on the future path of the Green Spine while traffic hissed past on the wet avenue. Declan took out his phone and typed a decline that was shorter than pride preferred and longer than anger required. He showed it to Rhea before sending. She did not edit his sentences. She only said, "Send it before romance makes you cruel to yourself."
He sent it. The phone made the small whoosh that modern life used in place of a door closing. Rhea exhaled. Declan put the phone away and looked at the mud.
"Someday," he said, "there will be shade here."
"Someday," she said, "you will have a spring capital track or something better or something different, and we will fight about that too, hopefully with less theater."
"Hopefully with umbrellas."
"Buy a backup. You're unreliable in weather."
He smiled, real this time. "You yanked me out of a puddle. I trust your methods."
That evening they told Cormac about the second offer and the second no. Cormac said, "Good. Temptation should have to work for a living." Brenna, on speaker, said she was proud and also still sad about the money, and Declan said both could be true, and for once nobody needed a binder to hold the contradiction.