Nolan finally smiled. “You know,” he said slowly, “when I was a rookie—the real kind, not the TV kind—I learned that you can’t control the number of seasons, cases, or bad days coming your way. You just show up. Episode one. And you trust the process.”

Nolan rubbed his temples. He’d been a rookie once—late in life, full of questions. But never about television.

For the next twenty minutes, the only sounds were the opening credits of a show about a late-blooming cop and the occasional snort from Celina when something mirrored a real LAPD story Nolan had once told her.

Detective Celina Juarez stared at her phone, thumb hovering over the search bar. The precinct bullpen was uncharacteristically quiet for a Tuesday night—just the hum of the vending machine and the distant clack of a keyboard from Nolan’s desk.

“They’re saying season eight is in talks,” she whispered.

She sat back down, pulled up a streaming app, and hit play on Season 1, Episode 1.

“Seasons.” Celina held up her phone. “ The Rookie . Someone in a true-crime chat just asked how many seasons there are. And I realized… I don’t know.”

And for the first time that night, Celina Juarez stopped counting and just watched.