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Will we make it?
Do you want to keep me?
Will you stop me from being who I want to be?
Instead, I ask, “Did we lose anyone?”
A pause. A breath.
“Not yet,” he says.
And the silence that follows feels like death.
When the door shuts behind him, I finally let myself cry.
Not the angry, hot tears that come from fear or pain. The kind that seep out slow. That leave you hollow.
I sink to the floor, curled in on myself, and cry into my knees like I did the night my mother died.
Because this uncertainty. This loss? I only felt like this when she was taken from me.
And yet, Dante’s alive. He told me he loves me.
So why do I feel like I’m grieving anyway?
Dante
There’sa special kind of irony to swearing you’ll keep the woman you love safe… seconds before the world shatters around her.
I walk the perimeter twice. Maybe three times. I’ve lost count.
The sensors are clear. The drones we hacked show no signs of pursuit. The safehouse is tight. Secure.
None of it matters.
Because I can’t go inside. Not yet. Not while the scent of her skin is still in my lungs and I’m still shaking from the thought of losing her.
She almost died.
I watched that fireball ignite in the dark andknew—just knew—it would swallow her whole if I didn’t move fast enough. I don’t even remember dragging her down, pressing my body over hers, taking the burn.
But I remember her voice.
“Are you okay?”
NotAm I okay?NotWhat the fuck just happened?
She asked aboutme.
That this thing between us was supposed to be about the contract. The heist. The control.
It was. It is. But…
Fuck.
Am I the asshole for dwelling on what I’ll do if she doesn’t love me back? How even now I flirt with a different heist. A kidnapping. The forever kind. I have the means to take what I don’t deserve.
No fucking doubt.