Page 99

Her voice was rough. “I’m afraid I’ll break you.”
“You can’t break a SEAL, babe. We were born of water, fluidity is in our DNA, and I’ll never back down from a challenge. I don’t want to break you. I can’t…handle that anymore, Quinn.”
She took a step forward. Her body ached, deep, bone-level pain, but all her cuts and bruises, all of Dagger’s, had been treated by Twister. His hands had been so gentle. After what she and Dagger had gone through in Herrera’s compound…Things she couldn’t explain.Not even to herself. She didn’t want to try. She just wanted to wrap herself in him, his arms, his breath, his steadiness, and put all the madness behind them. Even though her ribs screamed with every step, every breath, she just wanted him to hold her. Just for a moment. Just to remind herself that whatever judgment…verdict…moved through that place…they survived it. Together.
“You won’t,” she said softly. “I already broke. I burned. I bled. I made you bleed.”
The room was quiet, hushed, the moment of her reckoning, the moment of her stark truth.
Outside, the compound was a flurry of movement—SEALs, medics, reports being filed, wounds being stitched. But here, in the stillness, the real damage remained.
Quinn stood in the center of the room like she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Her arms wrapped around herself, shoulders hunched, eyes glassy and distant. Dagger didn’t speak. He just watched her, watched the cracks in her armor finally start to split open.
“I didn’t grieve for him,” she said suddenly, her voice thin, aching. “I thought I did… but I didn’t. I drank. I ran. I buried everything so deep I convinced myself I was okay. But I wasn’t. Iwas just a coward… and too ashamed to admit it.” She laughed, hollow and broken. “I thought I was strong. I thought my anger made me righteous. But it didn’t. It just made me blind. I couldn’t see the damage I was doing to myself, to you, to the boys.”
Her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor, curling in on herself. “You were right,” she whispered. “I didn’t grieve for him. I grieved who I thought I was supposed to be. I let that lie destroy everything.”
Dagger dropped to his knees beside her, arms slowly wrapping around her as she shook, the sob finally breaking loose from her chest. She didn’t fight it this time, welcomed the pain in her ribs, in her heart. Didn’t hold back. She cried for Brian, for her treatment of Kade, for her children, for herself, for everything she’d lost and never dared admit.
Then he broke too.
“I let him haunt me,” he said quietly, forehead pressed to hers. “I carried him like a weight I couldn’t put down. I told myself I was honoring him, but I was punishing myself too. I kept thinking I could’ve done something different. Saved him. Saved you.”
Their foreheads touched, tears slipping down both their faces.
“But he’s gone,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re still here.”
They held each other in the silence that followed, not out of passion, but out of shared grief, shared release, shared healing. The storm had passed. The wreckage remained. But so did they.
Their foreheads pressed together, Quinn's sobs softening into breathy trembles. Dagger’s arms stayed wrapped around her, steady, unshakable, even as his own shoulders began to tremble.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. The words came from some hollow place in her chest, cracked and shaking. “I should’ve said it a long time ago. For blaming you. For making you carry all of it. For punishing you when you were the only one who stood by me.”
Dagger didn’t speak, but she felt it in the way his breath hitched, the way his fingers curled tighter at her back.
“You never quit on me,” she said, voice thick. “You never pulled away, never made me feel like I wasn’t worth the fight. I didn’t understand what it meant to really love someone… not until you.”
She leaned back just enough to see him, her hand brushing his cheek, thumb catching a tear he didn’t try to hide.
“I was so afraid,” she said. “Afraid that if I let go of my anger, it meant I was betraying Brian. That if I stopped hurting, it meant he didn’t matter. But it’s not true. I see that now. Grief isn’t proof of love. Living is.” Her voice caught on a breath, she clasped his beautiful face between her palms. “I want to live, Kade. With you. With our children. Your sons.”
His face contorted, and she kissed him softly. “God, I love you so damn much.” For a moment she stared into his eyes. “You have no idea what kind of man you are, do you?”
His eyes welled. “I only want to be the kind of man you need, Quinn.”
“I was such a fool,” she whispered, her heart breaking, filled so full of her love for him, for his team, for their beautiful sons. “I held onto the ashes, thinking they were all I had left. But I wasn’t honoring him. I was only continuing to destroy myself.”
She hesitated, her gaze dropping briefly before lifting again, fierce and wet with clarity.
“But I’m done hiding from the fire. I’m done pretending I’m still who I used to be. That version of me burned.” A pause. “Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s what had to happen.” Herhand pressed to her chest, her voice barely a whisper. “To be reborn, I had to be willing to burn.”
She didn’t fear the fire anymore. It had carved her into something stronger. He made her stronger.
Dagger’s eyes shone with grief and reverence, but also something else,pride. Quiet, aching pride.
“Do you think Brian could forgive us?” he asked softly.