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“Your job?” I echoed, voice rising.
“Keeping you alive,” he replied. His eyes shuttered again. “I agreed to you being there. So it was on me to make sure you came out.”
The guilt in his tone made it feel like we didn’t.
“Webothcame out.”
“This time.” His fingers clenched around his phone. “But I keep thinking… if that guard had fired a second earlier. If Alphabet missed a camera feed. If you had flinched…”
His voice trailed off, and the look in his eyes hollowed out into something raw and terrifying.
“I know what it would’ve done to them,” he said. “And what it would’ve done to me.”
My throat closed. I crossed the space between us in a heartbeat, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin, the coiled tension beneath it.
“And what about what it would’ve done tomeif you didn’t come back?” My voice was low, but it hit like a slap. “If you died? If any of you had?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I don’t care about me.”
I nearly slapped him right then, not out of anger, but from sheer helplessness. “Well, Ido.”
The fight bled out of his shoulders all at once, and the air around us shifted. The tension softened, but not gone. Just… waiting.
“I’ve led men into hell and pulled them out,” he said quietly. “Lost some. Nearly lost others.” His eyes found mine, stormy and sharp and bleeding. “But I’ve never had to protect someone I… someone I couldn’t afford to lose.”
I placed my palm carefully over one of the bruises on his chest. My hand looked small against the damage.
“You didn’t lose me,” I said softly. “I’m still right here.”
His voice cracked on a whisper. “But it’s coming, isn’t it? The part where I do.”
My breath left in a rush. I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his chest, right above the bruises. I didn’t care if I was sweaty or dirty or shaking. He needed me.Here.
“You don’t get to push me away to protect me. That’s not how this works anymore.”
He exhaled slowly. “You’re still the mission.”
There was something uncertain in the way he said it now. Less a statement, more a question. As if he didn’t quite believe it.
“Not anymore,” I whispered, insisting. My fingers splayed wider, feeling the thrum of his heart beneath the damage. “Maybe I was in the beginning. But not now.”
“Dollface,” he murmured, pained and exasperated.
“Bones,” I echoed, matching his tone.
He made a sound—frustrated, maybe amused. His hand slid into my hair and he dipped his head to press a kiss to the crown of mine.
“Grace,” he whispered. “Tell me what you need.”
“To be here. Foryou.” It wasn’t hard to say. It was the most honest thing I’d ever felt. “You all think you’re still fighting for me. Maybe you are. But you’re the reason I’m still fighting, too. All of you.”
He fisted his hand in my hair and just held on. Like if he let go, something in him would come apart.
Eventually, he lifted his head and looked down at me. His hand slipped from my hair to my jaw, tilting my face up.
“You need a shower.”
I smirked. “Still bossy.”