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Like the words are crawling out of my throat through splinters, raw from the scream I didn’t let loose when I saw her standing there—shaken and vulnerable.
She shrugs like it’s nothing. Like she didn’t just almost get torn from this world. “I wanted to work out.”
My jaw clenches. There’s a tidal wave of emotion I’m choking down just to stay in this moment.
“The world isn’t a safe place, Maxine,” I say, quieter this time. Not a warning—an admission. A confession from a man who’s seen too much. Who’s done too much. And who knows exactly what monsters are still walking the earth, unchained.
She looks at me, something dark and tired moving behind her eyes. “I, of all people, know this.”
And fuck, doesn’t she?
Her voice carries the weight of it—months of it. Abuse. Survival. Silence. That’s the worst part. She’s not naïve. She’s not clueless. She’s just trying to take a piece of her life back, and I’m the bastard trying to tell her she can’t.
But all I can see is her face in the streetlight, seconds away from becoming a memory I couldn’t bear.
“You shouldn’t have been alone,” I murmur, swallowing the gravel in my throat. “You don’t get it, Max. If anything had happened to you...”
I trail off, because the truth is ugly.
I’d burn this entire city to the ground.
I can feel it now—the phantom weight of her body slipping from my hands. The blood. The panic. The cold sweat on the back of my neck. I can see it all, even though it didn’t happen. And that’s what haunts me. How close I came to losing her.
I take a step closer, not touching her, just needing her to feel the heat of my presence. Needing her to understand. “I’m not here because Iwantto be near you, Maxine. I’m here because Ihaveto be. Because I don’t sleep if I don’t know you’re safe.” A pause. “And I damn sure won’t survive if something happens to you.”
She doesn’t respond. But her silence is heavy. Acknowledging.
“I should teach you to fight,” I say, dropping to my knees in front of her. “Real stuff. None of that kick-the-air cardio bullshit. Things that’ll really hurt someone.”
She blinks. “You think I can hurt someone?”
“I need you to.” My voice is low, raw. “In case you ever need to, Max.”
“I don’t know that I can.”
Her fingers reach for my hand, pausing over the broken skin across my knuckles. She pulls it into her lap without asking and starts rubbing her fingers over the cuts. I don’t tell her that the movement stings against my skin.
Instead, I watch as she rises, still holding my hand, and walks me to her bathroom. She starts to clean my bloody knuckles with a washcloth. I watch the way her brows pinch in concentration, the way her lips press together like she’s holding something in.
And I break.
I reach up and cradle her face in both hands, gently, reverently, like she’s made of fragile glass and I’m terrified she’ll vanish. My thumbs brush under her eyes, across her jaw, committing every inch to memory in case I ever forget what she looks like, what she feels like beneath my fingers.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispers.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m yours.”
My chest aches.
“You’ve always been mine,” I say. “From the moment I found you, you’ve been mine. I just fucked it up.”
Her breath catches—sharp and sweet and silent. Our foreheads almost touch. Her fingers are still wrapped around my torn hand. Her heartbeat thrums loud enough for me to feel it in my bones.
I shouldn’t kiss her. I shouldn’t.
But for a moment, we don’t breathe. We just are. Her and me and the ghosts we carry.