Page 24

"We'll meet in the middle," Nash said quietly.
For the first time in months, Grace smiled. A real one.
Her finger hovered over the keyboard, a shiver running down her spine. This was the first breadcrumb they’d found. The glitches replayed in her mind, suddenly sharper.The elevator jerking, snapping her back to the drone malfunction. The impact. The explosion. The vending machine spitting every chip bag but the one she wanted. Comical, if it wasn’t so eerie. Add in the gamesmanship with Rory. Someone was nervous, and that was still very good for them.
Nervous people slipped. Nervous people showed their hands.
Maybe not the whole company. Maybe just someone inside it, or maybe a contractor who didn’t want their secrets exhumed. She closed her eyes. Breathed once.Fuck that person.
If they were hiding something, she was going to break it wide open.
Nash came in.God, could the man helpmakingan entrance?
Here thefuckI am. Let’s move. Let’s go. Let’s get this done.
“Let’s get dinner, I’m starving.” He closed her laptop firmly. “Let’s hope whoever fucked with the vending machine doesn’t have access to a restaurant.”
She laughed softly, the sound caught her off guard. “Could you be any more adorable?” She stiffened.Oh, God. Had she actually said that out loud?
She turned in her chair and just stared at him. Those almost black eyes were dancing. He was thrilled by her unthinking outburst, a direct reaction to him.
Suddenly he was close, leaning in, a warped grin appeared, and a touch of wry humor in his voice. “Yeah, I can, but my cuteness is like a weapon. I should holster it for now before someone gets hurt.”
She almost blurted.What kind of hurt?But caught herself at the last minute.
He hesitated, then met her gaze directly, and she experienced a weird sensation in the pit of her stomach. His voice had a peculiar huskiness to it as he continued, the sparkle intensifying. “You know,” his eyes went over her, “too much of a good thing…”
Breathe, Grace…just take a breath. You remember how to breathe…don’t you? Inhale, get life-giving oxygen, then exhale the bad stuff. Right, easy as pie, biological. But he was a storm of biology and anatomy. Put together by a God who loved his creation, a gift.
“I think that cuteness comes with a side of ego. You got a double holster there, hotshot?” She had to do something to dissipate this overload of sensation for a woman who had been so locked up for so long, and he was just too goddamned charming.
Then he stunned her again, and again without even trying. That grin widened into a full smile, transforming his handsome face into something lethal. That smile could ruin a woman. Was this what ruin felt like? Then she wanted his apocalypse. It knocked into her like kinetic energy pulled into a fist and punched her in the heart. She lost her breath again for entirely different reasons. Nashir Rahim turned into an intoxicating rush.
Some of that weaponized smile faded into a twisty grin. “Come on. Food, woman. We’ve earned a good meal.”
It was back in the car to the first place they came to. Italian. Both of them called outstopat the same time. He looked over. “Pasta…no brainer.”
“You’re talking my food love language.”
So, he smiled again, and she wasn’t sure if she was now working at getting him to do that like every second…
He parked, and they went inside and got a table. When they opened the menu, she asked, “What’s your go-to comfort food?”
“Lasagna. My mom…oh man, she made the hell out of that dish. You?”
She looked up from her menu, met his eyes, caught up in the pleasure of that memory about his mom’s cooking as much as he was. She wished she had something like that in her childhood, but she was lucky she got a cake on her birthday. “In college, my friends and I would go for late-night comfort food…chicken alfredo. Oh, my God, I haven’t had it since?—”
A lump formed in her throat.
“Grace…” Nash’s voice rasped out, his features softening. His tone was regretful, like he was at fault for making her remember her past trauma.
“No, Nash. It’s okay. Maybe I didn’t want comfort, maybe I thought I didn’t deserve it.”
“Fuck, Grace.” He reached out, hesitated for a moment, then covered her hand in a tight squeeze. “That drone strike wasn’t your fault. Stop doing that shit to yourself.”
“I will, if you will.”
His shoulders tensed. The smile vanished. Then he closed his eyes, like the words cost him breath. “I don’t know if I can,” he whispered. His jaw clenched as he looked away. “I can’t remember their faces, Grace. Not clearly. Just shadows, voices, shapes that slip when I try to hold on. That hurts so goddamn deep I don’t know what to do with it.” He swallowed, eyes fixed on something far away. “Kento… he was our corpsman. Decorated. Brave as hell. He patched us up under fire, never hesitated. Not because he had our backs because he believed our survival was his responsibility, and he never failed us.” He shook his head. “Riggs… that man could gut you with a look, hard as hell. But when shit got real, when someone broke down or bled too much… he was the one who sat with you. Held pressure. Held space.” Nash’s voice trembled, barely audible now.