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“Burner… fuck, Burner was always laughing. Always had a line. So, in love with Rita, you didn’t even have to ask. You could hear it in his voice.”
He breathed out, ragged and thin. “They were mine. My brothers. Now it’s like… the more I try to remember, the more they disappear.”
She took a breath, but it caught halfway. Her fingers curled into fists on the table as she clenched her jaw. “I’m glad I came back, Nash,” she said, voice low, thick. “You were right. We couldn’t leave them behind again.”
But even as the words left her, the memories came rushing in.
Mira’s scream. Danner’s body…just gone.
The blood, the fire, the impossible ringing in her ears as the world came down. After she’d woken up, she’d dragged herself out of the wreckage half-blind, lungs burning, every inch of her body screaming.I should’ve caught it faster. Why didn’t GRAVITY listen?
She looked at him, eyes shining, voice shaking but steady.
“I remember how they died, Nash. I can give testimony to their sacrifices. Their last breaths. Their final acts. I was there. I saw it all.” Her voice caught. “If I let myself, maybe even closure.” She drew a trembling breath. “You didn’t get that.” He looked up, eyes dark and burning. “There can’t be closure without witness,” she whispered. “You’re a man who understands sacrifice better than anyone. But you can’t speak totheirlast moments. Can’t testify to what they chose. What they felt. If they gave everything to save you.”
She reached for his hand again, her grip firm.
“I know they would have.”
“That’s what tortures you,” she said fiercely. “You’re a survivor without context.” Her throat thickened. “I’m a survivor with it.” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “But the guilt’s the same. It doesn’t ease the weight. It only sharpens it.” Tears stung her eyes now, hot and unrelenting. Still, she didn’t look away. “I promise you… if I have to track down the bastard who did this to us from the grave, I’ll haunt the best damn hacker on the planet to make it happen. Iwillget you the answers you deserve.” She squeezed his hand hard. “Thank you for reminding me why we’re doing this. It’s not about you. Or me. Like you said. It’s about them.”
Nash’s mouth quirked, soft but fierce. “I’m going to make sure you keep breathing, beautiful,” he said, voice low, steady. “You are the best damn hacker on the planet. Together…” His hand tightened over hers. “We’re going to nail this bastard.”
She looked up.
Something passed between them, intangible, electric. Like heat shimmer rising off scorched pavement. In that white-hot beat between their hearts, the promise they’d made twisted into something deeper. A slow, searing current that coiled down her spine and anchored low in her belly.
He looked scorched by it. Like he felt it too. Like she was his heart magnet, and he’d stopped fighting the pull.
The hair on his arms prickled.
Her heart trembled.
Her body leaned toward him before her mind caught up.
This was an intimate danger,him,a bigger threat.In the way he saw her. In the way he made her feel real again. She could taste it, feel it humming under her skin. That wild, razor-edge thrill of adrenaline. She wanted to know everything now. Every scar. Every breath. Every piece he’d never let anyone see.
But something shifted in his eyes.
Without a word, he let go of her hand.
The break felt like recoil. A snapped wire. The ache in her chest was instantaneous, raw, and unexpected. But she understood. What they’d shared had weight. Maybe he needed to breathe again. Maybe she did too. Her gaze dropped to the table, but her mind drifted back to the night before. To her at the door, frozen. Hearing him go. Then come back. The soft sounds of pain bleeding through the connecting wall.
When she turned the knob and it hit her, the door was unlocked… it felt like the first step into her downfall. She’d planned to leave. Then she saw him writhing on the bed, silent, shoulders hunched, enduring.
Her stillness couldn’t save her from this… fromhim.
She wasn’t even sure what she was doing, invading his privacy, touching him under the pretext of soothing. Secretly caressing his nape, the skin that was softer than she had anticipated, warm against her tingling fingertips. His hair brushed against the back of her hand, and she had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound.
At her touch, he’d calmed, settled, and that reaction delved down into her core like the snowflakes had gathered around him this morning, falling with a hushed silence that touched her. This man…Still and silent. He was a rock, a foundation that was forged with iron will, and an anchor that never faltered. Inmotion, he was a storm of violent action, a wildfire roaring, a tempest whirling into a dangerous wind.
Before those debilitating and stark words stripped of pretense or mercy, she could have fled, but once he opened that beautiful mouth, giving her nothing but himself in that quiet place between their pain and a hope of healing, he had changed her.
She took a shuddering breath.
She’d invaded his privacy again to find the pills she was sure a man who was six months out of recovery would carry for emergencies. Got water while he silently endured the pain. When she massaged his temples, she wanted to be ice in the worst way. When that gorgeous jaw relaxed, she relaxed.
Tenderness filled her, and she reeled from it. Isolation had taken everything she was, everything that made her a woman, a human being, someone who cut off connection to survive, and she had been wrong. This was powerful and potent, and Nash was a force of nature.