Page 13 of Code Name: Atticus

He smirked. “While on a run? Sounds like a lot of heavy breathing.”

“I’ll walk that part.”

“You know what you should do instead?” He took a step closer.

I shook my head.

“Tell me why you’re freaking out.”

My eyes bored into his as he waited for me to confess what I never would—how much I wished the passion behind his kiss was real. How much I wished he’d done it because he wanted to, not because we needed to practice.

“You wanna know what I think?”

“Not particularly,” I said under my breath.

He stepped away. “Go run, Bronwyn. But know that when you’re done, we’re going to pick this conversation up again.”

We wouldn’t, but there was no point in arguing about it now. Instead, I took off down the stairs just as fast as he had this morning.

I ran a quarter mile on a path that went from below the house and along the water’s edge. When I came to a bench, I sat down, caught my breath, then thought about placing a call to Emma.

She and I met during the same investigation where I’d reconnected with Atticus. We were the same age, both had advanced to the same levels in our careers, and while she was at Treasury and I was with the DOJ, we understood enough about each other’s jobs that an easy friendship had formed.

Kodiak had mentioned her in the briefing, and with the amount of shit his coworkers were giving him about liaisoning with her, maybe she needed to talk to me as much as I did her.

The other thing was she was one of the few people outside of Atticus and me who knew what had happened on my family’s back porch all those years ago.

“Hey,” she said, picking up on the first ring. “How’s the undercover life?”

“Not like I thought it would be,” I admitted.

“How’s Atticus?”

“Weird.”

“How unlike him,” she deadpanned, then laughed. While she didn’t know him well, she’d met him at two joint briefings wehad at K19 Sentinel Cyber’s headquarters a couple of weeks ago. He’d been in top form that day, cracking jokes to alleviate the tension the mission had brought.

“You were right.”

She sighed. “It’s happening already?”

Emma had warned me against requesting Atticus for this investigation, and every word she’d said was proving true.

“We’ve kissed a couple of times.”

It sounded like she’d dropped her cell, then picked it up. “You’vekissed?”

“Practicing being newlyweds.”

She laughed out loud for the second time. “So who instigated it? Or them?”

“He did…I think.”

“I’m hanging up. I need to see your face.”

My cell rang a second later with a video call.

“Whoa. Where are you?” she asked when I stood, facing away from the water, not thinking about the view she’d have behind me.