Page 127 of Double Down

I take a deep breath, struggling not to cry with the truth of it.

I guess maybe Conrad feels the same truth as I do.

I’m led out of Conrad’s bedroom into the living room. The low wooden coffee table has been cleared and the sofa’s been pushed to the outer edges of the room.

Conrad stops me in front of the table and lets the rope drop from his fingers before pointing to the ground, silently telling me to kneel.

As I lower, Atticus steps to my side, his hands pulling my hair into a tight high ponytail.

“I’m disappointed,” Atticus says, matter-of-fact, like a diagnosis. “You kept information I could’ve used two days ago. That video changes everything. I could have trapped our ghost sooner. You wasted valuable time and invited incalculable risk.”

“I was scared,” I say.

“Next time,” he says, “be scared with us. Don’t make me fight battles blindfolded.”

He tips my head, inspecting my face the way he inspects a long line of code. Not unkind, but not forgiving. Then he presses his mouth to my ear. “Breathe, Kitten.”

I do.

In and out, slow deep breaths that come out shaky at first. My shoulders drop a little as I relax.

Maverick’s hands settle on my shoulders from behind, warm and heavy, and then slide down my arms, slow enough to make me feel owned and safe and seen.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet, and a little broken.

“You didn’t trust me,” he says. “After last night, after everything between us, Firebird. We talked for hours, and I thought we were past this. You’re making me doubt that.”

He lets the words hang in the air, cutting deep before adding in a hushed, wounded whisper, “You hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.

“Don’t say sorry yet,” he murmurs. “Earn the apology you’re going to make.”

Storm crouches to my right so we’re eye to eye. He doesn’t smile. There’s something raw and steady in his gaze.

“When you kept that secret, you made everything complicated,” he says. “You put yourself in the middle of a target and then tried to body-block the bullets by yourself.”

He shakes his head once, slow.

“You don’t carry monsters alone anymore. That’s not being part of us, being a part of this team. That’s suicide. I won’t let you go, angel. Don’t leave me. I will follow.”

His words land like a weight lifted, and a weight added, both at once. I nod as a sob breaks free, and my eyes sting.

Conrad stands, and the air shifts again. “Good,” he says, like he accepts nothing and everything. “Now we begin.”

Atticus pulls me to my feet, then with one hand on my waist and the other on my shoulder he has me bend forward, keeping my ass high in the air with my hands planted flat on the table.

I brace for the hiss of a belt, but it’s not the belt that comes. It’s his hand, bare and hot, landing with a crack that rocks me forward. Fingers lock at my hips, steadying me before I can fall.

The next strike blooms with heat over heat; my breath stutters but I hold it, eyes open, jaw set. Tears track anyway, not because I’m breaking, but because the sting is loosening something I knotted tight.

The rhythm finds me and I let it—counting in my head, exhale on four—until the shame unspools with the breath.

“She’s warm,” Atticus says, breath clipped. The edge of his shoe nudges my feet farther apart. Cold air ghosts between my thighs. I can feel their attention as a second kind of temperature.

“Color?” he asks.

“Green.”