Page 126 of Fractured Loyalties

“I thought you might not come back,” she says, the words pressed into the hollow of my neck.

“You thought wrong.”

“Did I?”

I pull her back just far enough to look into her face. The bruised softness of sleep still clings to the edges of her eyes, but what’s underneath is sharper. Awake. Watching.

“I left the house because someone made you a target,” I say. “I came back because that someone doesn’t understand what it means to cross a line I didn’t invite them to.”

“And what if it’s more than one?” she asks. “What if it’s not just Vale, or Caleb, or ghosts with burner IDs?”

“Then I burn them all down.”

Her fingers curl against my chest.

“You say that like it’s easy,” she whispers.

“It is.”

We’re nose to nose now. Breath to breath. Every word is a choice.

She presses her forehead to mine. Her voice is barely there. “What if I break something in you by staying?”

“You already did.”

She freezes.

And I feel the air shift. Not away from me. Not toward.

Just deeper.

“What did I break?” she asks, no longer soft.

“The part that thought I didn’t need this.”

She exhales like she’s been holding that breath since before I walked through the door.

Her hands rise. One to my shoulder. The other to my jaw. Her thumbs stroke along the edge of my face like she’s memorizing fault lines. Like she knows I might fracture but won’t fall.

Then she kisses me.

This time, it’s real.

No warning.

No hesitation.

Her mouth opens under mine with a desperation I haven’t earned and a certainty I don’t deserve. I take it anyway. I takeall of her. Her weight. Her heat. The way she climbs into my lap without ceremony. The way her thighs tighten around me like I’m the last real thing she can hold.

Her shirt—my shirt—bunches around her hips.

She doesn’t pull it off.

She drags my hand under it instead and presses it to the flat of her stomach.

“Feel that?” she murmurs. “That’s not fear.”

“What is it then?”