Page 29 of Sawyer (The Maddox BRAVO Team #1)

Sawyer

Three weeks, four court dates, and more coffee than a platoon in winter.

That’s how long I give her the quiet she asked for.

It’s how long I keep one foot out of the house and both eyes locked on it, working the case to the nub while letting space do its gentler work.

We close loops: Vale folds, pleads to conspiracy and manipulation, agrees to testify against the black-listed fixer; Kestrel dissolves in a cloud of statements; Rourke learns he’s not half as dangerous in a jumpsuit under lights as he was in a mask.

Gregory sits under oath and under the weight of what he did.

He’s smaller, but he doesn’t look away. HarborShield settles into their rotation, unobtrusive, competent. The city exhales.

And me? I live in a rental in Atlantic Heights that still smells like paint, run drills with brAVO Team, file after-action reports, and try to teach my body that every midnight creak isn’t a van door finding us again.

I tell myself space is part of the mission.

Sometimes that feels noble. Sometimes it feels like standing at parade rest outside a room where your whole life is sleeping.

I don’t even realize I’m smiling until the mirror tells me. My thumbs move. Permission to trade boring for better? I send.

Dots. Then: Tonight. Seven. Gate code unchanged. A pause long enough to make me lean against the kitchen counter. Bring nothing but you.

I stand in my rental and let that settle into my bones. Then I shave like a rookie on inspection day, iron a shirt that’s never seen a crease, and try not to count miles between hearts like yards between blast craters.

Nathan is on the veranda when I pull through the gates. He lifts a hand. “We’ll keep the perimeter light and the porch lighter,” he says, reading my face the way all good guards read a client’s weather. “Go on in, Maddox.”

“Thanks for holding the line,” I tell him, because gratitude belongs in the open.

Inside, the house isn’t a fortress tonight. It’s a home. Lamps set low, windows cracked to let the jasmine ride in. Somewhere Edgar hums—old soul song turned soft. The white line she painted months ago— Never Cover —hangs in the entry, thin as breath, bright as oath.

She waits for me at the base of the stairs.

Blue dress, barefoot. Paint on her fingers like she forgot to finish washing it off. Hair down, eyes the color that started this whole war in my chest. For a second we don’t move; we just drink each other in, re-memorize edges dulled by distance.

“Hey, Soldier Boy,” she says, like a secret we share.

“Hey, Blue,” I say, because that’s what she is to me—color and oxygen.

We close distance without thinking. She stops with her fingers at my shirt placket, not touching yet.

“I’m okay,” she says. “I needed time, and you gave it. I needed proof, and the world handed some over. I needed to know that this next part belongs to us and not to the fear that barged in. I know now.”

My hands find her waist with care born from a thousand don’ts and one resounding do. “What do you want?” I ask, because consent is music and I can’t hear enough of it.

“You,” she says simply. “In this house, in my studio, in my mornings. Not as a line item on a security plan but as the reason the kettle whistles.”

I swallow, and it lands like something holy. “Copy,” I whisper, and then she’s in my arms.

The first kiss is careful—like we’re fitting a hinge back into a door.

The second forgets about carpentry and remembers fire.

She takes the collar of my shirt in both hands, pulls, and I go willingly, letting her set the pace.

Months of sleeping on chairs and walking perimeters and staring at ceilings slip off my spine when she opens against me, when her breath sighs my name in a way that rewires a soldier down to boy.

“Upstairs,” she breathes, tugging my hand. I nod and follow, not because I don’t know the way but because being led by her has become my favorite kind of map.

Her suite is different tonight—candles low, the bed new with indigo linen.

On the dresser there’s a small canvas leaning on the mirror: a zip-tie scrap buried in blue, a white line cleaving through like a trail you can trust. She sees my eyes land, nods once.

“I wanted that patch of earth to learn a better story,” she whispers.

“It did,” I say, stepping close again. “We did.”

I kiss her like that’s a fact we both can live in.

Heat rises, slow, uncoiling. She slides my jacket off, folds it with an absent grace that makes me stupidly hungry.

My fingers learn the back of her dress where the zipper hides; I move slow, giving her time to reconsider, to laugh, to stop me.

She doesn’t. The fabric whispers down, and she’s standing in soft lace and bravery.

I keep my eyes on hers as long as I can, then let my gaze travel with reverence that’s half prayer.

“Beautiful,” I say, because my vocabulary is battlefield blunt and this is the only word that lands anywhere close.

She steps into me, presses a kiss under my jaw, fingers slipping beneath my shirt. “Show me,” she says.

I do what she asks, unbuttoning slow enough to make my own hands shake.

Her palms touch my chest like they’re learning terrain she intends to paint later.

I feel more seen than stripped. When my shirt hits the floor, she tips her head, studies a scar like a curator and a lover at once, and presses her mouth to it.

I forget how to breathe correctly for a second.

She smiles against me, small and wicked.

We make it to the bed in a series of stumbles and laughter and quick, sharp inhalations when fingers find warm skin.

I lie back, and she follows, braced above me, hair slipping around us like a curtain that keeps the world out.

“I want to set the pace,” she says, breathless but sure.

“But you can take the wheel whenever you want.”

My grin is helpless. “Shared command,” I murmur. “My favorite kind.”

Her mouth traces the geography of me—the line of throat and shoulder and the places no one sees except the few who’ve earned maps.

I return the cartography, fingers sketching a path down her spine; my palms span her hip, learn its new shapes—strength and a bruise flowered into yellow and green.

She shivers when I mouth the edge of lace.

I slow, and check her eyes. She nods, a yes that’s both small and blazing.

The lace joins the growing trail on the floor.

We take our time because we can. We’ve earned a clock that doesn’t tick like a bomb.

She rides me down into the mattress with a gasp that’s all light after the tunnel.

I meet her there, hands guiding, hearts synced.

The world narrows to breath and skin and the long, rolling rhythm you make when you know you’re not stealing minutes, you’re spending them like a currency that keeps printing.

“Look at me,” she whispers as the crest builds, and I do—God, I do—until the room blurs at the edges, until her mouth opens into my name, until the only thing I know is that love feels like coming home in a body that knows the route by heart.

After, we don’t rush the return. She collapses on my chest, cheek over my heartbeat. I smooth her hair back and kiss the spot where protest and praise share a language. The ceiling is the same as it always was, but the air under it is different—cleaner, like the house exhaled with us.

“I want to say something ridiculous,” she says after a while, voice muffled in my skin.

“Please do,” I say. “Ridiculous is my favorite genre lately.”

She lifts her head. Her eyes are still starry and a little wet at the corners.

“Move in with me,” she says, like a dare and a prayer at once.

“Not tomorrow. Not in a way that drags your duffel by the strap and calls it commitment. After the sentencing. After my father’s board finishes building the scaffolding around what’s left.

When the kids finish the second half of the mural and the city looks a shade kinder.

Move in then. Bring your stupid kettlebell and the pan you claim is iron but is definitely not.

Bring the ugly mug you refuse to throw out.

Bring the way you look at me like I’m what happens after a war ends. ”

There are a lot of things I can do under fire.

Talking is not always one of them. I manage to prop up on an elbow, frame her face with my other hand, and find my voice.

“Copy,” I say, hoarse and happy and every other thing.

“And while we’re swapping ridiculous…” I lean down, fish the small box I stashed in my discarded jacket, and hold it out.

Her eyes widen, equal parts shock and oh-God-no-you-didn’t and yes-yes-you-did.

“Don’t panic,” I say fast. “This isn’t an ambush.

It’s an idea I’ve been carrying around like a coin.

You don’t have to cash it yet.” I flip the lid.

Inside, a simple band—brushed platinum, thin as the white line she painted, inlaid across the center.

“I asked a jeweler to make a line that would never rub off. When you’re ready.

Not because I need to stake a claim. Because I want to build the rest of the map with you. ”

Her hand flies to her mouth, and laughter bubbles up, the kind people make when the universe gets it right for a change. “You carried a ring in your pocket while you patrolled my hallway?”

“And in three safe houses and one command trailer,” I admit, sheepish and not. “I almost asked you when I was prying a flash-bang out from under a rolling door. Thought better of it.”