Page 163 of The Silent War

I reached for her hand, untangling her fingers from the fabric of her dress. I laced mine through hers, thumb stroking over hers.

Her eyes darted between us, guilt etched across her face. “I didn’t want you to?—”

“Don’t care.” Bastion’s kissed her forehead. “Doesn’t matter what you want when it comes to this. You don’t get to sit alone in their walls and drown.”

“You think your tears belong to Adams? No, baby. They’re ours. Always ours.”

She swallowed, her lips parting like she meant to argue. Her silence pressed into me, heavy, but she didn’t pull away.

Bastion shifted her further into his lap, his hand around her waist, his lips trailing down the side of her hair. “Our girl,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Ours to hold. Ours to keep breathing.”

She closed her eyes, her forehead pressing against his chest.

I squeezed her hand tighter, kissing the back of her knuckles.

We pulled away from the curb. I had every intention of guttering that Adams penthouse floor when we torn Alexander legacy from him.

The city blurred outside, neon streaks and dark glass sliding past, but inside was silence.

Just the sound of her breathing, the faint hitch when another tear slipped.

I caught it with my thumb, tilted her chin so I could see her face. “No more hiding,” I murmured. Then I kissed her cheek.

Time. It would just take time.

Bastion’s hand cupped the back of her head, pulling her back into his chest. His lips pressed again and again to her hair, her temple, her crown.

“I don’t deserve you two?—”

“Stop.” My voice cut like a blade, but I softened it against her skin with another kiss to her palm. “You don’t decide what you deserve. We do. And we say you deserve every second of this.”

Love was a weak word for what we felt for her.

Slowly, her hand tightened around mine. She pressed her face deeper into Bastion’s chest, letting him swallow the rest of her tears.

We rode like that, silence thick, her body between us, claimed by touch and nothing else.

When the car finally pulled to the curb of our tower, I leaned close to her ear, whispering as Bastion shifted to lift her out.

“Home,” I said. “Where you belong.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

BASTION

She sat on the edge of the bed. Shoulders tight. Hands twisted in her lap.

The silence was wrong. Not her soft quiet—the kind I knew how to fill with touch but the kind that meant she was bracing.

My chest locked.

“Emilia.” My voice came low, even, though my body already knew. “What is it?”

Her fingers tightening. She didn’t look up.

“I need to tell you something,” she whispered.

The air shifted and my stomach turned. Luca stilled on her other side, his shoulders tight, but his eyes didn’t move. Waiting. Calculating.