I crossed the room slowly and opened the top drawer.
There, tucked beneath a notebook and an old patch from my first mission, was the photo.
It wasn’t much. Just a small, printed snapshot I’d had made weeks ago. One I’d taken without her knowing.
Liz.
Sitting by the window of the café where she always stirred her tea even after the sugar dissolved, lost in thought, her hair falling softly across her cheek.
Her face was turned slightly, caught in a slant of golden light. And her eyes—thoseeyes—even frozen in ink and paper, they held me still.
One blue, one green.
A contradiction. A storm and a sky. Fire and ice.
I remembered the first time I really looked at them. Not just saw them—butlooked. Her blue eye was pale, like a frozen lake at dawn. Her green one deeper, sharper, flecked with something wild. Every time she stared at me, I felt like she was splitting me down the middle. Seeing the truth I hadn’t spoken yet.
And every time she blinked, it felt like a question I didn’t know how to answer. I sat on the edge of my bed, the photo cradled in my hands like something holy.
God, she was beautiful. Not just in the kind of way people turned their heads for. But in the way thatwreckedyou. Quietly. Permanently.
And I had lied to her.
Used her.
Turned those eyes into a challenge, not a gift. I pressed the picture to my chest and bowed my head, my shoulders heavy. I didn’t deserve the way she looked at me.
Not when she had let me see her—not the version everyone else got, but the one with grief in her smile and danger in her laugh. The one who carried silence like armor and still let herself hope.
I saw her.
The whole of her, and I’d still let the lie linger. Because I was selfish. Because I wanted her to love me first—before I gave her a reason to hate me.
My hands trembled, and for the first time in a long time, I felt close to breaking.
Those eyes… they’d haunt me if she looked at me differently. If the blue turned cold and the green turned sharp. If they didn’t soften the way they did when she was teasing me, or safe with me, or leaning her head against my chest like maybe I was the only peace she had left.
I didn’t want to lose that.
I didn’t want to loseher.But if I didn’t tell her soon… I’d lose her anyway. I closed my eyes and made myself a promise I wasn’t sure I was ready to keep.
I would tell her. Even if it shattered the fragile thing we’d built. Because she deserved to know—before her storm-colored eyes looked at me and saw nothing but betrayal.
And maybe then… she’d still believe thatsome partof me had always been hers.
Elizabeth
Just two days until the mission.
The safe house lay in calm repose, nestled among ancient pines, where the world felt distant and muted. It was a sanctuary meant for waiting, for silence, for vanishing until the moment of action arrived. Yet tonight, there was a warmth in the air, a softness that wrapped around us like a cozy blanket.
Maybe it was the wine we were sipping. Or perhaps it was Noah.
We were sprawled on the floor, files and blueprints strewn about, half-read and half-forgotten. The fire in the corner crackled softly, casting playful goldenglimmers across the hardwood. Noah was immersed in his reading, his focus intense, jaw clenched, eyes glinting with purpose. But now and then, he'd steal a glance at me, as if needing reassurance that I was still there.
“I think this guy’s lying,” he said, tapping a part of the report. “The timestamps don’t line up with his claimed movements across the checkpoint.”
I leaned in a little closer. “We know he’s lied before. A clean face but dirty hands.”
