Bear’s teeth ground. He knew it was exhaustion, disorientation, nothing more. But it felt like she’d chosen the medic’s steadiness over his. After everything, after carrying her through fire, after nearly dying in her arms once and again tonight, the sight burned.
Her eyes found Bear across the space, raw for just a breath. A bruised God-you’re-killing-me-in-so-many-ways look seared through him before she shuttered it behind the steel again.
It gutted him more than the fight had.
Buck sidled up beside him, voice pitched low. “You getting your Lakota ass in hot water?” His grin was sly, but his eyes flicked toward Bailee with more than a little concern. “Man, you need to sort this out before you get yourself killed in more ways than one.”
Blitz gave a knowing nod, the corner of his mouth twitching. D-Day just crossed his arms, mouth tightening. “She off-limits, or you too worried about shitting where you eat to take the bull by the horns?”
Buck stiffened, bristling. “Was that a dig at me?”
D-Day smirked, the faintest gleam in his eyes. “Nah. You and Helen just rub off on me with the cowboy lingo.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the team, tension bleeding off into the humid night. Bear didn’t rise to the bait, but his jaw worked, eyes pinned to Bailee as Zorro steadied her. The banter washed over him, familiar, grounding, but her earlier look still branded into him, burning in a place none of them could see.
“I don’t need your smug-ass comments,” Bear said suddenly, his voice low but edged like a blade, unable to keep the peace this time. His gaze cut to them, hard enough to freeze the air. “Shut the fuck up about Bailee. She’s not a topic of discussion.”
The silence that followed was sharp, the kind only Bear could pull off. Buck’s brows rose. Blitz let out a low whistle. Even D-Day eased back a fraction, smirk fading.
Bear’s jaw flexed, the heat of his own voice still vibrating in his chest. He hated the crack in the calm, hated that he’d lost the silence he carried like armor. But he didn’t regret the words. Not one.
Then, shaking his head, Buck said under his breath, “Well, damn. You a goner, son.”
Bear didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Buck had no idea how gone. His jaw worked once, locking the words where they belonged, inside. He turned his focus back to Bailee, shutting out everything else.
Thirty minutes later, the compound smelled of soap and sweat, steam rolling off the tiled shower bay. Bear stepped out of the stall and reached for a towel, wrapping it around his waist. He wrung out his hair, the strands falling back, sticking to his jaw and brushing his shoulders. Each heavy strand was history, power he’d given up when he cut it for his brother. He would always remember that choice, the mourning it carried, the way it marked Thatcher’s sacrifice. Now, grown long again, it carried both grief and strength, his brother’s and his own. He stepped out into the corridor, body humming from the heat, ready to collapse into silence.
Bailee was there. Hovering.
Her eyes flicked over him, then held. “Are you all right?” They were smoke over ice, a blue that could chill, a gray that could haunt.
He lifted his brows. “Me? You’re the one who got shot and concussed. I’m fine. Never better.”
She nodded once, but her eyes were hollow, shadowed, and damn it to the Ancestors, Bailee was killing him by agonizing degrees, shattering him in ways he couldn’t protect himself. Her presence pulled him off balance, not just the woman she was now—fierce, distant, avoiding his eyes as if Rio had burned too deep—but the memory of her hands pressed to his stomach, blood soaking her fingers, that raw look in her eyes when she thought she was losing him.
He wanted that touch again, not the panic of Rio, but the closeness, the feel of her fingers in his hair, the tremor of her breath in the hospital when her guard slipped. Hunger gnawed at him, sharp and insistent, even now with this different kind of danger pressing in. She was weight and warmth and memory all tangled together, fucking with his mind, scattering his calm like leaves in the wind.
He hated how uncomfortable she was with him now. He wasn’t sure if it was his intensity, or the way he kept his shit together in her presence…okay, he’d admit it…he held onto his composure…barely, but she turned as if to bolt.
He didn’t know what came over him. Instinct cut faster than thought. He reached out, caught her wrist, and tugged her back into the doorway. Water still dripped down his chest, his grip firm but gentle.
For a moment, something raw pressed at his chest, words that were too dangerous to say, even in his mind. We need to talk about Rio. He couldn’t do this anymore. The way you look at me, like I’m your last breath. He swallowed them back and let the wall slam down instead.
“You’re beat up, Bailee. Don’t waste energy on me.”
Her pupils flared, her mouth trembling for a second before her defenses locked into place. She twisted her arm free.
“I’m just concerned for a colleague,” she said coldly. “That’s it. Don’t read anything into it. We work together. That’s all. The only thing that will ever be between us.”
The words hit like a round to the chest. For a second, Bear couldn’t breathe. His grip on the towel tightened, damp fabric twisting in his fist, chest aching worse than any wound he’d ever taken in combat.
Then she stalked off down the hall, her stride sharp and certain, even if her shoulders carried the tremor of retreat.
He didn’t move. Didn’t follow. He just let the hollow of her absence fill the space she left behind.
The hand he’d used to touch her twitched, the palm burning like a brand, and he fisted it against the ache of her skin. The words came out low, more to himself than anyone else. “Whatever you think you want? She doesn’t.” The work was all that existed in her mind. He wouldn’t burden her with his needs, with his words, with his fucking hunger.
Bailee’s boots struck too sharply against the floor, each step an attempt to drown out the chaos in her head. Stupid. Ancestors help her, she was so stupid. She should have gone straight to her bunk, pulled the thin blanket over her head, and shut him out the way she shut out everyone.
