His eyes hold mine, something shifting in their depths. “Haven’t had much reason to.”
The simple admission hangs between us. Cooper doesn’t speak about emotions—he communicates through action, through protection, through the physical claiming that left me breathless in the safe house. This quiet acknowledgment of joy’s absence in his life cuts deeper than expected.
My hands finish their work, securing the fresh bandage with medical tape. When I step back, Cooper captures my wrist, holding me in place.
“Thank you.” The words sound dragged from someplace deep and unpracticed. “For this. For the decoding. For not falling apart when most people would have.”
Heat floods my cheeks at the unexpected praise. “I’m still breathing because of you.”
“We’re both still breathing.” His grip tightens slightly. “That’s what matters.”
Something shifts in the space between us. It’s not theecho of a train overhead or the distant rumble of city life above the tunnels.
Ten hours until extraction.
My pulse still hammers from the adrenaline of nearly being killed twice in twenty-four hours.
Cooper sits in the battered chair like it was carved from the concrete itself, ribs rising and falling beneath a chest gone taut with tension and pain.
The overhead light flickers, casting sharp shadows across his face and making him look less like a man and more like a relic of war—cut from stone and scar tissue, silent and immovable. Still dangerous.
Still—breathtaking.
Even wounded, he’s more alive than anyone I’ve ever known.
He watches me cross the space. His gaze is calm. Sharp. Unreadable. “What are you doing?”
I hesitate, the question hitting something soft and undefined inside me. My pulse skitters. I shouldn’t have come closer. But I couldn’t not.
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice softer than I intended.
And I don’t.
Not exactly.
All I know is that the ache inside me hasn’t stopped since the safe house. A slow, constant thrum that began the moment he pressed me to the wall and told me to shut up the only way I’d ever dreamed of being silenced. It’s grown louder with each step through this underground tunnel, winding itself tighter every time I glance at him and see what he doesn’t say.
It’s not lust. It’s not even comfort.
It’s something else entirely—some raw, unspeakable gravity pulling me toward him, one breath at a time.
His eyes narrow. Not in suspicion. In understanding. As if he’s decoding me with the same skill he uses to read a threat inthe dark. His body doesn’t shift. But something in his expression does. A flicker of awareness. A breath of something personal.
He knows.
This isn’t seduction.
This is me trying—clumsily, irrationally—to take care of him. A man who doesn’t want care. Who probably doesn’t even know what to do with it. But I’m here anyway. Because I don’t know how to be anywhere else.
He’s bleeding. I’m shaking. And somehow, being near him feels like the only right thing left.
His hand lifts to my hip. A touch so light it barely registers, but still—it grounds me.
“You’re trying to take care of me,” he says, low and rough.
I nod before I think better of it.
His mouth twitches, almost a smile. Not quite. “That’s dangerous.”
