“Together?” she asked.
“Together,” I said.
We didn’t talk plans. Not yet. Not when everyone else was collapsing into bunks and the city was still burning somewhere beyond these walls. We just sat—two soldiers who’d walkedthrough fire and come out bearing the scars of it—and held the little island of warmth between us.
Outside, Hydra raged and Roger Grand counted losses. Inside, for a few borrowed minutes, there was the Team and a stove that finally stuttered to life and the small, fragile truth that we’d given one another tonight.
We’d fought their trap and we’d lived. The rest of the night would be about recovery—and something quieter I had promised myself I’d earn.
72
Elara
By the time we reached the safehouse, dawn had chased the last of the firelight from the city. The sky was a dull gray, heavy and quiet—the kind of morning that feels like the world is holding its breath after a storm.
The door groaned when Beckett pushed it open. Inside, the air smelled faintly of old wood, gun oil, and something like home. It wasn’t much—a kitchen with a dented table, a living room that doubled as a war room, and a handful of bedrooms with mismatched doors—but to us, it might as well have been a sanctuary.
Cyclone was already setting up his equipment on the table, muttering about encryption and firewalls. River dropped onto the couch and leaned his head back with a sigh that sounded more like a growl. Gage scavenged the kitchen until he found coffee. And Oliver… well, Oliver just stood at the window, eyes scanning the empty street like he didn’t quite trust the quiet.
Beckett turned to me. His voice was low, rough from smoke. “Shower’s in the back. Hot water’s hit or miss, but you’ll feel human again.”
I wanted to argue—to say I’d help Cyclone decrypt Grand’s files— I knew more than anyone about Roger Grands files. But exhaustion hit me like a wave. My hands still trembled faintly, not from fear but from adrenaline that hadn’t burned out yet. “You first,” I said softly.
He gave me that half-smile—more scar than curve. “Ladies first.”
I didn’t fight him on it.
The water was barely warm, but it washed the blood, grime, and ghosts from my skin. I braced my hands on the tile and let my mind catch up with everything that had happened. The fire. The ambush. The way Beckett’s voice had anchored me through it all.
And the way I’d almost lost him—again.
When I stepped back into the bedroom, steam still clinging to my skin, Beckett was sitting on the edge of the bed, shirt half unbuttoned, dog tags glinting against his chest. His hair was damp, and he looked exhausted—shoulders heavy, eyes shadowed—but when he saw me, the air in the room changed.
No words. Just the quiet sound of my bare feet on the old floorboards as I crossed to him.
He reached for me first, fingers tracing the edge of the bruise on my jaw. His thumb brushed it like an apology. “You shouldn’t have been out there.”
“I was right where I needed to be,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened, that soldier’s guilt flickering behind his eyes. “You almost—”
“Beckett,” I cut him off, my hands finding his chest. The muscle beneath my palms was solid, warm, alive. “We both almost. That’s what we do. We fight our way out together.”
He swallowed hard, then pressed his forehead to mine. “You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not,” I breathed. “But it’s real.”
His breath caught, and for a long, fragile heartbeat, we just stayed like that—two people who’d been forged in the same fire, finally letting the world fall away.
Then he kissed me.
It wasn’t desperate. It was deep, steady, and sure—the kind of kiss that doesn’t ask for permission because it already knows the answer. His hands slid to my waist, pulling me closer until I could feel his heartbeat under my palms. I leaned into him, letting every wall I’d ever built crumble.
When we broke apart, his voice was rough. “Tell me this isn’t just adrenaline.”
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s us.”
The next moments blurred—his shirt hitting the floor, my fingers tangled in his hair, the sound of our breathing filling the small room. Outside, the world could burn again for all I cared. Inside, there was only this—the heat of his skin, the tremor of his touch, the unspoken promise that neither of us had to face the darkness alone anymore.
