The world tilts, the ache in my body drowned beneath a different kind of heat.
Our mouths meet—hard, hungry, every ounce of fear and relief and unspoken want igniting at once.
Her fingers clutch my vest, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away. She tastes like salt and tears and survival, the kiss rough-edged and breathless, desperate to make sure we’re still here, still real.
When it finally breaks, she’s still holding on, foreheads pressed together, breaths colliding in the space between us. The world is quiet except for our breathing and the echo of what just happened.
“I couldn’t have done this without you.” Her hand slips up to cup my face, thumb brushing the line of my cheek. Her voice shakes.
"Yes, you could have." But I turn my head to press a kiss to her palm. "But I'm glad you didn't have to.
Her breath hitches, and she's opening her mouth to respond when medical personnel with a stretcher arrive.
Medical personnel arrive with a stretcher. They check my vitals, and one of them—Jenkins—frowns at what he finds.
"Possible pneumothorax developing," he says to his partner. "We need to transport immediately."
They load me onto the stretcher despite my protests that I can walk. Carolina stays close, her hand finding mine, and that touch is the last thing I'm aware of before the pain medication they push pulls me under.
ELEVEN
CAROLINA
The hospital waitingroom is antiseptic and fluorescent, designed for efficiency rather than comfort.
I've been here for three hours while they work on Flint—monitoring the pneumothorax, ensuring his collapsed lung has fully re-expanded, checking for internal bleeding from the multiple vest impacts, all the medical intervention required when someone pushes through catastrophic chest trauma through sheer stubbornness and refuses to quit until the mission's done.
Agent Parker sits with me, nursing terrible vending machine coffee and occasionally trying to get me to eat something from the collection of snacks she's accumulated.
I can't.
My stomach is in knots, my mind replaying every moment from the terminal—the device, the firefight, Flint taking those rounds to his vest and still returning fire, the way his breathing got more labored as he maintained security while I worked.
I press my palms against my eyes, I press my palms against my eyes, trying to stop the images, but they keep coming: the way he looked at me when he said I was worth it. The feel ofhis mouth on mine. The absolute certainty in his voice when he promised to keep me safe. The way he was struggling to breathe, but wouldn't leave his post.
"Ms. Sutton?" Parker's voice is gentle. "He's going to be fine."
"You don't know that." My voice is rougher than I intend. "He's being treated for a pneumothorax because of me. Because he kept throwing himself between me and danger, kept fighting when he should have been evacuated, kept?—"
I stop, throat closing up. Kept looking at me like I mattered more than his own survival.
The truth is, I'm terrified. Not just of losing him to complications or respiratory failure. I'm terrified of how much I already feel for a man I've known less than forty-eight hours. Terrified of how right it felt to kiss him, to hold him, to promise we'd figure out what this is between us.
I'm terrified because I haven't felt this way since before Noah Parker died, since before I convinced myself that caring about people was just another way to fail them. And now here's Flint Morrison—stubborn, brave, ridiculous Flint—making me feel things I thought I'd buried for good.
Making me want things. Making me hope.
"I barely know him," I say quietly, more to myself than Parker.
"Sometimes that doesn't matter." Parker sets down her coffee. "Sometimes you just know."
I look at her, seeing understanding in her eyes. "Is it always this terrifying?"
"If it's real? Always." She offers a slight smile. "But that's how you know it's worth it."
He took multiple rounds to his vest for me. Fought with cracked ribs and a developing pneumothorax. Nearly suffocated maintaining security so I could focus on disarming a bomb. And I didn't even realize how bad it was until Device Four wasneutralized and I turned to find him propped against a pillar, pale and gasping for air.
"He's going to be okay," Parker says for maybe the fifth time. "The doctor said the pneumothorax has been successfully treated, no permanent damage. The ribs will heal. He'll be on medical leave for a while, but he'll make a full recovery."
