Better than Pain.
I shove the box back in before my heart starts swelling too much for me to handle and pull on the morgue hoodie and tug the linebacker sweatpants up over my hips. They are hilariously oversized and exactly perfect.
If Pain were here, I just know he would bitch about me getting lingerie in my size but sweatpants built for a barbarian. Which is precisely why it’s a relief he isnotcurrently here to witness any of this.
I shove my feet into the skull socks and take one last slow look around the room. It shouldn’t mean anything. It shouldn’t get under my skin. A bed, clothes, soap, hot water, softness, they’re normal things.
But they’re also evidence.
Someone thought of me, not just the tool I am.
And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.
I square my shoulders.
Time to face the welcoming committee.
Who knows?
Maybe I’ll want to drop to my knees for them anyway.
I don’t even reach the common area before I hear Cassian’s voice. It’s so low that it almost blends in with the generator hum.
“...supposed to tell me when she wakes up,” he’s saying. “Why am I only hearing about it now?”
“Because you were upstairs trying to break the door off the storage room like a lunatic, that’s why,” Nathaniel replies.
“Cut the bullshit,” Cassian snaps. “Move, Talon. I’m going to see her.”
“She should be here any minute,” Nathaniel says. “I told her to meet us in an hour, when—”
“Fuck that.”
The last part is louder—angry thunder walking toward me—and then I round the corner and almost collide with it. A wall of hoodie, muscle, and very controlled fury.
We both freeze.
For one long, silent second, he just stares. His chest is rising and falling like he’s just run a marathon, but his eyes… they’re wild in the softest way, like he can’t believe I’m standing here.
“You’re awake,” he says at last.
I tilt my chin up, forcing my lips into something between a smile and a smirk. Anything to keep my pulse from showing.
“Hello to you too, big guy. Miss me much?”
I expect a grunt. A scoff. Some sarcastic comeback. Not this.
He moves faster than I can breathe, closing the space between us and wrapping me up like I’m something he’s afraid to lose again. His arms are all heat and weight and safety, and for a split second, I forget how to breathe. Cassian doesn’thug.
But God, when that warmth seeps into my bones, I melt.
“Does that mean yes?” I whisper into his chest.
He doesn’t answer. Just exhales—hard—and then untangles himself, gripping my shoulders like he’s checking I’m solid, real, here.
Then he takes me in. Head to toe.
“You look like hell,” he says flatly, and there’s something almost tender in the insult. His eyes drag over the hoodie, the loose sweatpants, and then I swear I see it. That flicker in his eyes, that stray thought wandering straight to what’s under the clothes.
