“Do you believe me?” she asks.
I look at her.
At the girl who almost moved to Berlin and stayed instead.
At the woman who learned how to fight so she’d never feel small again.
At the chaotic girl who blackmailed her way into my missions and my heart.
I take a breath.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I think I do.”
Her shoulders loosen, like I just input the correct password.
“Good,” she says. “Because whether you think you deserve it or not doesn’t change the code, Hayes. You’re stuck with me.”
A knock on the digital door in my brain interrupts us—the mental alarm I set for our next check-in window.
I glance at the modem box.
“Time to see what the outside world’s done while we were emotionally compromising,” I say, grateful and annoyed for the distraction.
She grins. “See? Games are good for you.”
As I hook up the box and angle the antenna, my hands are steadier than they were this morning.
Dean might not have nailed ALFA07 yet.
Cathedral might still have our faces pinned to their wall.
But Lark knows more about me now than anyone aside from Gage and her dad ever has.
And she’s still here.
She’s still looking at me like I’m worth protecting, too.
That’s a patch note I don’t know how to process yet.
But I think?—
I think I want to try.
TWELVE
BED, BUGS, AND OTHER TERRIFYING THINGS
LARK
I did not mean to saylove.
It just… slipped.
One second I was ranting about patch notes and feelings and murder bounties, the next I dropped the L-word like I was casually commenting on the weather.
Iloveyou because?—
Nope. We are not rerunning that audio file. Delete. Alt+F4. Yeet it into the void.
