Except I can’t, because it happened in the real world where there is no undo button and Knight Hayes looked at me like I’d just knocked a wall out of his chest.
And then he said he believed me.
Which is somehow even worse.
Hours later, my brain is still replaying it on loop as the sky outside the cabin goes from dusty pink to deep indigo. The treesbecome silhouettes. The forest noise grows louder. Crickets. Wind. The occasional distant crack of a branch.
We’ve done our night check-in with Arrow and the gang. No big updates. Dean’s team is still chewing on Cathedral. ALFA07/Helios is still a slippery bastard with too many proxies and not enough mistakes.
So we wait.
Again.
The worst.
Knight kills the light over the table, leaving just the small lamp by the couch. It throws a warm puddle across the worn rug, makes the tiny cabin feel almost cozy if I ignore the potential for armed intruders.
I hover in the hallway like a ghost that doesn’t know where to haunt.
Knight’s in the kitchen, rinsing our mugs. His shoulders look broader in the low light, his t-shirt clinging to the line of his back. He moves with this quiet economy now, a little more relaxed than this morning but still coiled underneath like he’s never entirely off.
My heart does a traitorous little flutter.
You told him you love him.
I press my palms against the doorframe and rest my forehead there, silently screaming into the wood.
I didn’t mean to.
That’s a lie.
I did.
I’ve meant to for years.
I just didn’t mean toactually say it.
“Lark?” Knight’s voice cuts through my spiral. “You dying over there?”
“Just doing some light existential panicking,” I call back. “It’s fine.”
He appears at the end of the hall, dish towel slung over one shoulder, eyes scanning my face like he’s assessing damage.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
God, I’m so tired of that question being complicated.
“I will be,” I say. “Once we get some sleep and no one tries to kill us today.”
“High bar,” he says dryly.
He leans a shoulder against the wall across from me, close enough that I can smell soap and coffee and something that’s justhim.
His gaze dips to my mouth.
My stomach flips.
We stand there for a long, stretched-out moment, the air between us thick with everything we said earlier and all the things we didn’t.
