“Yeah.” My throat tightened. I looked at Alejandro, watched his chest rise and fall, slow and painfully shallow.
Frank continued, “So what’s your plan? You staying a cop? You think Stanton’s gonna let this go? Asshole’s already talking to IA.”
A bitter laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “Stanton can go fuck himself.”
“Sure,” Frank said. “But the department won’t. You got pulled off the grid for nearly two days. Came back with injuries. And a story that holds together only because the Cave rewrote stuff.”
I clenched my jaw. “I’m not leaving him.”
“I didn’t say you should.” Frank pushed off the wall and stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I’m saying you need to decide which world you live in. The badge? Or this?” His gaze flicked to Alejandro again. “Because this?” He pointed. “Him and the Cave, what they do… that’s real. And it’s gonna need everything you have.”
My chest felt too tight. It hit me all at once. “Frank…” I tried, but he shook his head.
“Do you see a future with him, Levi?”
The answer came out before I could think. “Yes.”
Frank’s shoulders loosened. “Then figure the rest out. And know I’ll cover you where I can. But you can’t be half in and half out anymore. Not with him. Not with the Cave. And definitely not with Stanton on a mission to get your badge.”
I swallowed hard, my hand tightening around Alejandro’s.
“What do I do?” I whispered.
Frank gave the smallest, saddest smile. “You choose the life you want. And you don’t look back.”
Then he clapped my uninjured shoulder, nodded once, and slipped out of the room—leaving me alone with the man I loved and the weight of everything that came next.
Alejandro woke again sometime near dawn—more lucid this time, more aware of every piece of pain stitched into him. His breath hitched when he shifted, and I had to steady his shoulder, whispering, “Easy. I’ve got you.”
He blinked up at me, disoriented, confused, but present. “You’re still here,” he murmured.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. And I meant it with everything I had.
The day bled into the next, hours stretching, collapsing, reforming. Jenkins came and went. Marisol brought food I didn’t eat. The Cave sent updates I barely registered. My whole world narrowed to the rise and fall of Alejandro’s chest.
And somewhere in the long, quiet stretch of afternoon—while he slept and the house settled around us—the email to Lieutenant Davis wrote itself.
A resignation.
Short. Direct. Final.
I didn’t walk in and tell Davis face-to-face. Not when IA was circling. Not when I was on medical leave. Not when my world had shifted so violently, I wasn’t even sure I had a badge anymore. I wrote it down. Signed it. I stared at the email with a scan of the letter, thumb hovering. Then I clicked send, with Marisol posting the original. A clean break. No explanations. No apologies. I’d have exit interviews at some point, I was sure, but for now, I was done.
I looked back at Alejandro—sleeping, healing, alive—and everything inside me settled. This was the life I wanted. Him. The Cave. Maybe as a PI? Able to cross lines when I needed. And I wasn’t looking back.
A few days later, Alejandro was upright—well, as upright as someone with burns, a broken arm, and a fractured rib could be. He looked like hell. Bandages across one side of his chest, gauze at his temple, bruises blooming purple and sickly yellow. Hisbreathing was steadier but still shallow, every inhale a wince he tried to hide.
And he was grumpy as sin.
“This is stupid,” he muttered, shifting and immediately regretting it with a hiss. “I’m fine?—”
“Sit,” I ordered, pushing him gently but firmly back against the pillows. “You’re not fine. You nearly died, remember?”
He glared at me with as much heat as someone high on pain meds could manage. “I’m not a child.”
“No,” I said, climbing onto the bed beside him, careful of every injury. “You’re just whining like one.”
He made a low growl in his throat, tried to swat at me with his uninjured hand, and I caught it easily. After a half-hearted, exhausted tussle, he sagged against me with a frustrated huff.
