“I didn’t mean to,” she snaps.
“Idon’tbelieve you.”
Her eyes narrow. “You think you know me, Vael?”
“Idoknow you.” I don’t yell. I never need to. I let my voice drop, like the weight of it will carry the truth. “I know how you breathe when you lie. I know the way your hands tremble when you’re terrified. And I know last night wasn’t some ‘lapse in judgment.’”
“I made love to a memory,” she whispers, her voice breaking around the edges. “Notyou.”
My heart stops for half a beat.
Then I close the last bit of distance between us, my breath ghosting over her cheek. “That’s a damn lie, and you know it.”
She exhales sharply, backing up until she hits the edge of the console behind her.
I cage her there, not touching, not trapping — but close enough she has to feel it too. The electricity. The unresolved war still thrumming between our bodies.
“You’re hiding something,” I say, not accusing. Just… sure. Like gravity. Like truth.
“I’mprotectingsomething,” she shoots back instantly.
“From me?”
She hesitates.
That pause? That silence? It’s not denial.
And itkills me.
“You still think I’m a threat,” I say, stepping back like her answer physically knocked me off-balance.
“I don’t know what you are anymore,” she says, hugging her arms around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together. “You come back from the dead, half-machine, half-fury, with questions I can’t answer and eyes that?—”
“What? Thatseeyou?” I snarl. “That remember what we were before you vanished without a damn word?”
Her lip trembles. She turns away. “This isn’t fair.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. “But it’s real.”
“I can’t do this, Vael.”
“You alreadydid.”
She spins on me. Her fists clenched. Her cheeks flush with a furious red. “It was a mistake.”
“No. It wasyou.Finally being honest. Just for one godsdamned second.”
“It’s not that simple.”
I soften. Just a hair. “Then make it simple. Talk to me. Tell me what you’re afraid of.”
Her voice is barely audible. “Losing everything.”
I step closer again, gently this time. “You already lost me once. And I lostyou. What’s left to protect if we keep pretending none of it matters?”
She looks at me like she wants to scream and sob all at once.
“I can’t tell you.”
