But together, somehow, we hadn’t.
We were in a room that looked like a giant holding cell everyone getting bandaged and sewn up when Adam looked around.
“What happened to Logan?”
My heart fell into my stomach. Logan.
“I don’t know.”
My eyes looked around, frantic with worry.
“We’ll find him,” Adam said.
44
Logan
The drunk tank smelled like sweat and bleach. My knuckles ached, my jaw was swollen, and I could still taste blood where the cop’s fist had split my lip.
They’d shoved me in here after I’d swung on one of them—because they wouldn’t let me take my bird up. Not even when the comms had gone dead. Not even when my sister was out there in the storm, with killers crawling all over the ridge. No one believed me, or acted like they didn’t believe me.
I slammed the heel of my hand against the steel bench, rage boiling up within me. “Damn bastards.”
The deputy outside didn’t even look up from his phone. To them, I was just another hothead ex-SEAL who didn’t know when to stand down.
But I wasn’t wrong. I could’ve gotten eyes in the air. Could’ve brought those kids home faster. Could’ve backed Adam’s team before they nearly got slaughtered. Could have gotten my sister out. I heard about what happened.
Instead, I was stuck here while my sister bled for it.
The door buzzed. Heavy boots echoed down the hall. A shadow filled the doorway, broad-shouldered, dripping with rain.
Adam Stoker.
His face was a wreck—mud, blood, exhaustion carved into every line. But his eyes… they burned.
“Carter,” he said, his voice low, dangerous. “You and I need to talk.”
45
Raine
The storm finally broke by the time they hauled us back to town. The rain left everything smelling like mud and iron, the air heavy with smoke from burned-out engines and gunpowder. The medics had patched my ribs, Adam’s arm was wrapped tight, Hawk and Russ were under observation, and Blade had vanished like a shadow the moment the troopers turned their backs.
By the time I closed the motel room door behind us, my body ached in ways I didn’t even have words for. Exhaustion pulled at me, but adrenaline still hummed in my veins, and there was Adam—alive, standing in the dim yellow light, stripped down to his T-shirt, every line of him carved with strength and weariness.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The quiet between us was louder than gunfire.
“You should sleep,” I whispered, though the words caught in my throat.
His eyes locked on mine, storm-dark and burning. “Not without you.”
Something inside me broke open. Five years of missing him, five years of convincing myself I hated him, five years of silence—all of it crashed down in that single heartbeat. I crossed the room in two steps, and then I was in his arms.
His mouth crushed against mine, fierce and desperate, nothing tentative. His hands slid into my wet hair, down my back, gripping like he could anchor me there forever. I melted into him, fingers clutching his shirt, pulling it up, needing skin.
“Raine—” His voice was ragged against my lips. “God, it’s been so long.”
“Too long,” I breathed, tearing the shirt over his head. My palms mapped the scars I hadn’t seen, hadn’t kissed, hadn’t healed. Every line told a story of survival, of the man who’d never stopped living inside my chest. He had as many cuts on him as I did.
