The cabin settles around us after dinner like it’s exhaling.
Wind shoulders the walls. Snow keeps up its quiet assault on the windows. The fire burns down to a steady glow that paints Riley’s face in warm light when she moves through the room, stacking plates, rinsing a fork, trying to pretend her world isn’t on fire.
I watch her anyway.
I can’t help it.
She’s wearing softness like armor tonight—an oversized hoodie, bare legs, hair loose and wild at her shoulders. She looks smaller in this place, away from the base, away from her lab, away from the things she understands. But there’s nothing fragile about her. She’s steel wrapped in freckles and stubbornness. She’s brilliant and furious and scared and trying not to show it.
And I keep thinking about the way her hand covered mine at the table. Like it belonged there. Like she wasn’t asking permission to comfort me—she was just doing it.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I don’t know what to do withher.
I check the perimeter twice, even though I checked it an hour ago.
Locks. Windows. Cameras. Sightlines.
The kind of routine that used to calm me.
Tonight it feels like I’m trying to outrun the fact that she’s here, in a bed that’s too close, in a cabin that’s too quiet, with a mouth I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since she asked me—would you have kissed me by now?
The answer is still yes.
The answer is getting louder.
When I come back inside, Riley is by the fireplace, hugging her knees, staring into the flames like she’s willing them to give her a plan.
She hears my boots and looks up. Those eyes—blue and bright and too honest—find mine and hold.
“You done doing your serial killer rounds?” she asks, trying for light.
“Professional rounds,” I correct.
She hums. “Sure. Professionally paranoid.”
I cross the room and stop a safe distance away. “You okay?”
Her smile is small. Real, but thin. “Define okay.”
I squat in front of her, elbows on my knees. “I’m listening.”
She swallows, gaze flicking to the side like she’s embarrassed to be seen with feelings. “I keep thinking about my lab. Like… what if I missed something? What if there was a note I didn’t grab, a drive I didn’t back up, some stupid sticky note with a password because I was tired and?—”
“Riley,” I cut in, low and firm. “You didn’t do this.”
Her breath shakes. “I know.”
But she doesn’tknow. Not in the way someone needs to know when their name is being dragged through the mud and their work is being turned into a weapon.
I reach out, thumb brushing her knee through the hoodie fabric. A small touch. Grounding.
She stills. Then she leans into it like she can’t help herself.
My chest tightens.
“That ex of yours,” I say, keeping my voice neutral even as something sharp coils in my stomach. “Evan.”
