Eden didn’t know what I was capable of, not really. She thought Parrish was the monster, and maybe he was, but there was a reason I didn’t shop after the first hit… or the fifth. There was a reason I didn’t feel anything when his face started to come apart in my hands. No shame, no sickness, just a steady rhythm in my chest. Cold purpose.
Yeah, she saw a glimpse of it when I took Parrish’s face apart, but that wasn’t the worst of me. Not even close.
I’d done things I couldn’t speak aloud, for countries that would deny my name, for people who burned their own records. I’d done things that didn’t make it into books, the kind of operations even history wouldn’t speak of. Executions dressed up as extractions, threats neutralized before they had names. I’d left bodies behind in snow, in sand, in cities whose names I never learned. Every time I got out alive, I walked away a little less human.
And now here she was, all tenderness and hope and kindness, curling up against a monster like I was her shield and not the thing she should be running from. She saw a man, but I didn’t know if that man was still in here.
Even in sleep, she was tense. The kind of sleep people get after trauma: shallow and restless. Her brows furrowed like she was fighting something behind her eyes. Maybe she always slept like that. I couldn’t be sure.
I wanted to climb back into that bed. Not to touch her or even to hold her, but just to be there. To be the warmth behind her spine that made her finally let go and feel safe.
But if I crossed that line tonight, I wasn’t sure I could uncross it, and once I started needing things –
once I started needingher… I’d fall, and I’d take her down with me. I’d stop being careful; I’d stop holding back.
That was when someone like me became a liability. “Love” didn’t fix men like me; it just gave us something else to lose, a weakness to exploit. I’d seen what happened when people like me fell in love. We didn’t get happy endings. That was how people like me died: not clean, and certainly not noble. We left blood on the floor and crater-sized holes in people’s lives. Next time someone tried to take her away from me – therewouldbe a next time, I wouldn’t just be brutal. I’d be reckless. I’d burn cities down with her name in my mouth… and she would hate me for it… or worse, she wouldn’t.
My phone buzzed on the windowsill, its dim screen cutting through the quiet. I snatched it before it could buzz again and read the name: ROOK. Wire’s guy. Ex-Signal Corps, off-grid, and always pissed about something.
I stepped out onto the fire escape, closing the window behind me.
“Rook,” I answered.
“You’re a hard man to get ahold of,” came the voice, gruff and static-blurred. “Wire said you’re burning something hot down there.”
“Too hot,” I muttered, watching Eden through the glass. “I need off-the-record intel. Old Command ties, something buried.”
“Got a name?”
I gave him what he needed: the names, including Matteo’s. I told him who was dead, and he didn’t ask for an explanation.
Rook whistled. “Shit. You’re poking at ghosts, Halo. Someone’s gonna bleed.”
“They already have.”
“You know this is going to go beyond Matteo, right?”
“I don’t care if they’re after me; I just want to make sure no one else goes after her.”
Silence.
Then: “I’ll meet you. Motel a half hour out of Sunning. Little dump called Whispering Winds. I’ll text you the alias. You’ll check in first, I’ll come to you.”
“When?”
“You can check in tomorrow. I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”
Too far. But I had no choice.
“I’ll be there.”
“Bring cash.”
I hung up and stood in the night air for a long time. The stars were out, indifferent and cold. They were indistinguishable from the twinkle of city lights on the horizon.
When I finally slipped back into the apartment, Eden hadn’t moved, but her hand lay stretched toward the space where I’d been, like she’d reached for me in her sleep.
I didn’t lie back down. I just sat there, watching her fingers twitch softly, wondering what kind of dreams she was having, and praying they didn’t have my face in them… good or bad.
