I hold up my hands. “Compliment, I swear.”
The wind shrieks on the other side of the barrier, a flash of pink lightning illuminating her face in sharp relief.
I study her profile—how her nose crinkles slightly when she thinks too hard, how her lips pull tight when she’s holding something back.
“You said once that you were tired of pretending you weren’t afraid of the dark,” I murmur.
She doesn’t look at me, but her jaw twitches. “Yeah.”
I step closer, turning toward her, fully now. “I am too.”
That gets her attention. Her eyes lift, meet mine. Searching.
And I let her look. Let hersee.
I don’t hide behind my usual grin. I don’t flex or deflect or dodge.
I just stand there, stripped of armor, shirt open, chest bare not just to the air, but toher.
“I was trained to compartmentalize everything,” I say. “Pain. Fear. Emotion. Keep it out of the cockpit. Out of the mission. Out of the way.”
“You were trained wrong.”
I nod. “I know that now.”
A beat.
“I don’t want to be that guy with you. I don’t want to be the one who forgets how to feel because I’m too busy trying to protect you.”
“I don’t want to be protected,” she says, voice sharper than expected. “I want to be chosen.”
The words hit harder than any impact I’ve taken in combat.
“Then I choose you,” I say, quiet but certain. “Even when it’s messy. Even when I screw it up.”
She doesn’t answer.
Just steps closer.
Now we’re shoulder to shoulder. Closer than in the Meld. This is real skin. Real breath. Real stakes.
My fingers twitch at my sides.
She notices.
“Don’t,” she says softly.
I still. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t hold back.”
And that’s it. That’s all the permission I need.
I reach for her, slow, giving her time to step away.
She doesn’t.
Our hands meet first. Fingers interlocking with the kind of quiet desperation that says we’ve both waited too long for this and don’t know what the hell to do with it now that we’ve got it.
