She scrambles out of the chair. She crosses the room in seconds, stopping just short of touching me, her hands hovering in the air like she’s afraid I’ll break.
“What are you doing up? You should be in bed. The tissue damage?—”
“I had to check.”
“Check, what?”
“You.”
She stares at me. Her face is scrubbed clean, the grime and blood washed away, but the exhaustion is etched deep in the hollows of her eyes. She looks fragile. Shattered.
“I’mfunctional,” she whispers, throwing my own word back at me. “Whereas, you are not.”
“You’re shaking.”
She is. A fine tremor runs through her hands.
“I can’t turn it off,” she says, her voice cracking. “The loop. The shooter. The angle. I keep re-running it in my head. Every time … Every time I calculate the trajectory, you die.”
“I didn’t die.”
“Statistically, you should have.” She wraps her arms around herself, digging her fingers into the fabric of the hoodie. “You took a one-hundred percent probability of a lethal impact and transferred it to yourself. That is … It is illogical.”
“It was tactical.”
“It was suicide!” The shout echoes in the quiet room. Tears spill over her lashes, hot and fast.
I ignore the pain in my side. I push off the wall and close the distance. My good arm wraps around her waist, pulling her into me. She resists for a second, stiff with fear, and then she crumples against my chest.
“I hated it,” she sobs into my shirt. “I hated the blood. I hated the way you looked at me before you closed your eyes. You promised me ‘after,’ Jackson. You don’t get to break that.”
“I’m here.” I rest my chin on the top of her head, breathing in the scent of soap and her skin. “I’m right here.”
“Why?” She pulls back enough to look at me. Her golden eyes search mine, desperate for an answer that makes sense in her world of data and patterns. “Why did you do it?”
“Because the math changed.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does.” I lean my forehead against hers. “For three years, my value was zero. I was a weapon. Expendable. If I broke, Cerberus would replace me. If I died, the mission would continue without me.”
I run my thumb over her cheekbone, tracing the line of her jaw.
“Then you started talking about probabilities and patterns. You looked at me not like a gun, but like a person.”
“Jackson—”
“You became the constant.” The words grind in my throat. “The variable I couldn’t lose. If the choice is between a world with me in it and a world with you in it … I choose you. Every damn time. The math is simple.”
She stares at me. Her lips part. The analyst is silent. The woman is reeling.
“You love me,” she whispers. It’s not a question. It’s a conclusion. She kisses me.
It’s gentle. Careful. She kisses me like I’m made of glass, her lips soft and testing. But underneath the gentleness, there is a fierce, possessive heat. She isn’t just kissing me; she’s verifying I’m real. She’s claiming the territory.
I groan, the sound vibrating in my chest. The pain in my side flares, a sharp reminder of mortality, but it pales compared to the sensation of her body against mine.
She breaks the kiss, resting her forehead against my chin. “You need to lie down.”
