Her arms are safe. Not like his hands last night. Not possessive or claiming or testing boundaries. Just... safe.
Warm. Solid. Real.
“We aren’t walking away,” she says fiercely. Voice steady even as her hands tremble slightly against my back. “We are putting a pin in it. For a week. To think.”
“Pausing is walking away.” Muffled against her shoulder.
“No it’s not.”
“Feels like it.”
“Well, feelings are data. And the data says we’re exhausted and terrified.” Her voice cracks on the last part. “So we’re pausing.”
I pull back slightly. “You’re scared.”
“Terrified,” she admits. Voice dropping. “I sat in that car and watched the minutes tick by and kept thinking—what if I don’t get to you in time? What if?—”
She stops. Breathes. Her hands are definitely shaking now.
“So yeah. I’m fucking terrified. And I need a week to figure out how to do this without losing you.”
“We could take up a hobby,” I try. “Knitting. Or extreme couponing.”
“Or yoga.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I hate yoga.”
“I know. But you hate spiral thinking more.” She squeezes my shoulders. “Listen to me. You just found out there’s a network of powerful women who’ve been trying to stop Marcus for years and can’t. That’s not failure, Dylan. That’s intelligence we didn’t have before.”
“Intelligence that says we’re fucked.”
“Intelligence that says we need to be smarter.” She’s using her firm voice now. The one that means she’s made a decision. “And I just photographed files that might connect him to multiple crimes. Files I need time to actually go through. So we need to strategize.”
“Strategize,” I repeat.
“Let me work through the files while you process what you learned.”
“Process. Right. I’ll just process the fact that I almost became victim number four. Easy. Or maybe number twenty four. I don’t actually know and that’s the problem. We don’t know what we are up against.”
“Dylan—”
“Sorry. I’m trying to joke and it’s not working.”
“I know.” Her voice is soft. “It’s okay that it’s not working.”
We stand there for a moment. Her hands on my shoulders. Both of us shaking slightly.
“Okay,” I finally say. “We put a pin in it.”
The decision settles strange. Uncomfortable.
This is Alex’s approach. Trust the gut, pause when it says pause.
“For a week,” Alex confirms.
“A week.”
“Let me dig through the financials. Quietly. Carefully.”
