Inside, he moves with the ease of someone who’s been here before. I hover near the door, arms crossed, nerves twitching.The walls are lined with faded mission maps, shredded datapads, and a disarmed rail cannon bolted into the ceiling like an ugly chandelier.
He gets to work setting up a perimeter field—small discs, magnetic, each one sparking with blue static as he places them.
I pace.
"You want to tell me how you found me?"
No answer.
"Or why you didn’t sendanythingafter that night?"
Still nothing.
I snap. "You don’t get to show up two years later, kill a hit squad, throw me on a stolen bike, and act like this is normal. You don’t get to play hero without explaining why you ghosted me like a coward."
He doesn’t stop working. But I see his jaw flex.
"I thought you were dead,” I say, quieter. “I cried for you.”
"I didn’t ask you to."
“Goddammit, Valtron!”
He straightens, turns, and faces me.
“I knew you were special,” he says. “The second you called me a glory-hound in front of a senator.”
I blink.
“You remember that?”
“You were wearing that terrible purple dress. The one with the sleeves that kept falling down.”
“It wasvintage,” I snap.
“It wasslipping.”
I hurl a pillow from the couch. He catches it with one hand.
“You ever get tired of being right all the time?” I snap.
He lifts one brow. “No.”
The tension should snap. It should boil over or blow out.
But it doesn’t.
It hums.
Familiar.
Hot.
Like gravity’s pulling us in again, just like that night. Just like that mistake.
And I hate how much I want it.
CHAPTER 4
