She's not my type. Sophisticated and polished and urban. She belongs in courtrooms and corner offices, not mountain cabins with off-grid survivalists. And even if she was my type, she's a job. A responsibility. Someone I'm required to keep alive, not someone I should be thinking about.
But my brain doesn't seem to understand the difference.
When I return to the cabin at sunset, she's curled up on the couch with a book from my shelf. She's changed into different yoga pants and an oversized sweater, her hair still damp from the shower and twisted into a loose braid. Soft. Comfortable.
Dangerously at home in my space.
"I made dinner." She doesn't look up from the book. "Nothing fancy. Just pasta and sauce from your pantry. I figured you might be hungry after brooding outside all afternoon."
"I wasn't brooding."
"You were absolutely brooding. I watched you do three complete perimeter circuits and reorganize your woodpile twice." Now she looks up, amusement in her dark eyes. "I'm a prosecutor, Deck. Reading people is literally my job."
"Then you should know that what you're reading is professional focus, not brooding."
"Sure. That's definitely what that was." She sets the book aside and unfolds from the couch with a grace that makes my mouth go dry. "Come eat. Then you can tell me all about panic room protocols."
Dinner is surprisingly good. The pasta is perfectly cooked, the sauce seasoned with herbs she must have found in my cabinet. She's comfortable in my kitchen, moving around the space like she belongs there.
She doesn't belong there. She's temporary. A mission. A responsibility.
But watching her plate food and pour water and settle across from me with easy familiarity makes my chest ache.
"Tell me about before." She twirls pasta around her fork. "Before the military. Before all this. Who was Decker Cross?"
I think about deflecting, but find myself answering honestly anyway.
"A kid from Montana with too much energy and not enough direction. I enlisted at eighteen because it was either that or get in serious trouble. Turned out I was good at it. Good at following orders, good at leading men, good at the physical and mental demands."
"And you liked it?"
"I loved it." The admission comes easier than expected. "The structure. The purpose. The sense of being part of something bigger than myself. The military gave me a family when I didn't have one."
"And then Kandahar took that away."
I set down my fork, appetite gone. "Kandahar didn't take it away. Bad intelligence and bureaucratic failure took it away. Kandahar was just where it happened."
"Do you blame yourself?"
"I gave the order to enter that building. I trusted intel that shouldn't have been trusted. So yes. I'll always blame myself."
She's quiet for a moment, studying me with those dark eyes that see too much. "That's why you don't want to be responsible for anyone else. You're afraid of failing again."
"I'm not afraid of failing. I'm certain of it." I meet her gaze. "Everyone I've ever been responsible for has either died or left. That's not paranoia. That's pattern recognition."
"That's trauma talking. Survivorship bias combined with catastrophic thinking." She says it gently. "You're not doomedto fail everyone. You're carrying guilt from an event that wasn't entirely your fault."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know exactly what I'm talking about. My father was a police officer. He died in the line of duty when I was sixteen. I spent years believing I should have somehow prevented it, even though I was a teenager with no control over his shifts or his cases." She reaches across the table and touches my hand. "Guilt doesn't mean we actually did something wrong. It just means we loved someone enough to wish we could have saved them."
Her touch sends electricity through my system. Her words hit places I've kept locked away for five years.
"You're very good at that." My voice comes out rough. "Getting people to reveal things."
"It's my superpower." She withdraws her hand, and I immediately miss the contact. "Also, I wasn't trying to manipulate you. I just recognize the look. The one that says you're carrying weight you shouldn't have to carry alone."
"And what about you? What weight are you carrying?"
