She turned toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms, but Reed’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“Elena. Wait.”
She looked back at him, and something in his expression made her heart stutter.
“Can we talk?” he asked quietly. “Just... just the two of us?”
Elena glanced at his brothers. Walker was still focused on James’s stitches, but Terrel met her eyes with a small nod that seemed to convey approval. Or maybe permission. She wasn’t sure which.
“Okay,” she said.
Reed led her outside onto the cabin’s back deck, where the cool night air carried the scent of pine and distant water. The sky above was impossibly vast, scattered with more stars than Elena had seen in years of hiding in cities where light pollution drowned out everything but the brightest points of light.
They stood at the railing in silence for a long moment, shoulders almost touching, both of them staring out at the darkness. Elena could feel the warmth radiating from Reed’s body, could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing. After the chaos of the past few hours, the quiet felt almost sacred.
“I need to tell you something,” Reed finally said, his voice rough.
Elena turned to face him, her heart beginning to pound for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. “What is it?”
Reed was quiet for another moment, his jaw working as if he was struggling to find the right words. His hands gripped the deck railing so tightly that his knuckles went white.
“When I heard your voice in my earpiece tonight,” he began slowly, “when you said you’d been made, that they were coming...” He paused, swallowing hard. “I’ve been in combatsituations more times than I can count. I’ve faced down enemy fire, walked into ambushes, watched friends die right in front of me. But I have never—never—been as terrified as I was in that moment.”
Elena’s breath caught. “Reed...”
“Let me finish.” He turned to face her, and the raw emotion in his eyes nearly brought her to her knees. “I was afraid I would lose you today. And all I could think about, the whole time I was fighting my way to you, was that...” He paused, his voice cracking slightly. “I love you.”
The words hung between them, fragile and precious in the starlit darkness.
“I never stopped loving you,” Reed continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not when I thought you were dead. Not when I was standing beside your grave, trying to figure out how to live without you. Not for a single moment in five years.” He reached out and cupped her face in his hands, his touch impossibly gentle. “And I can’t lose you again, Elena. Ican’t.”
Elena’s vision blurred with tears. They were happy tears this time. Tears of relief and joy and a love so overwhelming that it felt like her heart might burst from the pressure of containing it.
“Reed.” His name came out as a broken whisper. “I love you too. I never stopped either. Every day I was in hiding, every night I spent alone, I thought about you. I prayed for you. You were the reason I kept fighting, the reason I didn’t give up.”
She closed the distance between them in a single step, and Reed caught her in his arms like he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment.
For a heartbeat, they simply held each other—his arms wrapped around her waist, her hands pressed against his chest, their foreheads touching as they breathed the same air. His heart pounded beneath her palms, the starlight reflected in his eyes, and his muscles trembled in restraint as he held himself back.
“Elena.”
He murmured her name like a prayer.
“Yes,” she whispered back, answering a question he hadn’t asked.
Reed’s hands slid up her back, one settling between her shoulder blades while the other cradled the back of her head. He tilted her face up to his, and Elena’s eyes fluttered closed as the distance between them disappeared.
The first brush of his lips against hers was soft, tentative—a question rather than a demand. Elena answered by pressing closer, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as five years of longing and loss and desperate hope poured out of her in a single moment of connection.
Reed made a sound low in his throat, something between a groan and a sigh, and then he was kissing her properly—deep and thorough and achingly tender. His lips moved against hers with a reverence that made her knees weak, each caress communicating everything words could never fully express.
I missed you. I mourned you. I never stopped believing we’d find our way back to each other.
Elena lost herself in the kiss, in the taste of him, in the solid warmth of his body pressed against hers. The world fell away—the mission, the danger, their uncertain future—until nothing existed except this moment, this man, this love that had survived death and betrayal and five years of separation.
When they finally broke apart, both gasping for air, Reed rested his forehead against hers and laughed. It was a breathless, joyful sound that Elena had never heard from him before. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the moment you walked into my office.”
Elena smiled, her cheeks flushed and her lips still tingling. “Only since then?”
