“Julia.”
“…you disappeared for years. I kept waiting for you to come back home and ask me out to dinner.”
His breath left him slow. “That was different.”
“Why?” I asked. “Because you’re older now? Because Command sends emails instead of letters?”
He stepped closer. Not enough to crowd me, but enough that I could feel the heat rolling off him.
“Because back then I didn’t have anyone waiting for me at home,” he said. “Now I do.”
The words hit me right in the chest.
“And you’re sure,” I said quietly, “that they’ll let you come back?”
He hesitated.
I saw it. Felt it.
“Lucas,” I whispered, using his first name the way Reese had, only softer. “What aren’t you saying?”
“They’re going to ask me to stay on longer than I want,” he admitted. “Consult. Advise on new protocols. They’ll want a golden boy to stand next to them and say it’s all under control.”
“Is it?”
He held my gaze. “No. But I’m also the one who knows exactly how bad it was. That matters.”
“So what?” I asked. “You go to D.C., sit in a room with people who’ll never understand what happened down there, and try to convince them not to build another Echo with better PR?”
“Something like that,” he said dryly.
“And if they ask you to stay?” I pushed. “If they say it’s your duty? That you’re the only one who can keep the next version from going rogue?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“Then I say no,” he said at last.
Some tiny, tightly coiled thing in me loosened.
“You’d walk away?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?” The word came out too fast, too raw.
He didn’t even blink. “Because I’ve already spent a good part of my life belonging to a system instead of a person. That ends now.”
My heart stumbled.
“A person,” I repeated.
He stepped close enough that our boots touched. His thumb brushed the uninjured side of my face, calloused and careful.
“You,” he said simply. “I belong to you. And you belong to me.”
Tears pricked my eyes before I could stop them. Damn him.
“You better tell Command that,” I rasped.
