“Another shower?” I ask.
“The first one I had ran cold after you used all the hot water this morning,” she explains.
“Want help?”
She shakes her head as she closes the door. She doesn’t need another shower. She wants privacy. Somewhere she can shed her tears for her brother and clean up the evidence.
I sit by the side of the bed and check the devices again. Recorder. Backup. Chargers. The burner phones. The courier list.
Everything has its place.
Everything is ready.
I should feel calm.
I don’t.
Calm is a lie men tell themselves before a bullet arrives.
The bathroom door opens. Isabella steps out wrapped in a towel, hair damp, cheeks pink from heat.She looks younger like this, not because she’s changed, but because she isn’t armored. For a second I see the girl she must’ve been before her house taught her to be a weapon shaped like a flower.
She catches me looking and raises one brow.
“Are you planning,” she asks, “or are you staring?”
I stand. I move toward her.
“Both,” I say.
Her smile is small and dangerous.
She reaches for my belt and pulls it undone, slowly. Her hands are warm from the shower. She presses her palm to my scar. Not apologetic. Not reverent. Curious. Possessive in a way that doesn’t feel like ownership. Like acknowledgment.
“I hate that you carry it,” she whispers.
“I carry worse,” I answer, and my fingers find her jaw. “You make it lighter.”
The words come out before I can edit them. I don’t take them back.
She kisses me first.
It’s not sweet.
It’s deep.
Hermouth opens and she takes the control of the kiss like she takes every room. I let her. I let her because the point of us is choice, not conquest.
I back her toward the bed. The towel slips. She doesn’t grab it. She stands in front of me bare, unashamed, and the sight of her hits like a bullet I wasn’t ready for.
“Say it,” she murmurs, like she’s opening a door.
“What?” I ask, voice rough.
“That you’re here,” she says. “That this is real. That you’re not leaving when the day turns bright.”
I press my forehead to hers.
“I’m here,” I say. “It’s real. And I’m not leaving.”
