I'd watched the traffic camera footage at least twenty times. Watched that black SUV accelerate into her bumper, watched her car swerve toward the median, watched her somehow keep control and avoid the oncoming traffic.
My heart had stopped each time I'd watched it. And each time, the same thought had hammered through my skull:She could have died. She could have died and you weren't there.
That was when I'd finally snapped. When the carefully constructed walls had finally crumbled and I'd realized that keeping my distance wasn't protecting her anymore.
It was just making me watch her die from afar.
The first gray light of dawn was filtering through the windows when I finally gave up on sleep entirely. I'd dozed off for maybe an hour, my body too wired to fully relax, my ears straining for any sound that might signal a threat.
There'd been nothing. The night had passed without incident.
But that didn't mean we were safe. Lang and Briggs were still out there. Still watching. Still waiting for their next opportunity.
I needed a shower. And coffee. Preferably in that order.
I grabbed a change of clothes from my duffel bag and made my way to the bathroom as quietly as I could. Betty's bedroom door was still closed, and I could hear the soft rhythm of her breathing through the thin walls. Still asleep. Good. She needed the rest.
The bathroom was small, barely big enough for a shower stall, a toilet, and a sink with a cracked mirror above it. I turned on the water and stripped off my clothes while I waited for it to heat up, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
I looked like hell. Dark circles under my eyes. Stubble that had crossed the line from rugged to homeless. A body covered in the scars and ink of a decade spent in the shadows.
The tattoos had started after I'd left her. A way to mark the missions, the losses, the pieces of myself I'd left behind in places I couldn't talk about. A sleeve of dark, intricate designs covered my left arm from shoulder to wrist. More ink spread across my chest and back. A phoenix rising from flames over my heart, a compass on my shoulder blade, Latin words along my ribs that translated toThrough darkness, I find my way.
Betty hadn't seen any of them. When we'd been together, my skin had been bare, unmarked. I was a different man now. A harder man. A man who'd done things she couldn't imagine.
I wondered what she'd think if she saw them.
I stepped into the shower and let the hot water pound against my shoulders, trying to wash away the tension that had settled into my muscles. It didn't work. Nothing short of knowing Betty was safe was going to ease the knot in my chest.
I stayed under the spray longer than I should have, letting the heat seep into my bones. Finally, when the water started to cool, I shut it off and reached for the towel I'd hung on the door.
That's when the door swung open.
Betty stood in the doorway, her hand still on the knob, her eyes wide and her mouth open in a perfect O of surprise.
For a split second, neither of us moved.
She was wearing a thin tank top and sleep shorts, her hair a wild tangle around her face, her feet bare on the cold tile. She looked soft and rumpled and so fucking beautiful it made my chest ache.
And I was standing there dripping wet, completely naked, the towel hanging uselessly from my hand.
Her eyes dropped from my face to my chest, then lower, then snapped back up so fast I almost laughed. Almost. But my body had other ideas. Ideas that were becoming increasingly obvious and increasingly difficult to hide.
I wrapped the towel around my waist in one quick motion, but the damage was done. I'd seen her eyes go dark and had seen her throat move as she swallowed and the flush that crept up her neck and spread across her cheeks.
She'd looked.
And she'dlikedwhat she'd seen.
"Sorry. I didn't." She was stammering, her face now the color of a ripe tomato, her eyes fixed determinedly on a point somewhere above my left shoulder. "I forgot you were here. I mean, notforgotforgot, but I woke up and I had to pee and I just, the door wasn't locked."
"My fault," I said. "Should've locked it."
"Yes. You should have. That's….that's definitely a rule we should add to the list." She still wasn't looking at me. "Lock the bathroom door. Very important rule. Critical, even."
"Noted."
She nodded jerkily and started to back out of the doorway, but her eyes betrayed her. They dropped again, just for a second, tracing over my chest, my shoulders, the ink that covered my skin.
