She’s smiling when I finally pull back, rolling onto my side but keeping her close. A real smile. The first one I’ve seen since DC. It transforms her face, smoothing away the fear, exhaustion, and grief of the past few days.
“We really need to get moving now.”
“I know.”
Neither of us moves for another ten minutes. We just lie here, tangled together, breathing in sync. Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my chest. My hand rests on the curve of her hip, thumb stroking the soft skin there.
It feels like a crime. To be this peaceful in the middle of a war.
It feels like survival. The only kind that matters.
She’s the one who finally breaks the spell.
She sits, stretching, and the sheet falls away from her body. I watch her—the curve of her spine, the way the light catches the red in her hair—and something tightens in my chest.
Then she looks up at me and her brow furrows. Her eyes are bright. Not tears, exactly, but something close.
“You keep sacrificing pieces of yourself. The bruises. The exhaustion. At what point do you run out of pieces?”
The question hits harder than it should.
Her thumbs trace circles on my palm.
“When I think of all the ways you could be hurt …”
“But I wasn’t. More importantly, you haven’t been hurt.” I pull her hand to my mouth. Kiss her palm.
“Halo,” she says, softly. “You really do have a guardian angel watching over you.”
She doesn’t laugh. She looks at me like she’s just realized what I’ve risked to keep her alive. The full weight of it settles behind her eyes.
“Those bullets,” she says slowly. “On the wall. When we were rappelling. They should have hit you.”
“They missed.”
“It shouldn’t have. I saw—” She stops. Shakes her head. “Something moved. Or you moved. Or the wind changed. I don’t know. But one missed when it shouldn’t have.”
“That’s the job. Sometimes I get lucky.”
“That’s not luck.” Her grip tightens on my hands. “That’s you. That’s whatever it is that keeps you alive when everyone around you dies.”
“Cassie—”
“I’m serious.” She meets my eyes. “You’ve survived things that should have killed you. The bullet wounds. Syria. Colombia. The canyon.”
“The canyon killed someone I loved.”
“But not you.” Her voice is fierce. “Never you. Why?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I don’t have an answer. I’ve never had an answer. The other operators joke about it—Halo and his guardian angel—but the truth is simpler and more terrifying.
I survive because the universe hasn’t gotten around to killing me yet.
Or maybe …
Maybe I survive because I haven’t found something worth dying for since Sofia.
Until now.
