“It’s time for me to go home.”
The Heart Wants…
Max
The flight home feels like mourning. When the cabin door seals shut, the heavy thud reminds me of the final lock of a coffin just before burial. It’s a dark thought, but it matches the hollow ache of everything I’m leaving behind. In the span of a single week, I’ve been dismantled and put back together, only to walk away from the one person who finally saw the real me.
The jet engines maintain a low, unrelenting drone that matches the vibration in my chest. I stare out the tiny oval window at a sea of clouds, watching the moonlight bounce off the wing, but all I can see is the set of Eli’s jaw as I walked out of the hospital.
I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I feel the phantom pressure of his hand on my neck or hear the way he says my name or calls me hisMama. My heart is still back in the mountains, tucked under a weighted blanket in a room that smells like cedar and complicated promises.
But as the pilot announces our descent into Hartsfield-Jackson, the softness in me begins to calcify.
By the time the wheels hit the tarmac, the “closet romantic” who has been crying over a bearded man in the woods is gone. She is packed away in my carry-on.
The humidity of Cinnamon Grove hits me the second I step off the plane, thick and heavy, but I’m already moving. I don't head for baggage claim; I head for the rideshare line, my thumb scrolling through three dozen missed Slack messages. My brain is already re-mapping the security features that need to be reinforced at MatchSense.
I am exhausted, bone-deep and aching, but the adrenaline of the "fix" is taking over. By the time I walk into the conference room to meet Timantha and Anastasia, my shoes are moving against the floor with lethal precision, even though there is nothing lethal about me right now. I slide into the empty chair at the head of the table, my eyes locking onto the monitors before I’ve even said hello. The data is already moving, swirling in a way that makes my pulse spike.
“—which means this isn’t a curiosity poke,” Anastasia says, tapping the screen like she wants it to confess. “It’s a campaign.”
I lean back in my chair, arms crossed, eyes locked on the scrolling logs projected onto the conference room wall. Timantha is pacing behind me, heels clicking sharp and irritated, the universal soundtrack of her being five seconds from flipping a damn table.
“How long?” Timantha asks. “How long have they had access?”
Anastasia doesn’t answer right away. She zooms in, highlights a cluster of timestamps, then another. Her mouth tightens.
“A while,” she says finally. “Long enough that this asshole knows your system’s personality. Long enough to get comfortable.”
My stomach sinks. Comfortable isn’t good. Especially on my watch.
“He wasn’t trying to break in at first,” Anastasia continues. “He was watching. Mapping. Learning how you respond, Max. Which defenses you prioritize. Which ones you rotate.”
Timantha stops pacing. “So he’s been chasing us.”
“Exactly,” Anastasia says. “And every time he comes back, he adjusts. Like he’s filing mental notes.”
I stare at the screen, recognizing patterns I wish I didn’t. The pauses. The deliberate retreats. The way he disappears the second I get too close.
“He was flirting with me. He wanted me to see him,” I say quietly.
Both of them look at me.
“He leaves breadcrumbs,” I continue. “Just enough for me to chase. Just enough to make me think I’m one step behind when I’m not.”
Anastasia nods slowly. “He’s testingyouspecifically. And it isn’t external,” she says, dragging a new file onto the screen. “Not really.”
Timantha goes still. I feel her panic before she fully processes it. “What do you mean, not external?” she asks.
Anastasia zooms in on a permission map. “Your attacker never had to force his way past the outer layers. He was already inside the building. Just…not everywhere.”
I lean forward. “He only has level two access,” I say slowly, the realization settling in. “So anything beyond that, he’s been forced to come at from the outside. That’s exactly how I designed the security. He was never supposed to touch the core without leaving a trail.”
Anastasia’s eyes flick to me. “Right. Enough access to observe behavior. Not enough to touch the crown jewels without tripping alarms.”
Timantha’s voice turns sharp. “Reese.”
“Your cybersecurity manager,” Anastasia continues, methodical now. “Which means he’s perfectly positioned. He sees the alerts. He helps write the reports. He knows which breaches get escalated and which ones get waved off as noise.”
