"Thank you," she said quietly.
"For what?"
"For sharing that with me. For trusting me with something that matters so much to you."
His arm came around her, pulling her closer. "Thank you for asking. For wanting to know."
They sat there for a while longer, neither of them moving. The house was completely quiet except for the distant sound of waves and the occasional creak of the structure settling. Outside, the world kept turning. Tomorrow would come. The team would return. Everything would change.
But right now, they had this.
Ghost shifted finally, turning to face her. "Rachel?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't know what happens after this is over." His voice was low, intense. "I don't know how we make this work when you're traveling and I'm deploying. When your life is chasing stories across the world and mine is wherever the Navy sends me. But I want to try." He paused, his hand coming up to cup her face. "I want you in my life. However that looks. Whatever it takes."
Rachel's eyes stung. Her throat felt too tight. "I want that too."
He cupped her face with both hands and kissed her. Slow and deep and full of all the things neither of them knew how to say yet. All the feelings that were too big, too new, too terrifying to name.
When they finally pulled apart, Rachel yawned despite herself.
Ghost smiled, something tender in his expression. "Come on. Let's get some sleep."
"Can we stay here? On the couch?"
"Yeah. We can stay here."
He stood and grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch, spreading it out, then lay down and pulled her against him, her back to his chest, his arm wrapped around her waist. She laced her fingers with his where they rested against her stomach.
"Logan?" she said quietly into the darkness.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad I got assigned to embed with your unit. I'm glad we met."
His arm tightened around her, pulling her impossibly closer. "Me too, baby. Me too."
Rachel closed her eyes, feeling his warmth at her back, his steady breathing against her neck. Tomorrow everything would change. Tomorrow the team would come back and the mission would become real and they'd be moving toward danger instead of hiding from it.
But tonight, wrapped in his arms with the memory of piano music still echoing in her mind, she felt something rising in her chest. Words she'd never said to anyone before. Words that terrified her with their weight and truth.
I love you.
She almost said them.
Her lips parted. The words sat right there on her tongue, heavy and real and true.
But Ghost's breathing had already evened out, deepening into the rhythm of sleep. And she didn't want to say it when he couldn't hear her. Didn't want to say something that big and important into the darkness without being able to see his face, to know how he felt.
So she pressed a kiss to the arm wrapped around her and whispered, "Goodnight, Logan."
Tomorrow the team would come. They'd finalize everything moving forward. But tonight they had this, and it was enough.
She closed her eyes and let sleep take her, holding the words close to her heart where they'd have to wait.
40
