I peeled my fingers off the workbench, one by one. Made myself stand upright. Made myself breathe.
Cross would have loved this. Would have loved knowing that even after everything, I was still the same pathetic mess who couldn't tell the differencebetween someone wanting him and someone just... wanting. Using me as a convenient outlet for confusion they didn't know how to process.
No.
That wasn't fair. Tank wasn't Cross. The kiss hadn't felt like manipulation—it had felt like something breaking open, something neither of us had planned or controlled. The panic in his eyes when he'd pulled back hadn't been cruelty. It had been fear.
But fear and cruelty could feel the same when you were the one being left behind.
I turned off the work light and walked back to my room in the dark.
Sleep didn't come.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the kiss until I'd worn grooves in my memory. The exact moment his mouth had found mine. The heartbeat of stillness before my body had responded, before the want I'd been suppressing for weeks had surged up and taken over. The way he'd tasted—blood and smoke and something underneath that was just him, just Tank, the flavor I hadn't known I was craving until I had it.
And then the absence. The cold air where his body had been. The sound of the door closing.
Around three in the morning, I heard movement in the hallway. Footsteps that paused outside mydoor, lingered for a moment, then continued on. Heavy footsteps. Tank's.
I held my breath, waiting.
He didn't knock.
The footsteps faded, and I let the breath out slowly, something in my chest cracking along fault lines I'd thought were healed.
I'd been so careful. Since Cross, since the assignment, since the day I'd walked away from everything I'd built and started running—I'd been so goddamn careful not to want anything I couldn't afford to lose. The clubhouse had been shelter, not home. The club had been allies, not family. And Tank...
Tank had been a complication I'd told myself I could manage. A distraction I could appreciate from a safe distance. The morning lessons, the riding, the quiet hours in the garage—I'd let myself enjoy them without letting them mean anything. Without letting him mean anything.
That had been a lie.
I knew it now, lying in the dark with my lips still tingling and my chest hollow with wanting. Tank meant something. Meant enough that his walking away had cut deeper than anything Cross had done in months.
Which made me an idiot. But at least I was an idiot who could see clearly now.
Morning came gray and cold, fog pressing against the windows like something trying to get in.
I showered, dressed, went through the motions of being a functional human being. The face in the mirror looked like mine—same features, same tired eyes, same carefully blank expression I'd perfected during years of undercover work. No one looking at me would know that anything had changed.
Except everything had changed.
The common room was busy when I came down—members eating breakfast, comparing notes from last night, the low buzz of conversation that followed any successful operation. Ghost was absent, still at the hospital getting his leg properly treated. Irish had his arm in a sling, a graze from a stray bullet that he was already turning into a story involving significantly more heroics than I remembered.
Tank was at the far end of the room.
He looked up when I entered, and our eyes met for exactly one second before he looked away. His jaw was tight, his shoulders rigid, every line of his body screaming discomfort. He was sitting with Hawk and Axel, papers spread across the table—the pharmaceutical documentation we'd recovered from the van, probably. Important work. Work that required his full attention.
Work that conveniently meant he didn't have to acknowledge me.
Fine.
I got coffee, found a seat near Kai, and pretended I didn't feel Tank's presence like a brand on my skin.
"You look like shit." Kai's voice was low, private.
"Thanks. You really know how to make a guy feel special."
"Seriously." He leaned closer, violet hair falling across his forehead. "What happened? You were fine when we left for the ambush, and now you look like someone ran over your dog."
