“I didn’t say I was going.”
That lands hard.
I spin to face him fully. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You said you know a contact. It’s safer if you make the approach alone.”
“Safer for who? Me? Or your precious operational integrity?”
He doesn’t answer. That hesitation—that tiny break—is answer enough.
I step closer. My fingers brush his arm. He flinches.
It’s not violent. It’s not even big. But I feel it like a slap.
I drop my hand.
“So that’s how it is now?” I ask, heat rising under my skin. “We strip each other down to nothing, and now you won’t even let me touch you?”
He doesn’t look at me. “That’s not?—”
“Don’t lie.”
He breathes in deep, nostrils flaring. “It’s not about what happened. It’s about what’s coming.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it. I bite down on the rest, hard enough to hurt.
“I don’t regret it,” I say, quieter now. “Whatever last night was—however much you want to shove it in a box and pretend it didn’t break something open—I don’t regret it.”
His shoulders stiffen.
“But I’m scared,” I add. “Not of you. Of this. Of what it’s doing to us. Because whatever rhythm we had before—it’s gone. And I don’t know if that’s your fault, or mine, or just… the cost.”
He finally turns.
And gods, his face. The angles of it are brutal in this light, all shadow and restraint, but there’s something wounded at the edges. A tightness I’ve never seen before.
“It wasn’t a distraction,” he says.
I swallow. “Then what was it?”
He’s quiet so long I think he won’t answer.
Then: “Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That I’m already compromised.”
I want to scream. Throw something. Shake him until his armor cracks and the man underneath actually says what he means.
But I don’t.
Instead, I walk back to the console and pull up another layer of the station map. “Fine,” I say flatly. “Then let’s plan like two professionals who haven’t seen each other naked.”
He doesn’t take the bait. Just stands there, unreadable.
