“You handled yourself well,” he said. “You kept your head. That’s more than most people can say after a day like this.”
Ayla’s breath caught.
He didn’t see the moment she misinterpreted the gesture. He wasn’t looking for it. He was tired and hurting and too raw to put up every wall he normally would.
She stared at him like he’d given her something she desperately needed, validation, steadiness, a piece of his confidence.
He let his hand fall and nodded toward the fridge. “Pretty sure there’s ice cream in there. Chocolate. Something with those candy chunks Skull keeps stealing.”
Her eyes widened faintly, a soft, shaken laugh escaping her. “Ice cream?”
“Best thing for the kind of night we had.” A faint smile ghosted his mouth. “Better than milk.”
She blinked at that. “Milk?”
“Never mind,” he said, turning toward the counter to warm his mug. “It’s an old habit.” She closed her laptop, and he smiled. “That’s a start. Come on, you know you want some.”
He expected her to leave then. Instead, she sat there, watching him with something bright and earnest in her eyes, and he felt good that he could help her. The way she looked at him in that moment, quiet, open, almost tender, hit him like a ghost of what Blair stirred in him, and he shoved that thought away fast.
He nodded toward the fridge. “I’m sure there are sprinkles here somewhere, eh?” he said, mimicking the Canadian speech.
Ayla laughed and he smiled.
She cleaned the last of the gear, put everything back in perfect order, and shut off the light.
Then she murmured, because the empty room felt like it needed the honesty, “Madness isn’t always a bad thing, Kelly.”
She closed the door softly and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Cleaning Breakneck’s rifle shouldn’t have steadied her, but it had. Something about its weight, the mechanical exactness, the quiet trust implied in the act. Grounding. There it was again, that promise of real intimacy, but not in a way she could name.
Voices drifted from the breakroom down the hall.
One of them was unmistakably his. After what she’d been through with his weapon, the thought of seeing him again jolted through her.
Breakneck.
She moved toward the sound without thinking, drawn by that low, familiar gravel in his tone. When she reached the corner and glanced inside, she stopped.
He was standing beside Ayla in the break room, dishing up ice cream, shoulders loose, head bent toward her. Ayla said something, too soft for Blair to catch, and Breakneck’s mouth curved. A faint, tired grin, but real.
The kind of expression she hadn’t seen on him all day. The kind she hadn’t imagined he had left in him after the way he staggered out of the gear room an hour ago.
Her breath caught.
Ayla laughed quietly, relief threading the sound. Breakneck answered it with another low chuckle, soft and unguarded, and it slid under Blair’s ribs like a cold blade, sharp, unexpected, not fatal, but enough to bruise.
Not because of Ayla. Ayla was brilliant, kind, shaken after the RPG scare.
Of course, he’d check on her.
No, what hit Blair was the ease in him. The way the weight seemed gone. The way the man who had kissed her like he was splitting open hadn’t rebuilt the walls. He looked untouched by what had happened.
For one tight, unwelcome heartbeat, her past rose like a shadow behind her.
Matthew Darrow.
His gentle voice.
His careful praise.
