He grabbed a towel and dragged it over his face, down his neck, breathing through the cotton as if it could filter out the static inside him. He knew the look he wore. The one that men like Iceman didn’t miss.
“You’re spiraling,” Iceman said, not unkindly. “You need to talk to someone. If it’s not me—” His voice stayed steady, unpressured. “—pick someone.” Breakneck stilled. “You’re on the verge of getting pulled from this op.” The words cut clean and sharp, slicing through the fog.
Surprise surged through him, quick and cold. He lowered the towel slowly, met Iceman’s eyes for the first time. Just a quiet line in the sand.
He gave a stiff nod. “Yes, boss.”
Iceman held his gaze a second longer, as if measuring whether that answer was compliance or acknowledgment. Then he straightened and stepped back, giving Breakneck his space. “Don’t test me, junior.”
Breakneck remained where he was for a beat after Ice left, towel clenched in his hands, chest rising and falling. The gym felt suddenly too bright, too exposed. He caught the faintest sound of music drifting from somewhere deeper in the recreation center.
Soft. Soothing. Something in his chest twisted, sharp and unfamiliar.
He turned toward the showers, muscles still warm, body obedient, mind anything but. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d rested without earning it first.
The hot water hammered down over his shoulders. He braced his palms against the tile and bowed his head, steam closing in around him. He stood there and let it hit, as if heat alone could quiet whatever was unraveling under his ribs.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Not the training. Not the containment. Not the lies he told to himself.
Iceman’s threat should have pissed him off. It didn’t. It rattled him. Not because of the op. Not because of pride. It would mean leaving her.
His jaw tightened. He’d told himself this thing between them was manageable. Physical. Temporary. A spark he could smother.
Panic stirred low and ugly, rooted in something older than Blair. Older than the betrayal. Older than grief he never learned how to process.
Trust was dangerous.
His mother had etched that lesson deep. In her. In himself. In any woman. So he’d built a system. Simple. Efficient. No attachment. No vulnerability. Sex as a pressure valve. Nothing that could touch bone. It had worked. Until it didn’t.
He exhaled hard, water running over his face.
Numbness wasn’t control. It was avoidance. A high-functioning shutdown he’d dressed up as discipline, and now it was cracking.
The truth of his paternity. His mother’s lies. The rage. The grief. It all pressed in at once, and he didn’t have the bandwidth to hold it back.
The pain hit fast and precise, driving a knife through his center, so sharp he nearly choked on it. His chest heaved. He pressed harder into the tile like he could hold himself together through force alone.
But the truth came anyway.
He needed something he didn’t know how to ask for. A soft place. A safe place. Somewhere he could stop fighting. Somewhere he could rest.
His throat tightened around the admission.
He didn’t know how to reach for that without feeling weak. Didn’t know how to name it. Didn’t know how to stand in front of a woman and say I’m not okay without it sounding like failure.
He’d thought numbness would keep him whole. It hadn’t.
Blair took numbness and laughed in its face, shoving it away with heat and clarity and confrontation. She filled his lungs when he didn’t want to breathe. She made him aware of every raw edge inside him.
And the worst part? He wanted to fall into her. His breath hitched. God…could he let himself? If he did, there would be no going back.
He stepped out of the locker room, warm from the shower, skin still flushed from the heat, but nothing compared to the fire roaring through him. His thoughts raced, tangled and frayed, the edges raw from revelation. His shirt clung to his damp chest, the cotton catching steam from his skin. His hoodie hung open, barely touched, and his sweatpants sat low on his hips, the compression shorts underneath a faint line against his thighs. His feet moved on instinct, directionless, his mind still locked in the storm of what had broken loose inside him.
Then he heard it.
Music.
Faint, but distinct. Fluid and haunting. Something classical, but unfamiliar. It drifted from the end of the hall, weightless and unhurried, yet piercing in its clarity. He paused, turned toward it without thinking, drawn by the way it threaded through the air like silk. The door to the practice room stood ajar. Light spilled into the hallway in a soft band, pale and golden, a quiet invitation.
