Not because she said anything.
Because she didn’t.
She just watched. Her pupils blown wide. Her breathing shallow. A flush rising up her chest like a fire spreading fast.
She wasn’t surprised. Or scared.
She was with me. Right there in it. Letting me fall apart, and catching me without touching me at all.
And I can’t stand the thought of her being in that office now, with no one to catch her.
The final straw is Mason’s message. Just a forwarded ops note with time stamps and flight details. A list of final prep milestones. Nina’s name is attached to everything now. Embedded.
I close the message and stand up.
No bag. No real plan. Just a gnawing in my gut that if I don’t get to her now, I’ll never get another chance.
Langley to Denver is a short flight, but it’s long enough for every bad decision I’ve ever made to weigh in.
The cold hits the second I step out of the terminal. It’s not bitter, nothing like Chicago or the Baltics in winter, but it’s dry and sharp, threading through my sleeves and catching in my chest. I grew up here. I know this cold. But now it feels like walking through a memory that doesn’t recognize me anymore.
Nina’s address is burned into my brain. She never gave it to me, but that’s never stopped me when it comes to her.
I shouldn’t be here.
But I am.
The building is nicer than I pictured. Modern, sleek, with brushed steel numbers and coded buzzers and a clean concrete stairwell that smells like fresh paint and bleach. I don’t know what I expected. Some part of me still thinks she should live in a walk-up with bad lighting and cracked tile, because that’s the version of her I left behind.
I find her door without thinking about it. Stand there like an idiot, second-guessing everything I told myself on the plane.
This is reckless. Selfish. Pointless.
She’s probably not even here.
I raise my fist.
The door swings open. Wyatt’s mid-step, trash bag in one hand—he sees me and stops dead.
Shirtless. Sweating. His chest rises and falls from exertion. The scar on his right shoulder catches the light—the one I kissed without asking where it came from.
My jaw clenches before I can stop it.
For a split second, all I can see is him inside her. Then him inside me. Doesn’t matter. I see it too vividly. Hear the sounds. Feel the echo in my own goddamn body. Jealousy and desire tear through me in the same breath.
Then I glance past him, and I see the boxes.
Half-packed. A few sealed. Sharpie labels in Nina’s handwriting—Books, Office, Bathroom.
She’s gone. Or going.
Not here.
My pulse drops, then spikes again. Wyatt hasn’t moved. Neither have I.
And suddenly the hallway feels a lot colder than it did before.
5
