“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“I don’t know.” She exhaled shakily. “You’re just… steady. When I’m near you, my body stops bracing for the next thing. I don’t have to guess what you’re going to do. I don’t have to be afraid of being too loud or in the way or not enough.”
My throat tightened.
Steady.
I’d been called a lot of things in my life. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Too much. A liability in the wrong situation and a weapon in the right one.
No one had ever called me steady.
The word landed somewhere quiet and unexpected, like it didn’t know what to do with itself once it got there.
I realized then that she wasn’t talking about strength the way the club did. She meant consistency. Follow-through. The absence of surprise.
I didn’t disappear. I didn’t explode. I didn’t ask her to perform gratitude or toughness to earn space beside me.
I just stayed.
And somehow, that mattered more than anything else I could’ve offered her.
“You pulled me out of that hub before I even knew I needed to get out,” she said quietly. “You didn’t talk to me like I wasbroken. You didn’t question why I froze. You just… took care of it.”
“Amanda.” I angled toward her. She kept her eyes forward. “Anyone in your position would’ve frozen.”
“You didn’t,” she whispered.
I let out a slow breath. “I’ve got training you don’t. And experience you shouldn’t.”
Her jaw tightened. “I should’ve done something.”
“You did,” I said. “You survived. You got us intel. You didn’t break.”
She didn’t respond right away. Then she slowly leaned her head back against me, letting it rest near my collarbone. I felt the exact moment she let her weight go. Not all of it, but just enough that she wasn’t holding herself up out of tension.
My arm moved on its own. I slid it around her middle, not tight, just steady. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t pull away. In fact, she moved closer. Her back pressed to my chest. Her hand stayed fisted in my shirt.
My heartbeat kicked into overdrive, and I had to inhale carefully to keep it even.
“You’re shaking,” I murmured.
“Not as much,” she said. “Not when you’re touching me.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing hard. That—yeah. That did something to me.
“You’re safe,” I said.
Her voice was small but sure. “I know.”
We sat like that for a long time, the silence stretching out between us in a way that didn’t feel heavy anymore.
After a while, she whispered, “You don’t have to stay here every night.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
She made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh, not quite disbelief. “What if I keep needing you?”
“Then I keep showing up.”
