His gaze flicked to me and then away again, already shutting the moment down. If I hadn’t heard the crash, I might have believed him.
“That didn’t sound fine.”
“Dropped the lamp.” He sat on the side of the bed and nudged the broken base with his foot, as if that explained everything. “Clumsy.”
Novak wasn’t clumsy.
I didn’t call him on it, but I stepped further into the room anyway, slow, deliberate, giving him space but not backing off, my attention on him. There was something in the way he held himself—too still under the surface, as though everything had been locked down hard and fast.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
I let a second pass, then another, weighing it up, pushing enough without triggering whatever line he’d drawn.
“You can go,” he said.
Wasn’t this the point where I comforted him? Or not that, but reassured him? Was he in the middle of some PTSD-induced flashback? He’d probably kill me if I went anywhere near him.
“For the record,” I said, turning back toward the door, “next time you decide to redecorate, maybe don’t make it sound like you’re being murdered.”
A beat.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And don’t cut your feet open,” I added.
He raised an eyebrow. “I won’t.”
Then, I left because whatever had happened up here, nightmare or accident, Novak had shouted out in pain, then buried his reaction deep in his freaky brain, and I wasn’t getting anything more from him.
Adrenaline still flooded my system, sharp and restless, and there was no chance I was getting back to sleep. I’d been in bed with my laptop, but that was done, so I headed down to the comms room, pulled up the feeds, and started filtering data, watching the night rotations, and noting they ran on reduced coverage. Rookie mistake.
The scent of coffee and bacon woke me, or maybe it was the rough jostling of my shoulder.
I’d fallen asleep in the comms room, my face squished on my arm on the desk, and my back telling me that I was too old to be doing this shit.
“Breakfast in ten,” Novak said, setting a mug of coffee beside me before turning and walking out. I tracked the movement without meaning to, but it was his ass that caught me, high and tight and distracting as hell, and my brain shorted out for a second as I imagined burying my face there—no.
We’d never discussed the kissing or the blowjobs, but I’d never said I didn’t want more of the same—after all, we were in a remote cabin for at least the next week with nothing to do but plan how to extract Noah and Eden, and right now all we were doing was collecting intel. Sex would be good. Him fucking me.Me fucking him. All good. But maybe we could start small, and he’d tell me about his nightmare?
Fueled by caffeine, I headed for the bathroom for the fastest shower of my life, hard as a rock, but not touching because who knew what might happen when we started talking?
When I came back downstairs, the cabin felt different.
Novak stood at the stove with his back to me, moving with efficiency, bacon in the pan, eggs plated, coffee poured, as if the night hadn’t happened and he hadn’t shouted, and I hadn’t heard it.
I leaned on the counter, watching him for a second longer than I should have, trying to find the angle in. Something normal. Something that didn’t sound as if I was poking at a bruise he didn’t want touched.
“So,” I started, casual, or as close as I could get, “about last night?—”
My phone vibrated against the counter, cutting me off mid-sentence.
I stared at it for a beat.
Timing. Always perfect.
I grabbed the phone. “Caleb.”
