“I’ll drive her.”
I get her to the passenger side, grab her by the waist, and lift her in. She makes a small sound at the movement—too soft, too breathless, but I’m already slamming the door and rounding the hood before my brain can catch up to it.
Then I’m in the driver’s seat, engine snarling under my hands, tires spitting gravel as I throw the car into gear and tear us out of the yard.
The gate blurs behind us.
Then the depot.
Then the whole fucking world.
I drive like I’m trying to outrun death itself, one hand locked on the wheel, the other going straight to the back of her neck.
Mine.
Still here.
I drag her toward me and kiss her hard enough to bruise.
Her lips are cold, dry, but I don’t give a fuck because she’s here.
I kiss her again anyway, reckless and starved, the kind of kiss a man gives when he’s still half-convinced he hallucinated the woman beside him and needs to taste her to make sure she’s real.
“You areneverdoing that shit again,” I say my eyes back on the road, still driving too fast. “You hear me?”
The road blurs under the headlights.
Sirens fade somewhere behind us.
I keep one hand at the back of her neck and glance at her just long enough to make sure she’s still upright, still there, still breathing.
“You are never leaving the house again. I swear to God.” My voice breaks into something rawer, half laugh, half threat. “You’re going with meeverywhere.I don’t care if it’s business, war, or the fucking bathroom. Where you go, I go.”
Ayla makes the faintest sound beside me. Not a laugh.
Not quite a word.
I take it anyway. Take everything she gives me like it’s enough.
Because right now, it has to be.
“I love you,” I say.
The words tear out of me before I can stop them.
No pride left. No mask left. No room for anything except truth and speed and the woman in my passenger seat covered in blood.
“God, I fucking love you.”
I shake my head once, breath coming too fast, grip bruising on the wheel.
“You areneverscaring me like that again, Beda. Never.”
Her head lolls lightly toward the window.
Wrong. Too loose.
My smile dies.
