“Yes,” I answer. “Layered teams. Road choke. Lobby contingency. Redundancy in case the first attempt failed.”
He holds my hand tighter. “And you came back alone.”
“I knew you would tighten security the second you sensed something,” I reply. “I also knew if I told you over a line that might be compromised, it would tip him.”
“So you chose proximity.”
“I chose the only variable I could control.”
He studies me in silence for a long moment.
“I was never settling anywhere,” I add. “The flat over the locksmith was my fourth address in two months. I unpacked three baby things and kept the rest in a suitcase so I could run again if I had to.”
His gaze flicks to my stomach.
“I was building leverage on him,” I say. “I wasn’t building a life.”
“You should have come to me,” he murmurs. “Even with whatever was going on between us, Saoirse, I’d have…”
“I didn’t trust what I meant to you after you told me to leave,” I answer honestly. “And I didn’t trust what you would do if you knew about her.”
He absorbs that without protest.
“I thought if I could intercept the hit cleanly, you’d survive and I could vanish again before he adjusted,” I continue. “I thought I could protect both of you.”
“And you stepped in front of a bullet anyway.”
“I also knew you’d die if I didn’t.”
His hand moves over my stomach, protective and firm. “That ends now,” he says quietly. “You don’t carry counterintelligence campaigns alone. You don’t disappear into aliases. You don’t build war rooms inside rented flats.”
“And you don’t exile me when you’re furious,” I reply.
His eyes hold mine. “I won’t.”
The promise feels different this time, earned rather than demanded.
I shift slightly and wince when the bandage pulls, and his hand moves immediately to steady me.
“You were bleeding because of me,” he murmurs.
“I was bleeding because of him,” I correct softly.
His expression darkens at that, and something lethal flashes through it before he reins it back under control.
“I’m never letting you go again,” he says, voice weighted and dark with certainty. “You don’t get to vanish into infrastructure. You don’t get to decide I’m safer without you. You don’t get to raise my daughter alone in borrowed rooms.”
Emotion rises again, thick and overwhelming, but this time, it doesn’t fracture me.
He leans down slowly, and his mouth brushes the edge of the bandage across my chest, just above the wound, lips warm and careful against skin that still aches.
He studies me like I’m something breakable and unbreakable at the same time. “I have half a mind to keep you locked and safe.”
I chuckle throatily. “You think I don’t know how to find escape routes?”
His mouth twitches despite everything. “Fair enough.”
I lean into him again, exhausted in a way that feels cellular. “I never stopped loving you,” I say, the admission slipping out raw. “Even when I hated you. Even when I thought you’d killed her. I kept trying to reconcile the man in front of me with the monster in my head, and I couldn’t make them match.”
