"Itwasan emergency."
"You could have used that at any time." His voice is flat. "Any night. You could have walked out of that room whenever you wanted."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
"You know why." I hold his gaze.
Something shifts in his face. The anger that isn't anger. The thing that's been building underneath everything we've done in that room.
"So you stayed in a locked room, you could have left at any time … And then tonight?—"
"Lily was alone."
He crosses to the bed. Sits on the edge, careful not to jostle me. His hand finds mine. The one without the IV. His fingers wrap around my palm.
"You walked into a firefight to get my daughter."
"She was alone."
"So you—" He stops. His grip on my hand tightens. "You just threw yourself between Lily and a bullet?"
"I didn't decide anything." I meet his eyes. "I just moved."
"That's not how you work." He shakes his head. "You calculate. You analyze. You find the angle. You don't?—"
"What else was I going to do?"
The silence stretches between us. The farmhouse is quiet. Somewhere outside, I hear voices; the team, probably, establishing a perimeter. Inside this room, there is only his hand on mine and the steady ache in my side.
"She called you her friend." Thorne's voice is different now. Softer. "In the car. She was talking about you the whole way here. About partner numbers. About how you're the best math teacher she ever had."
"I'm the only math teacher she ever had."
"That's what she said too." A ghost of something crosses his face. Not quite a smile. "She wanted me to tell you about 5. That it's a twin. It has a friend."
"She's smart."
"She's six." His thumb traces across my knuckles. "She's six years old, has nanites in her blood, and a woman she's known for ten days just took a bullet for her."
"The woman who put those nanites there."
"Stop."
I go quiet.
"Stop doing that." His voice is fierce now. "Stop turning everything back to the debt. You're lying in a bed with a hole in your side because you wouldn't let my daughter die. That's notnothing. It's everything." He stops. His breath is ragged. His hand is shaking around mine.
"I don't know what to do with you." The admission sounds as though it is being dragged from him by force. "I had a system. A framework. You were the Rook. You were the woman who built the machine that poisoned my daughter. I was justified in hating you. I understood what you deserved. I understood how to give it to you."
"And now?"
"I don't hate you. I—" His voice breaks.
The words land somewhere in my chest. Below the wound. Deeper than the stitches.
"You don't have to hate me." My voice is barely a whisper. "I can hate myself enough for the both of us."
