He thinks for a beat. When he speaks, the words come like he’s surprised to hear them. “I don’t like sleeping when it’s quiet. I leave a fan on, not because I need the air. Because the noise keeps the film reel from starting, and I keep a book under the mattress. Not a gun. A book. Something boring, usually. Paper’s heavy enough to remind me I’m not a ghost when the room goes too still.”
I didn’t expect that to hit as hard as it does. “What book’s under the mattress now?”
“Manual for diesel generators.” A tiny shrug. “Told you, boring.” He tilts his head. “Your turn.”
I stall, and Carter waits. He’s good at that. “I don’t like doors,” I admit. “Not closed ones, anyway. If I can’t see the hinges and the gap under the frame, my skin itches. I count exits. I pretend it’s for tactics. Really, it’s so I know which way to run if the questions get sharp.”
He absorbs that without comment, like he’ll file it with everything else and not use it as leverage. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. “Another one,” he says.
“Pushy.” I laugh.
Carter shrugs his big shoulders. “Curious.”
I huff. “I kept something of Alex’s. Not the dog tags, you’ve seen that. Something else.” I reach into my cut and pull a thin strip of brass with a jagged edge. “His bike key. The one he broke when he was drunk and insisted he could pick his own ignition like a magician.”
Carter smiles for real, the kind of smile that warms blood instead of spiking it. “He told everyone that it was me.”
“Typical.” I twirl the key once and slide it back. “Your turn.”
He considers me for a long heartbeat. “Sometimes I don’t ask for help because I don’t know who I’ll be if someone says yes.”
I sit with that one. Let it cut, then settle. “Alright, Bishop,” I say softly. “How do you feel about now?”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “Like if I take one step closer, you’ll either kiss me or shoot me.”
“Statistically, those outcomes are not mutually exclusive.”
“Then I’ll risk it.” He stands and comes around thetable until he’s crowding my knees. He braces his hands on either side of my chair. Not touching, just asking without words. I tilt my face up.
“Stop thinking,” he says again, a murmur against the soft hum of old wiring.
This time I stop.
The kiss is slow enough to feel dangerous. No adrenaline spike to hide behind, no sirens to excuse it. His mouth is heat and patience. My fingers find the back of his neck and curl there, holding something I didn’t realize I’d been reaching for. His chest presses to mine, steady, grounding, the opposite of chaos.
We break long enough to breathe.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“The worst,” he agrees.
“Do it again.” He does.
The rest unfolds in fragments, light, breath, heartbeat. Carter’s hands move with a kind of reverence, tracing proof that I’m real, that I’m still here. Each touch feels like a question answered, a memory rewritten. He maps my scars like landmarks, pausing where old pain lives, smoothing over it until the ache becomes something else entirely.
My fingers find the rough edges of his jaw, the pulse that jumps beneath his skin, the quiet tremor that betrays how hard he’s fighting not to break.
We laugh once, quietly, the kind of laughter that shivers into something softer. His forehead rests against mine, breath mingling, a shared rhythm that feels older than either of us. The air hums with warmth and wanting.
Layers fall away. Not just the fabric between us, but everything we’ve hidden behind. The lies we’ve told to stay upright. The armor we thought we needed.
He cups my face like I’m something fragile that survived the fire. I touch him back like I’m reminding him he’s allowed to feel. The room narrows until it’s only us, skin against skin, pulse against pulse, the world outside dissolving into nothing but the slow, careful language of two people learning trust through touch.
When he pulls me closer, it isn’t about escape or urgency. It’s about belonging. It’s the quiet, aching relief of finding home in someone else’s hands. The part of me that’s been locked behind Alex’s shadow cracks open under the weight of his tenderness. His breath catches in my hair, a sound halfway between a sigh and a prayer.
The safehouse listens but doesn’t interfere. The city fades, the hum of neon dissolving into the steady thrum of shared heartbeats. In this small, stolen slice of peace, I stop measuring loss and start remembering what it feels like to be alive. We didn’t just earn this. We survived enough to deserve it.
When we collapse back into each other, the city outside is still awake but quieter somehow. His heartbeat is a calm hammer against my palm. Mine answers and doesn’t apologize.
