Jamie took a aggressive step forward, her eyes blazing with fire. “First of all, I got us the firepower we need to stay alive. And yeah, I flirted. Because that’s what he expects from me. I let him think there's a chance he might fuck me because it gets him to move product quick and cheap. He has never betrayed me when he easily could have. Do you want to survive this or not, Vinny?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn't. I started pacing the tight living room, my adrenaline running too high to stay still.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded, stopping.
“Because you were sleeping! I already told you that.”
I closed the distance between us until we were standing toe-to-toe, our breathing erratic. “And how long have you known him?”
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “A while.”
“How well, Jamie?”
“Well enough to know he’s not a threat to us.”
“No. You know damn well that’s not what I’m asking," I growled, the words tearing out of my throat. "Did you fuck him?”
She tilted her head, her gaze dropping into dangerous, icy waters. “You don’t get to ask me that.”
“The fuck I don’t.”
The words echoed in the quiet cabin, and the instant they left my mouth, regret tasted bitter on my tongue. Not because it was a lie, but because of how violently quiet she went.
She blinked once, slowly. Her arms stayed crossed, but her shoulders dropped just a fraction of an inch, a sudden vulnerability cracking her armor. “Tell me why you think you have the right, Vinny. Because I remind you of Sophia?”
The air left my lungs in a rough hiss. "No. Fuck that. Who the fuck is talking about Sophia? You’re you. I seeyou."
I stared down at her face for a long, silent stretch. Her chest was rising and falling in rapid, shallow bursts, her jaw locked tight. But beneath all that defensive fire, I could see the truth. She wanted to be seen.
I stepped completely into her space, my hand sliding up the smooth skin of her neck. My thumb caught the tight edge of her jaw, forcing her to look at me.
“I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t see a ghost when I look at you, Jamie. Sophia couldn’t ever make me feel the way you do.”
We stood frozen in the center of the room, breathing in each other's air. The leftover anger was still vibrating between us, but it was mutating rapidly into something heavy, thick, and demanding.
Suddenly, her head tilted up, and her teeth sank sharply into my bottom lip, drawing a small gasp from my throat.
“How do I make you feel?” she whispered against my mouth.
I leaned in, pressing my forehead firmly against hers. I couldn't find the words—couldn't admit how completely she had ruined the memory of everything else—but I prayed she could feel the desperate hammer of my heart against her chest.
“Next time,” I murmured against her lips, “wake me.”
Jamie didn’t pull away. She just nodded against my skin.
Chapter Twenty-Five — Vinny
She spent the rest of the day quiet, her head bent low over the ledgers and spiral notebooks spread across the kitchen table. Her brows pinched tightly together, her plush lips pursed in deep concentration. I didn’t ask a single question. She’d already told me she would lay out the map once she figured out our path, and I trusted her to do exactly that.
But just sitting there in the room with her, sharing a silence that felt completely comfortable, made my heart feel funny—in a way I hadn’t experienced in years. I was no longer used to this domesticity. For four years, my life had been measured strictly in muzzle flashes, cold concrete, and the suffocating weight of a debt that never got any lighter. Peace was something I thought I'd permanently buried in a New York cemetery. It was a luxury trapped with the parents I could no longer speak to.
But looking at Jamie now, the protective hardness in my chest felt brittle.
She was a storm, and somehow, sitting right in the eye of it with her felt like the safest place I’d ever been. I watched her all day. And the longer I let my eyes trace her, the more the truth settled into my bones.
I needed her.
Not just in the primal way I wanted her body, but because she was the only thing that made the old me and the new me feel like one cohesive man. She had seen me bleeding and broken—actually, metaphorically, and mentally—and instead of walking away, she had chosen to drag me back into the light.
