She didn’t pull away.
Didn’t hesitate.
Her body pressed against mine, warm through the thin fabric, and I could feel her breathing—ragged, unsteady, the same mess as mine—and neither of us pulled back, even though we both knew better.
And God help me, I’d never wanted anything more than another moment with this woman.
When I finally broke the kiss, my forehead dropped against hers. Both of us breathing too hard. Her fingers tangled in my shirt. My hand still cradling the back of her head like something precious, something I couldn’t set down.
Half a second.
That’s all I allowed.
I tilted her head back. “Look at me.”
She lifted her eyes.
Brown. Deep. Wet at the edges.
God.
She did.
And something gave—deep in everything I’d built to keep the mission clean.
I needed her to hear this. Every word. Needed it branded into her memory so deeply that panic couldn’t erase it.
“Listen,” I said, the words coming faster than I intended, but I couldn’t throttle them back. “I’m getting that car. I’m bringing it here. No matter what.”
I meant that.
Down to my marrow. Down to whatever piece of my soul still functioned.
Even if it killed me.
Especially if it killed me.
“I’ll get it to the stoop,” I continued. “Right to the front steps. And when I do—you remember your promise. About what happens if I get bitten.”
Her eyes didn’t waver. Not a millimeter.
“You take them and you go,” I said. “Fiona and Lily in the back. You get behind the wheel. You drive. No heroics. No circling back. No—” My throat tried to close. I pushed through it. “No stopping. Not even for me.”
My grip on her tightened—just enough that she’d feel the urgency in my hands, in my fingers pressing into her skin.
“If this is it—”
I swallowed. A painful motion.
The words had been sitting in my throat all morning. I made myself say them anyway.
“—I need to know you three are moving. You get to the coast. You find my boat or any boat, and you go.”
Libby’s head shook—small, involuntary—a refusal that lived in her body before her mind could override it.
“Finn—”
“Libby.”
