Page 76 of Property of the Bikers

She puts the book down.

I sit across from her.

The common room is empty except for us, the building quiet around us, the compound running its Wednesday night outside the windows.

“I left you five years ago to protect you from this world,” I say. “I was wrong. Should have trusted you to choose whether you wanted protecting or not.”

She looks at me.

Doesn’t fill the silence.

Doesn’t offer me anything to make the moment easier, because she’s not built for making moments easier and I don’t need her to be.

“Choose now,” she says.

“I’m choosing you,” I say. “Not as someone to keep safe from the thing that would cost her. As a partner who happens to need resources I have.” I hold her eyes. “Those are different and I should have understood the difference a long time ago.”

She looks at me for a moment longer.

Then she says, “Two days.”

“Two days,” I say.

She picks the book back up.

I stay in the chair. We sit in the quiet of the common room and the compound runs its night outside and Friday is two days away and I’ve said the thing that needed saying and she’s heard it and neither of us needs to do anything more with it tonight.

It was said.

That’s enough.

Chapter Thirty-Four

MIRA

I have run the operation four times today.

Four full scenarios, start to finish, in the chalk corridors Ghost drew on the workshop floor.

Doc administered the contraction simulation twice at half strength so I’d know what it feels like before tomorrow night when he runs it for real. Jax drilled me on the code phrases until I was saying them in my sleep.

Reeve timed every deviation, contingency, and abort trigger. He ran me through three of them back-to-back in the afternoon session until my responses were automatic.

I know the east wing of Millhaven Regional better than I know this compound.

I know the distance from the elevator bank to the private floor in steps. I know which orderly position Ghost’s man will be holding when Viktor’s team moves through the corridor. I know exactly where I need to be and what I need to look like and what I need to say when the moment arrives.

That’s what today was.

Now it’s evening, and my back aches.

The baby has been moving since three o’clock, and I’m in the main building common room, holding a book I haven’t been reading since Cade left, when Cade comes back through the door.

Jax is behind him.

Reeve behind Jax.

They come in from the debrief that’s been running in the security office for the last hour, the one I wasn’t in because Reeve said my part of the day was done and I needed to eat and rest.