Page 107 of Reckless

“If it went wrong because I told you. If you got hurt because I told you—”

“Sage.” His voice softens, but it doesn’t lose its weight. “That’s not protecting me. That’s deciding my risk for me. Those are two entirely different things.”

That is the part I have to sit with. Not the accusation, but the distinction underneath it, the one I have spent weeks refusing to look at directly.

“I don’t know how to do this the other w-way,” I say, and my voice cracks, the first crack in a wall I have been holding up since the moment his phone touched the table. “I have spent my whole life being the one who carries things so other people don’t have to… my mother, Piper, every family that’s walked into my office. I don’t know how to hand something to someone and trust they won’t drop it.”

“I’m not asking you to hand me everything.” He crosses back toward the table, slower now, some of the rigidity gone out of him. “I’m asking you to stop deciding, alone, what I am capable of carrying.”

“I get it.” The words come out smaller than I intend. “I get that now.”

He walks toward me, and I stay exactly where I am, rooted to the floor as he stops close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him.

“You scared me.” My breath catches, not because of his words, but because they’re coming from him. I’ve never heard him sound like this before. He keeps them locked away somewhere deep inside, where they’re safe. And right now, he’s opening the door anyway. “Do you understand that?” His voice stays low, rough around the edges. “I’ve run toward gunfire and never once felt what I felt staring at a screen and realizing those messages were pointed at you.”

“I’m sorry.” It is not enough, and I know it is not enough, but it is the truest thing I have.

“I don’t want your sorry.” His hand comes up, finally, touching the side of my face, and the anger that was holding his entire body rigid a moment ago drains into something else, something that has been sitting underneath it the entire time. “I want you to stop doing this to yourself. To us.”

The words settle between us, and for a moment neither of us moves.

I can still feel the heat of his anger, the weight of everything we’ve just said to each other, but it’s changing into something else right in front of me.

Something quieter.

Something infinitely more dangerous.

My eyes search his face, taking him in as if I’m seeing him for the first time. The hard line of his jaw is still there, his shoulders still tight beneath the leather of his cut, but the fight has gone out of him. In its place is something I’ve never seen from Ghost before.

Fear.

Not for himself.

For me.

And it hits me all at once.

All those nights I’d spent lying awake convincing myself I was protecting him, he’d been doing exactly the same thing.

The apartment feels impossibly small, the air thick enough to make every breath feel like work. I can hear the traffic somewhere outside, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, and the uneven rhythm of my own heartbeat.

Then I realize I’m not the only one breathing harder.

Ghost’s gaze drops to my mouth for the briefest second before finding my eyes again.

My heart stumbles.

The look on his face undoes something inside me that the argument never could.

Before I have the chance to talk myself out of it, my hand finds the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the soft cotton beneath my palm. I feel the warmth of him through the fabric, solid and real, and the simple fact that he’s standing here, that he’s safe, steals whatever words I thought I had left.

He doesn’t hesitate. The space between us disappears so naturally it almost feels as though we’d both been leaning toward it this entire time.

His mouth finds mine, and every ounce of restraint we’d been clinging to disappears in an instant. There is nothing careful about this kiss, nothing tentative. The kiss is equal parts relief, frustration, and every conversation we’d swallowed instead of having.

My fingers tighten in his shirt as he cups my face, and the second his thumb brushes my cheek, I realize he’s wiping away tears I hadn’t even noticed were still falling.

A broken sound escapes me. Whether it’s a laugh or a sob, I can’t tell you.