Page 85 of Reckless

The distance between us returns all at once.

“I’ve got work to do.” His voice has found its control again, and he turns before I can answer, heading for his workstation, already reaching for his laptop as the familiar toothpick finds its way back between his teeth.

I stay exactly where I am.

My fingers lift to my cheek, tracing the warmth his hand left behind.

He cares.

Somehow, that doesn’t make any of this easier.

It makes it worse.

Because the guilt that’s been sitting quietly in my stomach since I lied to Sin finally settles in for good.

Ghost thinks he just saved me.

But he has no idea I’m still keeping the thing from him that might get him killed.

Chapter Seventeen

SAGE

Six days have passed since the ambush on the highway, and if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I’ve made it through a single one without ending up back on that road.

It always starts the same way.

Not with the gunfire.

Not even with the photograph.

It’s Ghost.

Standing twenty feet away from me with the desert wind tugging at the edges of his cut while he looked at something I couldn’t see, yet somehow knew had changed everything.

I’ve replayed that moment so many times now that I could probably tell you exactly how long he stood there before he moved. The way his thumb rested against the edge of the photograph. The deliberate way he folded it before slipping it back inside his cut.

It took me days to understand what I’d actually seen.

That Ghost never decided to shoot those men.

Whatever was on that photograph made the decision for him.

The gunshots echo in my ears later, usually when I’m trying to fall asleep.

Sometimes they’re loud enough to drag me awake just as I’m drifting off, my heart racing before my brain catches up and remembers I’m home, the apartment is locked, Piper is safe, and Ghost checked every window himself before he left three nights ago because apparently that’s something he does now.

He never mentioned it.

I never thanked him.

The windows were checked before he left prospect, Liam, here on patrol.

The strange part is that I don’t keep replaying the shooting because I’m horrified by it.

Lord knows I should be.

I watched the man I’ve been quietly and hopelessly falling for execute two men on the side of a Nevada highway without so much as raising his voice. Every sensible part of me knows that should have irrevocably changed something between us. Instead, I’ve spent the last six days trying to understand why it didn’t.