Chapter 5 Elara
Elara
They bandaged me as if I were fragile, and sometimes I almost enjoyed pretending I was.
A neat strip of gauze, the medic’s thumbs pressing down, the smell of rubbing alcohol lingering on my skin.
Oliver made an unhelpful joke about my fashion choices; Gage told the man to stop asking if I wanted morphine like it was a mercy I didn’t deserve.
Beckett stayed close enough to be in my personal space but far enough to be safe. He maintained this balance with his body, and I observed it like I did the rest of him: broad shoulders that could hold a man’s weight, a clenched jaw that never relaxed, hands built for both making and breaking.
When the medic left us alone for a minute, Beckett’s face folded in a way I’d seen before—only with people who bled for other people. Concern, careful, and contained. He took my hand, and it surprised me that I didn’t snatch it back.
“You don’t have to pretend for me,” he said, voice low. “If you’re on our side, be on our side. If you’re not—say so and I’ll do my job.”
There it was: the offer, wrapped in a threat like a ribbon. I felt the weight of the room in it. Results, not trust. He never asked how—because if he asked how, the world would get complicated.
I looked at the blood on the gauze, at the thin line of red that marked the gravity of what I’d done. It landed where a confession might have landed if I’d ever been brave enough to open my mouth.
“Beckett,” I said, and then stopped. I had rehearsed words for this, for the million moments in which loyalty would be tested and I’d need to answer. None of them fit the ache in my chest.
He tightened his hold, not hard. “Talk to me.”
So I told him a small truth. Not everything—never everything—but a thing that seemed necessary.
“Hydra trained me,” I said, voice small for someone used to being loud. “Not to be a politician or a socialite. They trained me to get in, get out, and make sure their money stayed clean. I used to be good at making shadows.”
Beckett’s face didn’t change much. His jaw worked. I watched the way the muscles moved and it felt like an ache behind my ribs. “Used to.”
“Used to,” I echoed. “Then something happened, and I left. I didn’t leave because I grew a conscience overnight.
I left because a girl I knew—someone I cared about—disappeared.
I quit being good at shadows and decided I wanted to do the right thing.
Or at least, make things less wrong. I’m here to help your team shut Hydra down.
I didn’t know about the human trafficking, or I would have left a long time ago. ”
Did he consider me like a problem that could be solved with force if you hit it hard enough? “Why should I believe that? People say they want to be better. People lie to stay alive.”
I swallowed. The bandage pressed against my collarbone, and each breath tugged at it like a cheap string. “Because I could have run when you hit the warehouse. I could have bolted before the first gun went off. Instead, I stayed there. I could have pointed. I didn’t. I risked getting shot for you.”
Beckett’s expression softened into something I hadn’t expected: the beginning of understanding. It surprised me because I’d spent so much time training to be unreadable that when someone finally started to see me, I wasn’t sure how to stand.
“You almost died,” he said, and the sentence had no accusation in it. Only fact.
“I almost died,” I agreed. “And if I die, it won’t change Hydra. But maybe it will change Roger Grand’s accountants.”
He let out a laugh that sounded more like noise than amusement. “God, you’re stubborn.”
“You like stubbornness," I said, because insults and minor truths were simpler to express than heartfelt confessions.
Beckett moved slightly closer, a move you only make when you’re willing to take a risk. His face lowered until our breaths mingled. “Don’t test me,” he warned—the same line he’d used in the transport, but now his voice carried something else. Care. Possession. Something like longing.
My heart did that stupid flip again, that little traitorous thing that didn’t belong in a briefing room or a warehouse.
“I don’t plan to,” I told him. But when he touched the bandage with his thumb, there was heat under the gauze where the blood was still drying.
His thumb lingered, not to be tender but to be present, and the world narrowed to that small point of contact.
Outside, the Golden Team was writing up statements in the language of the job—sterile and efficient.
Inside, there was a warm, ridiculous possibility that I could be more than just an asset or a mask.
There was also the dangerous, terrifying idea that Beckett might—God help me—be the person I finally let in once the barriers came down.
For now, the mission hummed like an engine in the background. There would be debriefs. There would be interrogations. There would be breakfasts where we pretended we’d slept and were free from the ghosts that trailed us, or rather me.
But in the thin space between a bandage and a thumb, I let myself believe, just for a moment, that maybe I could be trusted. Not fully—never fully. But enough.
He closed the small distance between us and brushed his lips across the scar on my wrist—no flourish, no attempt to own me. Just a whisper of contact that left me trembling and unarmored. If only he knew how I got that scar.
“Don’t make me prove it,” he murmured. “Not everyone gets second chances, Voss. Be the kind of person who deserves one.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if I could ever become that person. All I knew was I wanted to try, because when Beckett Cole looked at me, I saw a future where I wouldn’t have to hide in shadows anymore. And that scared me more than bullets ever had.