TWENTY-SIX
ARSENY
The floodlights in the motor pool hum overhead, throwing long shadows between the parked vehicles. Most of them are dark now. The engines are cold, and the canvas is stiff with frost. The snow has drifted into the edges in little frozen piles and stayed there untouched.
I climb into the back of one of the trucks and sit with my back against the cab, my legs braced out in front of me. Waiting has never been a problem for me. Thinking while I wait is the problem.
Before my thoughts can swallow me up, headlights sweep across the far end of the motor pool, catching my attention, then disappear. A few seconds later, I hear footsteps. They’re unhurried and familiar enough that I know exactly who it is before I see him.
Caiden climbs into the truck bed and sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch straight away.
For a moment, neither of us says anything. We sit there in the quiet with the cold all around us, the fact that we’re here pressed into the same small space. “I missed you,” he says eventually.
“I know,” I say, looking over at him. “I missed you, too.” He exhales slowly, and some of the tension flows out of him. Then he shifts slightly, and I lean into him without making a thing of it, resting my head against his shoulder as his arm comes up around me.
That single, tiny thing eases something inside me immediately.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say. It comes out quietly, barely above a whisper.
“Me too,” he says, and there’s no hesitation in it at all, which gives me that regular warm feeling in my chest.
We stay like that for a bit. His hand rests against my side, his thumb moving in slow little strokes through the fabric of my shirt. I hadn’t realised how badly I needed ordinary touch until he got here and ruined my ability to pretend otherwise.
After a while, he turns his head slightly and looks at me. “You look like you’re carrying a lot.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “I am. I wish you being here could make it stop,” I add.
“I know,” he says. Then his mouth shifts, very slightly. “But maybe... I can distract you.”
I look at him properly then, one eyebrow raised. “That sounds suspicious.”
He leans in and murmurs against my lips.
“It’s meant to.” Then he kisses me. It instantly shoves everything else a little further away for a second.
I kiss him back without hesitation, my hand sliding up behind his neck and holding him there.
I’d almost forgotten what this feels like, which is crazy because it’s only been a matter of weeks.
I deepen the kiss, and Caiden makes a soft sound into my mouth, shifting in closer. The truck is cold underneath us, the metal leeching heat through my clothes, but his hand is warm, his mouth is warmer, and the contrast gets under my skin fast.
When I pull back, it’s only enough to rest my forehead against his. “That,” I say quietly, “is exactly the kind of distraction I had in mind.”
He laughs once. “I thought it might be.” We kiss again, slower this time, which honestly helps.
It’s just the two of us in the dark with the edge taken off for a few minutes.
Cassie is still dead. Niko is still falling apart.
Vladimir is still too small for any of this.
None of that goes anywhere, but while Caiden’s hands are on me, while his mouth is warm and his body is here, real and not something I have to imagine, the noise in my head drops to a level I can stand.
We stay there longer than we probably should, kissing in that slow, stupid way that makes time stop behaving properly. It’s almost as if my whole body woke up and went, “Yes, there you are. I remember this. Thank you.”
Eventually, he breaks the kiss and rests his mouth briefly against my temple. “We should go.”
“Yes,” I say, but I still don’t move. Neither does he for another few minutes. Then we do the sensible thing and climb down separately, spacing ourselves out without having to discuss it. It’s automatic by now — that distance in public, that private choreography of not looking like what we are.
He goes his way first, then I follow later.
I get back to my room and shut the door behind me, then sit on the edge of the bed without bothering with the light for a minute.
Caiden is here, and that matters more than I like admitting most days. It doesn’t make anything better exactly, but it makes it easier to keep going.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling. Tomorrow will bring all the things it was going to bring anyway.
Conversations I don’t want, responsibilities I can’t dodge.
Niko looking me in the face and pretending he’s more all right than he is, and me pretending to believe him for as long as he needs me to.
For now, though, I let myself think about Caiden in the truck. I close my eyes and hold onto that for as long as I can before eventually drifting off to sleep.