Chapter 25 #2
He pushed out of the splits slowly, deliberately, palms braced on the mat as his body unfolded.
The stretch released with a low, involuntary sound he didn’t bother to suppress.
His legs trembled as he came upright, muscles supple, loose, fully awake in a way the rest of him wasn’t.
Sweat ran freely now, down his chest, along his arms, collecting at his wrists.
He wanted to be all right.
The wanting was the worst part.
He grabbed a towel and dragged it over his face, down his neck, breathing through the cotton as if it could filter out the static inside him. He knew the look he wore. The one that men like Iceman didn’t miss.
“You’re spiraling,” Iceman said, not unkindly. “You need to talk to someone. If it’s not me—” His voice stayed steady, unpressured. “—pick someone.” Breakneck stilled. “You’re on the verge of getting pulled from this op.” The words cut clean and sharp, slicing through the fog.
Surprise surged through him, quick and cold. He lowered the towel slowly, met Iceman’s eyes for the first time. Just a quiet line in the sand.
He gave a stiff nod. “Yes, boss.”
Iceman held his gaze a second longer, as if measuring whether that answer was compliance or acknowledgment. Then he straightened and stepped back, giving Breakneck his space. “Don’t test me, junior.”
Breakneck remained where he was for a beat after Ice left, towel clenched in his hands, chest rising and falling. The gym felt suddenly too bright, too exposed. He caught the faintest sound of music drifting from somewhere deeper in the recreation center.
Soft. Soothing. Something in his chest twisted, sharp and unfamiliar.
He turned toward the showers, muscles still warm, body obedient, mind anything but. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d rested without earning it first.
The hot water hammered down over his shoulders. He braced his palms against the tile and bowed his head, steam closing in around him. He stood there and let it hit, as if heat alone could quiet whatever was unraveling under his ribs.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Not the training. Not the containment. Not the lies he told to himself.
Iceman’s threat should have pissed him off. It didn’t. It rattled him. Not because of the op. Not because of pride. It would mean leaving her.
His jaw tightened. He’d told himself this thing between them was manageable. Physical. Temporary. A spark he could smother.
Panic stirred low and ugly, rooted in something older than Blair. Older than the betrayal. Older than grief he never learned how to process.
Trust was dangerous.
His mother had etched that lesson deep. In her. In himself. In any woman. So he’d built a system. Simple. Efficient. No attachment. No vulnerability. Sex as a pressure valve. Nothing that could touch bone. It had worked. Until it didn’t.
He exhaled hard, water running over his face.
Numbness wasn’t control. It was avoidance. A high-functioning shutdown he’d dressed up as discipline, and now it was cracking.
The truth of his paternity. His mother’s lies. The rage. The grief. It all pressed in at once, and he didn’t have the bandwidth to hold it back.
The pain hit fast and precise, driving a knife through his center, so sharp he nearly choked on it. His chest heaved. He pressed harder into the tile like he could hold himself together through force alone.
But the truth came anyway.
He needed something he didn’t know how to ask for. A soft place. A safe place. Somewhere he could stop fighting. Somewhere he could rest.
His throat tightened around the admission.
He didn’t know how to reach for that without feeling weak. Didn’t know how to name it. Didn’t know how to stand in front of a woman and say I’m not okay without it sounding like failure.
He’d thought numbness would keep him whole. It hadn’t.
Blair took numbness and laughed in its face, shoving it away with heat and clarity and confrontation. She filled his lungs when he didn’t want to breathe. She made him aware of every raw edge inside him.
And the worst part? He wanted to fall into her. His breath hitched. God…could he let himself? If he did, there would be no going back.
He stepped out of the locker room, warm from the shower, skin still flushed from the heat, but nothing compared to the fire roaring through him.
His thoughts raced, tangled and frayed, the edges raw from revelation.
His shirt clung to his damp chest, the cotton catching steam from his skin.
His hoodie hung open, barely touched, and his sweatpants sat low on his hips, the compression shorts underneath a faint line against his thighs.
His feet moved on instinct, directionless, his mind still locked in the storm of what had broken loose inside him.
Then he heard it.
Music.
Faint, but distinct. Fluid and haunting.
Something classical, but unfamiliar. It drifted from the end of the hall, weightless and unhurried, yet piercing in its clarity.
He paused, turned toward it without thinking, drawn by the way it threaded through the air like silk.
The door to the practice room stood ajar.
Light spilled into the hallway in a soft band, pale and golden, a quiet invitation.
He moved toward it. The moment he looked in, the rest of the world dropped out.
Blair was dancing.
She didn’t see him. Her back was to the door, arms extended, her body in perfect control as she turned through a slow pirouette and let it flow into something even more graceful.
Her ballet shoes whispered against the hardwood.
Her pink almost transparent leggings hugged the powerful lines of her legs, and her white lace bodysuit shifted with each breath, clinging to the muscles beneath.
She moved like the music lived inside her, like she was pulling it out of the air and making it visible, something he felt in his chest.
Breakneck froze.
Not just physically, but down to the marrow.
Something inside him locked up and surged all at once.
He had no goddamn idea she could move like that.
No idea she had that in her. He’d seen her command a room, lead a team, keep up with warriors who carried scars and kill counts. But this…this was something else.
This was softness without weakness. Beauty without performance.
What was she, a ballerina in another life?
His heart thudded low in his chest, a slow, stunned rhythm. He stepped closer, barely breathing, the edge of the doorway biting into his shoulder. He didn’t want to break it. Didn’t want to ruin whatever spell she had woven in here.
Her arms curved above her head. She leaped, just enough to catch the light. Her shadow followed, rippling on the floor like it was trying to catch her. She landed with control so sharp it made something in his throat close.
She wrecked him.
She moved across the floor like she had always belonged to motion. Like stillness was her enemy and dance was how she stayed alive. He had never seen anything so intimate that didn’t involve skin. Never felt something this close to arousal that came from watching someone simply be.
She was light and strength. Balance and fire.
He realized in that moment that he wanted more than her body. More than her voice. More than the smart mouth and the sharp eyes and the way she could steady a room just by walking into it.
He wanted her whole.
To understand.
Fuck, he had no idea how to do that.
His breath backed up in his chest again, that same tight coil from the shower surging back, but this time it was laced with wonder. She turned again, one final spin, and the music trailed off like it knew the moment had reached its edge.
Her chest rose and fell, lips parted in breath, sweat at her temples catching the overhead lights.
He just watched her come back to stillness, not knowing if he was ready for whatever came next.
One second, she was loose and fluid. The next, she turned and caught his gaze, her breath still high from movement, her expression suddenly sharp.
Her green eyes locked on him, hard and unblinking. “You done killing yourself?” she asked, her voice calm but clipped.
That tone. He recognized it from the field. The way she got when someone was bleeding and pretending not to be. Cool, contained, but edged like a blade.
Was she pissed at him?
He wasn’t sure how to handle an angry Blair. Near as he could tell, no one else in this facility had cracked that code either.
“I was training,” he said, slow and steady.
“Is that what it’s called?” she shot back. “Looked like torture.”
He stepped into the room and jerked the door shut behind him, the echo sharp. “You saw me?”
“Everyone on this compound has seen you.”
He frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She crossed her arms, sweat still glinting at her collarbone.
He wanted to lower his head and lick her, taste her effort, drink in her heat.
“I don’t know, Mr. Body-hugging Black Shorts.
Maybe that my people have been taking pictures of you while you’ve been…
training, and they had plenty to say about it. ”
“Oh. Lusting after me?” He smirked, cocking his head. “Tell me something I don’t know. The ladies like the overall package.”
“It’s an impressive package,” she admitted coolly.
“But it only goes skin deep.” She paused.
Let it sting. It did, but in such a good way, he wasn’t quite sure how to process it.
“This lady isn’t interested in your six-pack abs,” she said, a little too fast, “or your broad shoulders…” Her voice thinned slightly. “Or that Adonis belt.”
Her chest was still rising and falling from the dance, the flush in her cheeks blooming hotter. She just stood there like she hadn’t meant to say all that out loud.
Breakneck shoved the hoodie off his head. His damp hair clung to his forehead, steam still rising faintly off his skin.
“Oh, you’re not, huh?”