Chapter 46 #2
“He’s alive,” Kodiak said immediately. “Surgery went well. Minimal organ damage. He lost blood, but you, buying him time with the Celox and the IV, saved his life.”
Breakneck closed his eyes, the relief so sharp it almost hurt worse than the wound.
A breath shuddered out of him, something he’d been holding since the cannery, finally letting go.
“Thank God,” he whispered.
Kodiak nodded once. “He’s in ICU. Stable.”
Breakneck lay there, staring at the ceiling tiles, the beeping of the monitor suddenly loud in the quiet room. Ice alive. Ice breathing. Ice not dead on that cold concrete floor.
“I want to see him. I need to—”
“No, kid. You can when you’re better. Right now, you need to rest and recover. If I let you go traipsing around, Blair will have my balls, and I’m pretty attached to them.”
He swallowed hard, knowing a hard line when it was presented. Didn’t mean that would stop him.
“Rest of the team?” he asked.
“Banged up. Still breathing like the badasses they are.” Kodiak took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “They held off a Hell’s Eight contingent long enough for JTF2 to roll in. Scene’s locked down. Major Crimes and Forensics Investigations Service are crawling all over it now.”
Breakneck huffed a weak breath. “Figures.”
“And Ayla,” Kodiak added, watching him closely. “That kid’s something else.”
Breakneck’s brow furrowed slightly. “What about her?”
“Found hidden cartel cameras,” Kodiak said. “Every angle. Every move. From the moment you rolled up to the moment it ended. I’ve seen the footage.”
He paused, then shook his head slowly.
“Goddamn, Break. You stepped up to the plate and then some. Remind me never to get on your bad side when you’re unarmed.”
A faint smile tugged at Breakneck’s mouth. It didn’t reach anywhere else.
“Sorry,” Kodiak added quietly. “Too soon for jokes.”
“It’s fine,” Breakneck murmured. It wasn’t, but he didn’t have the energy to correct him.
The room settled again, the weight of everything pressing in now that the immediate fear was gone.
The DEA. Carver. Jones. That death hurt, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely now.
The cameras. The politics that would follow.
The reports. The quiet, classified conversations that would decide how this story was told.
But all of that was noise and spinning. The only quiet space in his head and his heart was for her.
Blair.
His chest tightened at the thought of her, of her voice in his ear, her hand in his hair, the way she’d looked at him like he was something worth holding onto.
Every memory ran through him like a long, drawn-out breath, the ache, the restraint, taking her, wanting her, feeling whole.
All of it was a jumbled-up tangle in him, so hopelessly complicated, he was sure he was never going to recover from it.
This mess, this disaster with the DEA, was going to explode upward. Chains of command. Diplomats. Lawyers. Investigations. It would be ugly and complex and endless.
And somewhere in all of that was a clean, obvious line he could draw.
Protect her by letting go.
It would kill him. He almost couldn’t breathe thinking about never seeing or talking to her again. It was like his heart was being carved out with one of those rusty, spiked cogs.
He knew it would hurt her. She hadn’t been subtle in how she felt about him.
She might…again his breath stalled…love him.
In fact, he was almost certain that she did, and somewhere in the deep recesses of that lonely boy’s heart, he felt healed, whole.
She had taught him so much, given him so much, there was no way she hadn’t felt it, too.
Breakneck stared at the ceiling, the truth settling in like an old friend, familiar and convincing. Vulnerability wasn’t weakness. Surrender wasn’t failure, but protecting Blair was the last thing he could do for her.
“Blair,” he managed.
“I’m sorry. She was devastated, but she got pulled away to handle everything with the cannery. She told me to tell you she would be here as soon as she could.”
Breakneck’s heart kicked at that.
Kodiak stood, setting the coffee down. “Try to get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Okay.”
Kodiak hesitated, then squeezed his shoulder once before heading for the door.
Left alone, Breakneck let his eyes close again, the morphine tugging him under.
Ice was alive.
Blair was safe.
If he did this right, if he took the hit himself, maybe she always would be.
Even if it meant losing the one thing he wanted more than anything he’d ever survived.
Some time later, he woke up to darkness and the soft hum of machinery. This time he breathed through the pain in his side, swung his legs over the bed, and used the IV stand for support until he could get his wobbly legs to work. He wheeled it out of the room, clasping the thin metal and leaning.
The place was quiet, empty. He walked slowly until he made it to the ICU, then found Ice’s room. He slid the door open and went inside. There in the bed, his white hair bright beneath the dim lights, lay Christopher Snow.
Emotion flooded him and his knees buckled.
Affection that was more than one brother for another washed over him in a tidal wave.
He went to the side of the bed, pulled up a chair, and sat down.
He stared at him, at the heart monitor, and his pale face, and he collapsed forward, in a sobbing rush of tears and an overwhelming gratitude that he was alive.
He sobbed until the sheets were soaked, his eyes burning, his chest heaving with something he didn’t know how to stop. The sound tore out of him, raw and broken, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t try to rein it in.
Then he felt it.
Ice’s fingers ruffling his hair.
The simple, familiar gesture undid him completely. He inhaled, a broken sound ripping from his throat as the memory slammed into him so hard his gut twisted and his stitches pulled.
Flashes overlapped, Blair’s hand in his hair, the way it grounded him, the way it made the world quiet, and beneath that, something older, deeper.
His dad.
The way he used to do that every time he saw him, fingers brushing through his hair like it was the most natural thing in the world. First thing when he came home. Last thing after tucking him into bed. No words. Just presence. Just love.
Breakneck clutched the edge of the mattress, breath shuddering as the understanding finally reached him.
This was grief.
Not something to outrun or lock away. Not weakness. Not failure. It was love with nowhere to go and letting it break him open didn’t erase the loss, only honored it. It made it real.
For the first time, he understood why he’d never been able to feel this before.
Because no one had ever shown him it was safe.
Blair had.
Ice had.
Boomer, the team.
The emptiness hurt like hell, but threaded through it was something else, meaning. Connection. A sense that what had been lost mattered because he had been loved.
An inconsolable grief opened up, and a thought lodged somewhere deep and dangerous.
He made the decision, but it didn’t hurt any less.
He was losing Blair, truly losing her. There would be no outrunning it this time.
This grief wouldn’t burn itself out in tears or exhaustion.
There was no mission to bury it under, no distance that would dull it.
He had no idea how he was going to survive without her.
“It’s okay, Kelly,” Ice murmured. “You were there when it mattered. Thank you.”
He reached up and grasped Ice’s wrist. Lifting his head, he met Iceman’s ice-blue eyes, softer than he’d ever seen them. “Chris…I’m the one who is so thankful. You’ve always believed in me and was there when it mattered. I’m just glad I got a chance to be there for you when you needed me.”
“We’ll get this mushy stuff out of the way, now, kid. I love you and you know it. But I’m goddamned pissed you got to kill that fucker instead of me.”
Breakneck burst into laughter, his stitches pulling harder than with the tears. “Goddamn it, Ice. Don’t make me laugh.”
Ice chuckled, then groaned. “I’m not kidding.”
Break laughed harder, and that’s where Kodiak found him. Passed out near Iceman, both of them healing together.
The fluorescent lights of the command center hummed overhead, a sterile, unwavering buzz that felt like a physical pressure against Blair’s temples.
Two days. It had been two days since she’d seen him, since she’d felt the weight of him in her lap, since she’d heard his voice, broken and raw, whisper her name.
She sat at the cluttered desk, her hand absently twisting a strand of hair around her finger, her eyes fixed on the digital clock on the wall.
14:37. The seconds ticked by, each one a tiny hammer against her resolve.
She listened to Olivia’s voice on the phone, calm and professional, detailing the forensic report, the chain of custody for the cash, the preliminary findings on the DEA agents’ corruption.
It was all important, vital, the kind of work she excelled at.
But it felt distant, muffled, like listening to a radio in another room.
Her mind was a thousand miles away, in a hospital room, in a helicopter, in the dark, quiet space between his heart and hers.
The door slid open with a soft hiss, and she looked up.
Tyler stood there, his face a mask of grim resignation.
He didn’t need to say a word. The look in his eyes, the tight set of his jaw, the way his gaze wouldn’t quite meet hers, told her everything.
Something was coming. Something she couldn’t stop.
“Livy,” she said, her voice tight, cutting off the inspector mid-sentence. “I have to call you back.” She hung up, the plastic receiver clicking against the cradle with a finality that echoed in the sudden silence. “What?”
“They’re flying Break and Ice back to the States,” Tyler said, his voice low, urgent. “JAG wants Gatlin. Snow is going to Walter Reed.”