Forced to Be Festive

Chapter Thirty-Four

Nate

By the time I made it down to the lab, Jo was already there.

Lately that was the norm. Sleep was something she tolerated rather than needed. Her hair was yanked into a messy knot, and she was squinting at a screen full of numbers like she was personally offended by their existence.

She didn’t hear me come in.

I crossed the room, set my coffee on the nearest clear surface, and bent to press my mouth to the warm spot just below her ear.

“Morning,” I said against her skin.

She jumped, then melted back into me with a soft, automatic exhale that did obscene things to my chest.

“You’re getting stealthier,” she said.

“Or you’re getting distracted.”

“Don’t insult me,” she murmured, but one hand lifted from the keyboard and caught my wrist, her thumb brushing absently over my pulse.

My day started like this now.

Not with a boardroom. Not with a briefing. Not with a calendar full of meetings.

With Jo.

In my arms.

The heat of her back against my chest and her fingers tangling with mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.

At night, I fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, her leg thrown over mine like a human paperweight, as if she was holding me in place in case I had any ideas about leaving.

For a man who’d prided himself on not needing anyone, I’d become terrifyingly comfortable with the fact that my entire nervous system was now calibrated to one woman.

Jo turned muttering something under her breath about thermal runaway. I slid my hand free from hers, gave her one more kiss at the curve of her neck, and forced myself to step back.

“Coffee’s on the table behind you,” I said. “The one without live wires.”

She reached back blindly, fingers closing around the mug. “You’re a good man, Keaton.”

“You only say that when caffeine is involved.”

“Well, I’m not wrong.”

She took a sip. Her shoulders relaxed by a millimeter. I watched that tiny shift and wished I had better news for her.

I wish I could let her chase numbers and solder connections and pretend the world beyond these walls had paused to give us time.

But it hadn’t.

It had accelerated.

“Jo,” I said.

“Mm?”

“Can you take a break for a minute?”

“That depends,” she said, eyes still on the code. “Is this a ‘come look at a cute horse’ break or a ‘we’re all going to die’ break?”

“Somewhere between,” I said.

She sighed dramatically but saved her work and swiveled in her chair to face me, mug cradled between her hands.

Up close, she looked tired. Not fragile—she was never that—but stretched thin. Too much thinking. Not enough sleep, even with me there. I pulled the chair from the opposite workstation and sat, leaving the small metal table between us. Then I laid a folder on it.

She eyed it like it might explode. “That looks like the ‘we’re all going to die’ option.”

“Not if I can help it,” I said. “My team pulled this together overnight. I wanted to go through it with you.”

She straightened, all her focus snapping to me. “Okay.”

I flipped the folder open. Photos, printouts, a few pages with my notes in the margins. I’d gone through it three times already, and it still made my hands itch.

“Raymean has been busy,” I said. “You remember the fixer we flagged last week? The one whose name kept coming up on shell-company registrations?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not just moving money,” I said. “He’s moving narrative.”

Her fingers tightened on her mug. “Meaning?”

“Meaning he’s been quietly feeding information to a couple of very specific people in very specific departments,” I said. “Raymean’s lobbying for Roy’s case to be reclassified.”

Her face went very still. “Reclassified how?”

I met her eyes. “They’re trying to get him tagged as a national security threat. A terrorist. If they succeed, he won’t just stay in prison, Jo. He’ll be eligible for charges that carry . . . different penalties.”

Her breath left her in a sound that wasn’t quite a gasp, but close. “Execution,” she said, voice flat.

“Yes.”

The word tasted wrong in my mouth.

She stared at the papers like she could burn holes through them.

“They’re scared,” she said, more to herself than to me. “They’re scared enough to do something that drastic. That desperate.”

“Yes,” I said again. “That’s the good news, if you can call it that. It means the pressure from our side is working. We’re asking the right questions. They’re sweating.”

“And the bad news?”

“The bad news is that scared people with too much power make bad decisions,” I said. “Permanent ones. We’re not just playing defense anymore. We’re on a clock.”

Her jaw flexed. She set the mug down very carefully.

“I always knew this was a possibility,” she said. “I’m not shocked and I’m not scared.”

“I know you’re not,” I said quietly.

“This changes nothing,” she said, eyes flashing. “We still stay off the radar. We keep playing the long game. We keep our heads down. We wait until I have power cell—”

“Jo,” I said.

She stopped. “What?”

“I need to tell you something,” I said. “And you’re not going to like it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a terrible opener.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m saying it anyway.”

She folded her arms, every line of her body going alert. “Okay. Hit me.”

I took a breath.

“I’ve expanded our team,” I said. “Beyond my security guys. I brought someone else in.”

The silence was immediate and sharp.

“Who?” she demanded.

“His name is Tanner Morales,” I said. “We went to college together. He runs a tech company now—AI and infrastructure. He’s very good at what he does. He’s also one of the few people in my life I trust not to sell anyone out for a profit.”

Her expression didn’t change. That, more than anything, worried me.

“What does he know?” she asked.

“He knows enough to understand that Raymean is trying to bury a man who doesn’t deserve it,” I said. “He knows there’s a battery design involved. He does not have your equations. He doesn’t have your files. He doesn’t know your name, Jo. He only knows your father’s.”

“You told him about my father.” Her voice stayed very even. “Without asking me.”

“I told him what he needed to know to join us,” I said. “Nothing more.”

She leaned back in her chair, arms tightening around herself. “You decided for me,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. There was no point in lying about that.

Her eyes flashed. “Do you have any idea how many times in my life a man has decided what level of risk I should be comfortable with? What secrets I should keep or share? What I should be willing to sacrifice?”

“Yes,” I said again. “Because I’ve read your father’s file. I’ve read the transcripts. I’ve seen how many people thought they knew better than he and you did. I’m not those men.”

“Except you just did the same thing,” she said. “You took information that could get us all killed and handed it to someone whose only qualification, from where I’m sitting, is that you partied together in college.”

That stung. Mostly because it wasn’t entirely unfair.

“Tanner is not a party friend,” I said. “When everyone else was competing for internships on Wall Street, he was trying to figure out how to keep predatory algorithms from wrecking people’s lives.

He’s not perfect. But he’s not corrupt. And right now, he’s our best shot at getting your dad out of jail.

Raymean is too dangerous for us to take on alone. ”

“I have been running from people like this my entire life,” she said. Her voice was still quiet, but there was an edge under it now that sounded like fear sharpened into fury. “I know exactly what they’re capable of.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said.

“Then why,” she asked, “do you think I haven’t already done the math on how dangerous this is?”

“Because your math always ends with you disappearing,” I said. “Mine doesn’t.”

Her mouth snapped shut.

We stared at each other across the table, the buzz of the lab equipment suddenly loud in my ears. “You run because running has kept you alive,” I said. “You hide because hiding has worked. It’s gotten you this far.. I am not dismissing that.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she muttered.

“I’m not,” I insisted. “You survived a game that was rigged against you from the start. I respect the hell out of that. But Jo, surviving and winning are not the same thing.”

Her eyes darkened. “What do you call keeping my father alive this long if not winning?”

“Temporary,” I said. “You’ve bought him time.

You’ve bought yourself time. But they’re tightening the noose around his neck right now and hoping they can squeeze hard enough that he breaks.

They want him labeled a terrorist so they can flip a switch and never have to deal with him again.

That is not a problem we can solve by staying small and quiet and off the radar. ”

She flinched. Just a flicker. If I hadn’t been watching her as closely as I always did, I might have missed it.

“They won’t kill him,” she said, more to herself than to me. “They can’t. It would draw too much attention.”

“They’re counting on the fact that no one is paying attention,” I said softly. “That’s how this works. That’s how it’s always worked. A quiet reclassification. A new label. A story about a ‘radicalized engineer’ in a buried section of a paper no one reads. And then he’s gone.”

She stared at the table. Her hands had curled into fists on the metal surface. I wanted to reach across and uncurl them, but I didn’t.

“I brought Tanner in,” I said, “because I am not going to let that happen. Because I am not arrogant enough to think I can see every angle on my own. Because my security team can keep people from storming the gate, but they can’t outmaneuver a multinational corporation and half a dozen dirty politicians without help. ”

Her head lifted slowly.

“So you’re saying I haven’t been careful enough,” she said. “That my way is inadequate.”

“I’m saying your way got us here,” I said. “And my way might get us out. If we combine them.”

She laughed once. It was a brittle sound.

“You think I’m not all in already?” she asked.

“You think I’m holding back because I like having escape plans?

Nate, every second I’ve stayed here, I’ve been betting my life on you.

You. A man I barely knew a month ago. Do you have any idea what that costs me? ”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “And I don’t take it lightly.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she said again.

Her eyes were bright now. Not with tears—she didn’t cry easily—but with something raw and close to the surface.

“You trusted me with pieces of yourself,” I said. “Your father’s name. Your work. Your body.”

Color climbed into her cheeks, but she didn’t look away.

“But there’s still a part of you that’s separate,” I said. “Untouchable. You’ve left yourself an exit. If I fail you, even a little—if I hesitate, or misstep, or don’t live up to the version of me you’re willing to risk this on—you’ll grab the research, disappear, and I’ll never see you again.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed.

“And you know what?” I said. “I don’t blame you for that. It’s kept you alive. It’s logical. It’s smart. It’s exactly what I would have advised you to do a month ago.”

“But now?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“Now,” I said, “I look at the board, and I see a different game.” I leaned in, forearms braced on the table.

“They are trying to have your father executed,” I said.

“Not just jailed. Not just discredited. Executed. They’re escalating.

So we have to escalate too. Carefully. Strategically.

With more eyes on the problem than just yours and mine.

If we insist on staying small because it feels safer, we will lose. ”

She was breathing faster now. I could see the rise and fall of her chest; I could see the war behind her eyes. Fight. Flight. Stay. Run. Trust. Shut down.

“Jo,” I said, softening my voice. “Look at me.”

She did.

“I don’t run. I never have. And if we do this right, you will never have to again.”

Something flickered in her expression. Hope, maybe. Or the ghost of it. It scared her more than the threat did. I could see that too.

“You’re amazing. With your list of safe houses.

A set of burner accounts and dead drops and contingencies.

I respect the hell out of the woman who built all of that.

She’s brilliant. She’s alive because she never took her enemy for granted.

” I let out a breath. “But she’s not the woman who wins this. ”

Her fingers flexed against the table.

“What if,” I asked, “there’s a version of you who doesn’t divide herself between here and an escape route? What if the only way we win is if you trust me enough to take failure off the table?”

She shook her head, just a fraction. “You can’t take failure off the table. That’s not how life works.”

“For most things, no,” I agreed. “But sometimes? Sometimes the only way to survive is to decide there is no other outcome. That we either succeed or we die trying. No halfway. No fallback.”

“That’s insane,” she whispered.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it’s the only mindset that matches the stakes.

They’re treating your father like a terrorist, Jo.

They’re preparing to end his life to protect their profits.

You and I are possible collateral damage in that equation.

Tanner knows people who understand how these systems work.

He has connections, even some shady ones, that I don’t.

He can help us. But not if we’re half-committed. ”

I swallowed, throat suddenly tight.

“That’s your plan?” I asked. “No contingency. We just decide we can’t fail? That together we can do this?” Her eyes shone, but she didn’t look away.

“What if,” I said quietly, “you let yourself believe that I’m not going anywhere and that we can do this?”

That did it.

Not in a dramatic, collapsing way. She didn’t burst into tears. She didn’t throw herself at me. She didn’t storm out.

She just . . . froze.

Everything else faded away. There was only the two of us. The folder. And a decision to be made.

Jo’s hands slowly uncurled on the table. She looked at them, then at me. Her mouth parted, as if she was about to speak. Then she shut it again.

The war in her eyes hadn’t resolved. Not yet. But she wasn’t reaching for an exit. She wasn’t walking away.

I sat there in the charged quiet and waited to see whether she could take a leap of faith—not for me, but with me.