Chapter 19 #2
Her throat works as she swallows.
“Not allowed,” she repeats. “By who?”
“By me,” I say. “By Kael. By Gallagher. Pick one. Doesn’t matter. The rule’s the same.”
A shadow flickers through her expression—something like hurt, something like relief, both too fast to sort.
“So this is, what, professional courtesy?” she asks. “You’re celibate until the monster’s in cuffs?”
“This is me not becoming one more man who uses your fear to get close to you,” I say, sharper than I intend. “You deserve better than that.”
Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that.
Her eyes go wide, shiny.
“Oh,” she says again. Soft this time.
Silence stretches.
“Again?” I ask finally, because if we stand here in this for one second longer, I’m going to do something I can’t take back.
“You want to do that again?” she says, voice high.
“The move,” I clarify. “Without the falling. You need it in your muscles, not just your head.”
She lets out a shaky laugh. “Right. Moves. Yes. That’s what we’re doing.”
We run it twice more. Clinical. Cold. At least, I try to make it that way. There’s no way to make being chest-to-chest with her feel neutral, but we keep our focus on angles, leverage, escapes.
Barely.
The barn door creaks.
“Hey!” Brodie’s voice calls. “You two decent, or am I about to regret walking in here?”
Tallulah nearly trips just turning her head.
“We’re fine,” she yelps. “We’re training.”
Brodie appears, taking in the scene with cop eyes—sweat, flushed faces, hay in Tallulah’s hair, the way I’m standing—too still, too careful.
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Looks intense.”
“Brady’s ready in ten,” he adds. “State wants your brain, Gentry. And your face, Kelly.”
Twig groans. “State. My favorite.”
He jerks his chin at me. “Walk her back?”
“I’m not letting her out of my sight,” I say.
Twig rolls her eyes, but there’s no heat in it. “Very comforting, thanks.”
She steps off the mat.
Her socked foot slips on the edge.
I catch her without thinking—hands snapping to her waist, hauling her back against me before she can hit the floor.
Her fingers clamp around my forearms.
We’re back in that charged, too-close space.
Her eyes flick to my mouth.
Something in my chest claws at my ribs.
“Careful,” I say, voice low. It comes out sounding like a warning about more than footing.
“You’re the one who keeps throwing me at the ground,” she says. “I’m just…obeying physics.”
“You keep coming back,” I say.
Her breath stutters.
“Maybe I’m bad at math,” she murmurs.
“Maybe,” I say.
We stand there a heartbeat too long.
Brodie clears his throat, deliberately loud. “Any day now. Bureaucrats get twitchy if you make them wait. Then they start writing memos.”
Twig steps out of my hands like she’s been burned.
“Coming,” she says, too bright.
As we walk back toward the house, her sleeve brushes mine.
I don’t move away.
But I keep my hands very carefully to myself.
Kael’s threat isn’t the only thing holding them there, but it’s the loudest.
Later, after Brady and State try to cram Henry into neat little boxes over video call, after Cotton falls asleep on the couch with her feet in Brodie’s lap and Savvi scolds us all into eating dinner, Tallulah ends up in Cotton’s office again, laptop open.
At some point she mutters a curse and flexes her fingers.
“You okay?” I ask from the doorway.
“Fine,” she says.
She’s not. One of her knuckles is pink and swelling.
“Let me see,” I say.
“I’m fine,” she repeats.
“Twiggy,” I say.
She huffs but holds out her hand.
I take it carefully and turn it palm-up, brushing my thumb over the angry joint. Her breath catches.
“Does that hurt?” I ask.
“Define ‘hurt,’” she says. “On a scale of one to ‘Henry exists.’”
“On a scale of one to ten,” I say.
“Three,” she says. “Four when you poke it like that.”
I grab the tape Brodie left on the desk and start wrapping.
Her hand is small in mine. Her bones delicate. Her skin soft and nearly translucent where it isn’t rough from keyboards.
“You know I need my fingers to work,” she says. “My brain leaks out my fingers.”
“I know,” I say.
“So if you tape it wrong, you’re effectively censoring me,” she continues. “Which is a crime under Gentry law.”
“Gentry law doesn’t apply to me,” I say.
“It does if you’re in my jurisdiction,” she says.
I finish the wrap, smoothing the tape down with my thumb.
I linger a second longer than I should.
Her pupils dilate.
“I need all of you in one piece,” I say quietly. “Not just your brain.”
Her eyes snap to mine.
“Oh,” she says, again. That soft version. The dangerous one.
“You like me in one piece,” she says. It’s not a question.
“That’s one way to put it,” I say.
She swallows.
“Bran,” she whispers. “If you keep saying things like that in that voice, you’re going to make it really hard for me to respect Kael’s no-finger-breaking rule.”
A rough laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“Trust me,” I say. “You’re not the only one having trouble with that rule.”
Silence stretches.
She looks at my mouth.
I let go of her hand like it burns.
“Rest it for an hour,” I say, standing. My voice feels like it belongs to someone else. “Then you can get back to it.”
She nods, a little dazed.
“Stay?” she asks, so quietly I almost miss it.
My chest tightens.
“Yeah,” I say, taking the chair opposite her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Kael can threaten to break every bone I own.
Brady can send me ten more men.
Gallagher can watch me like a hawk.
None of it changes the fact that I am already in too deep with a woman I’m not allowed to touch.
So I sit there and watch her type one-handed, taped knuckles and all, and tell myself that for the foreseeable future, this is the only kind of release I’m going to get.
But if we make it out of this alive, maybe I’ll let myself want more.