Chapter 5 Hale
Hale
It’s been four days since I brought Wren here, and somehow, it’s both the easiest and hardest thing I’ve ever lived through.
Easy, because she fits here in ways she shouldn’t.
Hard, because I want her in ways I shouldn’t.
She hums when she cooks. Walks barefoot like the floor belongs to her.
Laughs under her breath when she finds the stash of paperbacks I keep hidden behind the woodpile.
She’s not soft—not in the way most people mean—but she’s real.
Sharp and bright and curious, like she never learned how to keep her guard up even when everything in her life told her to.
And me? I’m a walking guardrail. Barbed wire and bad history.
She shouldn’t feel comfortable here.
But she does.
And that… that’s the problem.
I chop wood until my arms burn. Strip and clean my rifles. Reset the perimeter traps. Replace the camera batteries. Keep my hands moving and my eyes away from her. I do everything short of smashing my head against a tree just to keep my thoughts clean.
But they never stay clean for long.
Not when she sleeps in my bed, curled under my quilt like she was always meant to be there.
Not when I walk past the door and hear her breathing slow and steady in the dark, and every cell in my body screams to go to her.
Not when she looks at me with that tilt of her head like she’s trying to read a language she hasn’t learned yet—and I’m the fucking textbook.
I promised her father I’d keep her safe.
That means from bullets. From bastards like Liam.
And from me.
I step out into the morning cold, the satellite phone already in my hand. Frost bites at my skin. The air smells like woodsmoke and winter. I keep the cabin behind me and pace into the trees until the signal stabilizes.
I hit the speed dial.
It rings twice.
“Jesus Christ,” a voice mutters on the other end, gravel and smoke and too many deployments. “I was hoping this number burned.”
“Nice to hear your voice too, Nate.”
Nate Bishop. Ex-CIA. Still has fingers in enough dirty pies to make politicians nervous. He owes me three favors, one life, and a few nights of sleep.
“You checking in, or you got another corpse to bury?”
“Neither,” I say. “Yet.”
“Ah,” he says. “Her.”
He always was good at reading between the silences.
“You heard anything?” I ask.
“About your girl?” he says. “Chatter’s light. Whoever’s after her, they’re keeping quiet. No contract on the dark web, no bounty on the forums. But someone’s paying a lot of money to ask a lot of quiet questions.”
I grit my teeth. “Liam?”
“Ghosted. Burned all his aliases. Last known location was Boston, two weeks ago. Then nothing.”
Nate pauses.
“You want me to dig deeper?”
“No paper trail,” I say. “No noise. Just eyes.”
“I’ll make a call.”
“And the other thing?”
“Micah’s on it. If Liam slips, he’ll know.”
Micah Hunt. Former Delta. Tracker. Ghost. If Liam breathes too loud, Micah will hear it in the wind.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t thank me,” Nate mutters. “This ends messy.”
I hang up without answering.
Because I already know that.
When I head back inside, the smell of coffee hits first. Then the sight of her—barefoot, hair in a messy bun, wearing one of my flannel shirts that hangs halfway down her thighs. She looks over her shoulder like she’s caught doing something wrong.
But she doesn’t apologize.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she says, holding up the mug. “You make the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted, but I figure that’s part of your charm.”
I grunt and walk past her to pour myself a cup. My hand brushes hers and something sparks down my spine. I pull back too fast.
She watches me.
Always watching.
“You okay?” she asks, voice soft.
“Fine.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
She doesn’t believe me. I can see it in the way she tilts her head again, studying me like I’m some kind of puzzle she’s dying to solve.
“Why don’t you talk about yourself?”
I sip the coffee. It tastes like ash. “Nothing worth saying.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I meet her eyes. “You want to know what I did before this? Fine. I killed people. A lot of them. Some deserved it. Some didn’t. I saw things I can’t unsee. Did things I can’t undo. And the only good thing I ever did was make a promise to your father.”
She doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t run.
She just stands there, blinking slowly like she’s trying to see past all that wreckage.
“You think you’re protecting me by shutting me out,” she says. “But you’re not. You’re just making it harder to trust you.”
I set the mug down harder than I mean to. The sound cracks through the room.
“You shouldn’t trust me.”
“But I do.”
That undoes me.
Just—undoes me.
I turn away before she can see the look on my face.
“I’ve got things to check outside,” I mutter.
“You always have things to check outside.”
Better than standing here and breathing her in like she’s oxygen I don’t deserve.
Better than thinking about her bare legs under my shirt, or the way her mouth curves when she’s challenging me.
Better than wanting.
Wanting leads to ruin.
I grab the rifle by the door and head out, into the woods, into the cold.
Every part of me wants to protect her. Not just with guns and traps and threats—but with everything I have. My body. My name. My fucking soul.
But I know what men like me do to women like her.
We ruin them.
So I’ll keep building walls. I’ll keep the promise I made to the man who gave me my second chance. I’ll keep her alive, even if it kills me.
Especially if it kills me.
Because she’s not just some mission anymore.
She’s the only thing in this broken, bloody world that feels like it’s still worth saving.