Chapter Twenty-Six
Asher
I jerk awake with a cramp in my neck and my right foot buzzing. One of the chair’s springs digs into my back, right over the old wound that never healed properly.
Raine’s out cold.
Not the brittle collapse she’s fallen into every other time. Her breathing has weight now. Depth. Like she might—finally—feel safe here.
I check my phone.
She’s been under for a couple of hours. Progress.
I stand slowly, stretching until my spine lets out a series of pops and the strain eases.
The ache is familiar. Ten years ago, I could have pulled an all-nighter, handled a twelve-hour op, and still gone for a run. Now my body likes to remind me there’s a bill for everything.
This one’s worth it.
My stomach growls. Shit. I haven’t eaten anything since this morning.
Raine will need food soon too. It takes a while to come back from such extreme deprivation. A few sips of tea, half a banana, and some crackers won’t hold her for long. Not with the amount of repair work her body needs to do.
The safe house kitchen is small, but I stocked it before I started this job. Canned chicken, frozen broth, dried noodles, carrots, celery, onions. A loaf of decent bread. Butter. Cheese.
I pull things out in a quiet rhythm. Pan on the stove, low heat. Stock first. Vegetables in a small, even dice. Chicken shredded with practiced fingers. Noodles last so they don’t turn to mush.
I make a grilled cheese for myself while the soup simmers. Something to keep my hands busy so they don’t drift back toward the laptop.
The rich scent fills the room. It’s ordinary. Domestic. The kind of thing people take for granted.
The kind of thing Raine deserves.
After my first bite of the sandwich, I hear it.
The soft drag of fabric over carpet. A pause. Another quiet sound. Maybe a gasp. Or a hiss.
I take a step so she can see me from the bedroom and drop my hands to my sides.
Raine stands in the doorway, bracing herself against the wood. Exhausted, eyes still haunted, but present.
“I…think I’m hungry?” Her brows pinch together, and her lips part briefly on an inhale. “It smells…good out here.”
“I made soup. If it’s too much—or too little—I can throw something else together and bring you a tray.”
She looks from the stove to the small table in the center of the room. The effort of standing is already wearing on her. I can see it in the way she’s holding herself.
“No. I mean…yes. Soup. But I want to sit at the table.”
Want.
She’s so careful with the word. For a moment, the why of it escapes me. Until I realize that’s exactly what they took from her. Wanting.
I swallow hard. “Then the table it is. Pull up a chair.”
Raine
I move the chair first, angling it so the door stays in my line of sight and the rest of the room doesn’t disappear behind me. The position will put us closer, but maybe that’s okay.
The table is small. Worn. The kind of place you expect people to eat and talk and maybe argue over who forgot to buy milk.
I used to wonder if I’d want that. Someone to share my life with. Someone who didn’t treat my need for order like a quirk to fix. My quiet as a challenge. The way my mind loops and recalibrates like a burden.
Every past attempt ended the same way. I was too much. Too intense. Too hard to understand.
Eventually, I stopped trying to explain myself.
Asher sets the bowl and a spoon down in front of me, followed by a glass of water—half full. He takes the other chair, keeping his hands on top of the table, visible.
That settles something tight in my chest.
I wrap my hands around the bowl and breathe it in before I taste it.
“Thank you,” I say, because it feels…normal.
“It’s basic.” He shrugs. “Soup is hard to mess up if you don’t get fancy.”
A faint smile pulls at my mouth. “That sounds like experience talking.”
“I’ve been stocking safe houses for more than ten years. But I’ve had my fill of MREs. This”—he nods at the bowl—“is just as easy. Frozen broth. Canned chicken. Dried noodles. I bought the carrots and onions when I got to town a few days ago.”
“I used to bake.” The words come easily. Surprise sends a slight tremor through my fingers, and I almost drop the spoon. “Before.”
Before everything.
“What kind?” he asks.
I’m surprised by how easily the answer comes. “Bread. Mostly. Sourdough, when I had the patience. There’s something satisfying about punching dough.”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Violence-adjacent hobbies are underrated.”
I huff a quiet laugh before I can stop myself. It startles me more than him.
We eat quietly, only the hum of the music between us. The lack of conversation isn’t heavy. It’s companionable.
“You don’t have to finish it,” he says. “Just listen to your body.”
“I know.” And I do. Maybe for the first time since they took me.
Each spoonful is a test, and for once, my body isn’t failing.
I glance up at him. “So…do all your jobs involve soup?”
“Only the important ones.”
I shake my head. “You’re terrible at small talk.”
“I’m excellent at situational honesty.”
That earns him a real smile.
For this one stretch of time, I’m not a problem to solve or a body to manage. I’m just a woman sitting at a table, learning the shape of the man next to her.
That feels like the beginning of something I might actually want.
Asher
Raine’s smile lingers longer than I expect. It does something to the room—warms it, steadies it. I take another bite of my sandwich to give me a second to recalibrate.
She’s watching me now. Not assessing. Just…curious.
“Situational honesty,” she repeats, like she’s tasting the words. “What does that even mean?”
I wipe my hands on a napkin and return them to the table where she can see them.
“It means I don’t sugarcoat things. If you ask me something, you get a real answer. Not the one I think you can handle. Not the polite one. Or the safe one. Or the one that makes conversation easier. The truth. Always.”
Her mouth twitches once. “So you don’t do small talk at all.”
“Oh, I’m capable,” I say. “My line of work requires it.”
She raises an eyebrow, waiting for the rest.
“But with some people”—I hold her gaze, hoping she understands what I’m really saying—“cutting through the bullshit is more important.”
The shift in her expression is subtle—surprise softened by something like relief. Or maybe recognition.
“And I’m one of those people.”
“Yes. I figured that out before you even told me your name.”
A soft breath slips out. Her shoulders jerk once, then soften.
“Has that ever cost you? Being honest when small talk would’ve been easier?”
She’s not asking to be polite. Or to fill the space. She’s asking to know me.
“It did,” I say. “Once.”
She doesn’t look away. She waits—patient in a way that’s intentional. Someone who knows silence can be its own kind of tool.
“There was a job,” I continue. “Straightforward on paper. Extract a target, hand them off at the rendezvous point, and disappear. Nothing chaotic.”
My jaw tightens, but I don’t dodge the memory. She asked. She gets the real answer.
“The target didn’t want to go. Thought staying was safer.” I shake my head. “I told them everything. The real threat. The timeline. The risk.”
Her eyes flicker with recognition. She knows what it means to be told the truth when lies would be easier.
“It bought me their trust,” I say. “But it cost us time. The client didn’t like that and pulled my exfil.”
Her breath catches—small, but I still clock it. “This is the job that taught you not to play the hero.”
“It is.” I take a slow sip of water. “We made it out. Eventually. Three days trapped in a conflict zone with no backup. I kept the target safe, but…”
My back aches with the memory. The blade tearing through skin and muscle. Breaking into a medical clinic after hours and trying to stitch myself up because the target was practically useless with fear. Shivering as the infection set in. Knowing the clock on my life was ticking down too quickly.
“Asher?” Raine leans forward, her fingers almost touching mine.
I ball my hands into fists so she doesn’t need to make the choice between comfort and safety. “We were attacked the first night. Three men. Highly trained. The first two went down easy. The last got behind me.”
The phantom burn along my spine flares—old pain, old truth.
“The blade didn’t hurt going in. Until he twisted it. And if the knife had hit an inch to the left, I wouldn’t be telling this story.” I roll my shoulder in a slow arc, and the scar aches. “I don’t remember falling. Just…hitting the ground hard enough that my vision went white.”
Raine’s thumb drifts to the side of her index finger, a small, searching motion that doesn’t find whatever she’s looking for. A frown curves her lips, and she presses her fingertips against the table hard enough her knuckles pale.
“The target froze. I recovered enough to drag us both to the back door. I was bleeding out. But there was a small medical clinic a couple of streets away. Did my best to stitch myself up.“
I can still feel the sting of the needle. The way my arms started to tremble as my strength waned. The superglue burned, fire spreading out from the wound until I was sure it was going to consume me.
“I carried the target the last mile to the border. My back was on fire, and my right leg was numb. Every step felt like the one that was going to drop me.”
Raine’s fingers twitch, but she doesn’t reach for me. Good. I’m too raw. Her touch might break me.
“I didn’t get us out because I was brave,” I say quietly. “I got us out because there wasn’t an alternative. Nobody was coming. Not for the target. Not for me. We both lived, but I learned what happens when you try to play at heroics.”
She shakes her head. “Because you were honest.”
“Because I did the right thing for the person in front of me,” I correct. “Not everyone cares about that.”
Raine doesn’t say anything for several long moments. The silence isn’t awkward. She’s mapping me. The way I work. The way I speak. My tells, but also my character.
“What happened to the target?” she asks.