Chapter 12
REBEL
The safehouse exhales after everyone leaves, like the building was holding its breath for Divine and French the entire time.
Now it’s just the buzz of old wiring, the hiss of the kettle working too hard, and the ache in my shoulders that refuses to let go.
The city hums past the blackout curtains, muffled sirens, a baseline from a distant club, someone’s laughter that sounds too thin to be real.
Carter sets two mugs on the scarred table and drags a chair around to face me. We’re close enough that the steam curls into the small space between us and disappears like smoke.
“Divine and French will ping if anything shifts,” he says.
“Divine will ping if a pigeon blinks near the fence line,” I answer, wrapping my hands around the mug. Heat works into bruised knuckles I hadn’t realized were throbbing. “French will send memes and a cocktail recipe.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “You like them.”
I pretend to study the coffee. “They’re annoying.”
“Which is how you say ‘family.’”
I look up. “Yeah.”
Silence settles, not empty, but weighted. The safehouse smells like gun oil, industrial cleaner, and us. Carter’s changed into a fresh T-shirt from a go-bag stashed in the hall closet, and it stretches over a chest that looks like it head-butts problems for a living.
I’m still covered in road dust and a long-sleeve shirt that smells of soap. The drive we took is with Divine. The plan keeps turning without us. For the first time in days, we have no orders.
Carter nudges my boot with his. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine when the Vultures choke on their own shells.”
“That’s not a feeling. That’s a mission statement.”
“Same thing in my world.” Carter watches me over the rim of his mug, patient and unblinking, like he can outwait the lies. I breathe out. “Alex really liked you as a friend, didn’t he?” The words land between us like I dropped a wrench.
Carter doesn’t flinch. “I don’t know. He liked giving me shit.”
“That’s how he liked people.”
“Then, yeah, he did.” Carter sets the mug down, voice lowering. “I should’ve told you sooner I was there that night. I had a shot at pulling him off that roof, but it wasn’t enough.”
My throat tightens. “You don’t have to keep wearing his last minute like a punishment.”
“Feels honest.”
“Honest isn’t the same as useful.”
A soft laugh, barely there. “You’re too good at that.”
“What?”
“Turning knives into ledgers. Accounting for pain like it’s billable.”
“Gotta put it somewhere.” I lift one shoulder, casual as I can make it. “What about you? Where do you put yours?”
“In work. In miles.” He turns the mug in his hands. “In staying alive long enough to finish what he started.”
“And what’s that?”
“Cut the head off the people who turned his name into a revenue stream.”
Our eyes catch and hold. The kettle clicks off in the background. I realize my hands have stopped shaking. “Tell me something real,” I say. “Not a mission. Not a tactic. Something you don’t say out loud.”
He thinks for a beat. When he speaks, the words come like he’s surprised to hear them.
“I don’t like sleeping when it’s quiet. I leave a fan on, not because I need the air.
Because the noise keeps the film reel from starting, and I keep a book under the mattress.
Not a gun. A book. Something boring, usually.
Paper’s heavy enough to remind me I’m not a ghost when the room goes too still. ”
I didn’t expect that to hit as hard as it does. “What book’s under the mattress now?”
“Manual for diesel generators.” A tiny shrug. “Told you, boring.” He tilts his head. “Your turn.”
I stall, and Carter waits. He’s good at that. “I don’t like doors,” I admit. “Not closed ones, anyway. If I can’t see the hinges and the gap under the frame, my skin itches. I count exits. I pretend it’s for tactics. Really, it’s so I know which way to run if the questions get sharp.”
He absorbs that without comment, like he’ll file it with everything else and not use it as leverage. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. “Another one,” he says.
“Pushy.” I laugh.
Carter shrugs his big shoulders. “Curious.”
I huff. “I kept something of Alex’s. Not the dog tags, you’ve seen that. Something else.” I reach into my cut and pull a thin strip of brass with a jagged edge. “His bike key. The one he broke when he was drunk and insisted he could pick his own ignition like a magician.”
Carter smiles for real, the kind of smile that warms blood instead of spiking it. “He told everyone that it was me.”
“Typical.” I twirl the key once and slide it back. “Your turn.”
He considers me for a long heartbeat. “Sometimes I don’t ask for help because I don’t know who I’ll be if someone says yes.”
I sit with that one. Let it cut, then settle. “Alright, Bishop,” I say softly. “How do you feel about now?”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “Like if I take one step closer, you’ll either kiss me or shoot me.”
“Statistically, those outcomes are not mutually exclusive.”
“Then I’ll risk it.” He stands and comes around the table until he’s crowding my knees. He braces his hands on either side of my chair. Not touching, just asking without words. I tilt my face up.
“Stop thinking,” he says again, a murmur against the soft hum of old wiring.
This time I stop.
The kiss is slow enough to feel dangerous.
No adrenaline spike to hide behind, no sirens to excuse it.
His mouth is heat and patience. My fingers find the back of his neck and curl there, holding something I didn’t realize I’d been reaching for.
His chest presses to mine, steady, grounding, the opposite of chaos.
We break long enough to breathe.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“The worst,” he agrees.
“Do it again.” He does.
The rest unfolds in fragments, light, breath, heartbeat.
Carter’s hands move with a kind of reverence, tracing proof that I’m real, that I’m still here.
Each touch feels like a question answered, a memory rewritten.
He maps my scars like landmarks, pausing where old pain lives, smoothing over it until the ache becomes something else entirely.
My fingers find the rough edges of his jaw, the pulse that jumps beneath his skin, the quiet tremor that betrays how hard he’s fighting not to break.
We laugh once, quietly, the kind of laughter that shivers into something softer. His forehead rests against mine, breath mingling, a shared rhythm that feels older than either of us. The air hums with warmth and wanting.
Layers fall away. Not just the fabric between us, but everything we’ve hidden behind. The lies we’ve told to stay upright. The armor we thought we needed.
He cups my face like I’m something fragile that survived the fire.
I touch him back like I’m reminding him he’s allowed to feel.
The room narrows until it’s only us, skin against skin, pulse against pulse, the world outside dissolving into nothing but the slow, careful language of two people learning trust through touch.
When he pulls me closer, it isn’t about escape or urgency.
It’s about belonging. It’s the quiet, aching relief of finding home in someone else’s hands.
The part of me that’s been locked behind Alex’s shadow cracks open under the weight of his tenderness.
His breath catches in my hair, a sound halfway between a sigh and a prayer.
The safehouse listens but doesn’t interfere.
The city fades, the hum of neon dissolving into the steady thrum of shared heartbeats.
In this small, stolen slice of peace, I stop measuring loss and start remembering what it feels like to be alive.
We didn’t just earn this. We survived enough to deserve it.
When we collapse back into each other, the city outside is still awake but quieter somehow. His heartbeat is a calm hammer against my palm. Mine answers and doesn’t apologize.
“Don’t make promises,” I say to the ceiling.
“I won’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t die.”
He exhales into my hair. “I’ll try not to.” I don’t say me too, but it’s there, folded into the sheets.
We talk about first bikes. His was a thrashed KLR rebuilt with stubbornness and scrounged parts.
Mine was a salvage job, Iris swore would kill me.
About music, he likes old punk that sounds like a room on fire.
I like anything with a bassline fat enough to drive.
We talk about the one thing neither of us outran.
How grief isn’t a cliff, it’s a tide. You learn to breathe under it, or you drown.
Carter falls asleep for an hour, head heavy on my shoulder. I watch the crack in the ceiling run from one corner to the other and think, if this is a mistake, it’s the kind that makes a life, not ruins one.
When the phone finally buzzes, dawn is braided into the blinds.
DIVINE: Stand by twenty-four hrs. Compiling a map the Vults won’t see coming.
FRENCH: I left cinnamon rolls on the counter. and by left, I mean I ate two and saved you one. be grateful, sinner.
I smile into the pillow and fall asleep like a woman who’s finally allowed herself to stop fighting for five minutes.
When I blink awake, Carter is nestled between my legs, the steady weight of him warm and familiar. His stubble ghosts along my inner thigh, and the small stop-gap world we made the night before presses in close, the mattress, the dim light, the safehouse’s ordinary breathing.
He lifts his head, a grin carving the sleep from his face. “Good morning, Wildcat.”
I stretch, the ache in my ribs loosened by the way he fits against me. “Morning.”
Carter makes a little, reckless sound and kisses his way up my skin like he’s reading me aloud.
Slow where the scars live, quick where I tend to flinch.
When his mouth finds mine, it’s not polite.
It’s fierce, urgent, like every restraint I’ve practiced for years is finally being thrown away.
The kiss hardens then softens, the kind that both punishes and pardons.