7. Reese #2
My throat goes dry. The intensity in his eyes presses against me.
"Your world is a warzone." I grip the Glock tighter. The metal digs into my palm. "Extraction is coming. That means your soldiers are coming. That means your enemies could be tracking them."
"I will not let them touch you."
"You can't control everything, Santi." I toss the gun onto the cot. It lands with a muffled thud against the rusted springs. "Bullets don't care about your family name. Bullets don't care about your possessive streak."
He steps closer. The distance between us vanishes. He towers over me. He does not touch me. He simply fills the space in front of me without moving.
"You are angry."
"I am practical." I look up at him. "I don't rely on people. I don't depend on protectors. The minute you trust someone to keep you safe, you hand them the power to destroy you when they fail."
Santi studies my face. The stillness in him is unnatural. He absorbs my words without a trace of defensiveness.
"Who failed you?"
The question is a scalpel. It cuts straight through the armor I have spent years building.
I want to look away. I want to tell him it is none of his business. I want to walk back out into the blizzard.
I stand my ground. He gave me the truth about his lethal world. I owe him the truth about my isolated one.
"My father." My voice does not shake. I refuse to let it shake. "He didn't mean to. But he did."
Santi does not interrupt. He does not offer a comforting platitude. He just waits.
"I was nineteen." I stare at the center of his chest. The dark fabric of his thermal shirt rises and falls with his slow, measured breaths. "I just got my private pilot's license. I came home to celebrate. I bought a cheap bottle of champagne. I walked into the kitchen."
The memory flashes behind my eyes. Vivid. Sharp. Unforgiving.
"He was on the floor." The words taste like ash. "The groceries were scattered everywhere. The milk carton had burst. It was mixing with the blood from where his head hit the counter. He was dead before he hit the linoleum."
Santi remains still. He does not reach out to stroke my hair. He does not pull me into a suffocating hug. He anchors me with his absolute attention.
"I dropped the champagne." I swallow hard. The tightness in my throat is suffocating. "It shattered. I sat on the floor with him for three hours before I called the ambulance. I knew he was gone. I just did not want the house to be empty yet."
The fire crackles loudly in the stove. The wind howls against the frosted glass of the cabin window.
"After the funeral, the debt collectors called." I force my gaze up to meet his. "The house was mortgaged. The flight school loans were crushing. I had twenty dollars in my bank account. I had to sell his watch to pay for the cremation."
I square my shoulders. The armor locks back into place.
"Nobody came to save me." I state it as a fact.
"No rich relatives. No charitable organizations.
The world just kept spinning. I learned how to spin with it.
I learned that depending on a man to provide a safety net is a lethal mistake.
The sky is the only thing that never lies to me. Gravity is the only rule I respect."
Santi absorbs the story. He absorbs the pain, the isolation, the stubborn willpower it took to survive it.
He does not say I am sorry for your loss. He does not say it gets better.
"You built a fortress." His voice is low and rough.
"I built a life."
"A solitary life." He steps into my personal space. The heat radiating off his body wraps around me. "You decided that needing someone was a weakness. You decided to fly helicopters because the ground was too full of ghosts."
"Are you psychoanalyzing me?"
"I hear you."
He reaches out. His rough hand cups the side of my face. His thumb brushes just beneath the bandage on my forehead. The touch is infinitely gentle. The contrast between the lethal man who owns a suppressed weapon and the man carefully tending my wounds is dizzying.
"You walked through hell and you came out the other side." Santi holds my gaze.
The validation hits me directly in the chest. It is not pity. It is profound respect. He sees the ugly, hardened parts of my soul and he respects them. He demands no vulnerability. He simply acknowledges my strength.
It is the most intimate thing anyone has ever said to me.
Heat crawls up my neck. My defenses crumble under the force of his dark stare. I lean my cheek into his palm. The rough calluses on his skin ground me in the present moment.
"I don't want to need you, Santi." The confession slips out before I can stop it.
"I know."
"Your world is going to drag me under."
"I will dismantle my world before I let it touch you."
He speaks the vow with terrifying conviction. He is a man who has lived a long time in emotional detachment. A man who lost his parents and absorbed the grief in total silence. He woke up the moment my helicopter crashed into the mountain. Somehow, I became the thing that made him feel alive again.
The realization terrifies me. It thrills me.
"The storm is getting worse." I whisper.
"It will break by dawn." Santi drops his hand from my face. The loss of contact leaves a cold ache on my skin. "The extraction team will arrive at the coordinates by zero-eight-hundred."
He turns away from me. He walks over to the cot. He picks up the heavy Glock.
He checks the magazine. He snaps it back into place. He checks the chamber.
He turns back and holds the weapon out to me. Grip first.
I stare at the black metal.
"Take it." His voice leaves no room for refusal.
I reach out. My fingers wrap around the grip. He releases the weapon into my sole possession.
"You keep the weapon tonight." Santi moves back toward the door. He pulls his coat tighter around his frame. "If anyone comes through that door who is not my blood, you put a hollow-point round between their eyes. You do not hesitate."
"Where are you going?"
"The wolves tracked the blood from the crash." He rests his hand on the iron crossbar. "They are circling the cabin. I’m going to clear the perimeter.”
He lifts the iron crossbar. The wind screams into the room.
"Lock it." He commands.
He steps out into the whiteout. He pulls the door shut.
I keep my finger outside the trigger guard and check the chamber the way my father taught me. Ready. The heavy click of the metal echoes in the silence. I walk to the door and drop the iron crossbar into place.
I stand in the freezing cabin, holding a Costa gun, waiting for the war to arrive.