FIVE
Rivers had survived a bullet to the liver. Tonight he was trying to get a barbell to finish the job.
The bar dipped low over his chest, stacked with the heaviest weight he’d ever attempted, and he pushed himself anyway. No spotter, no sense, just the raw need to feel something that hurt worse than the ache in his chest.
First set, he’d racked it clean—ten reps, perfect control. The kind of set that should have left him satisfied.
It didn’t.
He sat up, chalked his hands even though he didn’t need to and added a plate to each side before he’d even caught his breath.
You’d rather be dead than married to me.
Her voice looped through his head on repeat, steady as a metronome, timed to every rep he forced through the next set.
He racked it again at twelve reps instead of ten, arms trembling. He was fine to push harder. The shake in his muscles was progress. What he needed to wipe that kiss out of his mind was more weight.
Nothing about this situation felt good. Had never felt good. Leaving Caryssa had ripped his fucking heart out. He never wanted to walk away or to leave her grieving. It had to happen, but she couldn’t know why.
Rivers hit the third set harder yet. He was breathing through his teeth by rep four, jaw clenched so hard his molars ached, and some small, rational corner of his brain—the part that had kept him alive through years of Blackout ops—was screaming at him.
This isn’t training. This is punishment.
Go to hell.
He ignored the voice in his head and pushed through two more reps.
He thought about Caryssa’s face in the infirmary, stone-still while he cleaned her hand.
Thought about the kiss in her room, the way she’d stripped off his shirt with the clinical focus of someone defusing a bomb instead of touching the man she used to love, the way she’d gone cold the second she stepped away.
Every thought earned another rep. Every rep hurt worse than the last.
He finished and loaded one more plate onto each side. Maybe more weight could crush six years of guilt out of him.
He pushed upward…and stalled with the bar an inch above his sternum. Arms shaking, his air ran out. And for one genuinely stupid second he considered just letting it fall.
Then hands closed around the bar from behind and hauled it up and back into the rack with a clang loud enough to echo off the concrete walls.
“What the hell is going on with you?” Rorke stood over him, breathing hard from the assist that also tested him, his face screwed up between concern and fury.
Rivers sat up slow and planted his elbows on his knees, chest heaving. “She thinks I’d rather be dead than be with her.” He scrubbed both hands down his face. “I have to explain—”
“Explain what?” Rorke dropped his voice and glanced at the closed gym door before he crouched down to Rivers’s level. “That pending strike against Philly? You planning to walk her through that over dinner? You can’t tell people, man. That’s the job. That’s always been the job.”
“She’s FBI.”
“Exactly.” Rorke delivered the word with enough finality to end the argument.
“Exactly, Rivers. She’s FBI, and you specifically can’t tell her things.
We’ve got a breach—remember? That’s not theoretical.
Intel’s been buried in the Bureau for months.
That’s the whole reason the private Blackout network was created in the first place—because we can’t trust the normal channels anymore.
And until we know who compromised it, everybody outside this building is a question mark. ”
He threw Rivers a look and pushed to his feet. “Including her. Especially her, given where she works.”
He dropped his face into his hands, elbows digging into his knees. He said nothing. What was there to say that wasn’t a whiny excuse for what he’d done to her, even if his walking away from his whole life saved so many others, including everyone he ever cared about?
Rorke sank to the bench across from him.
“I know it’s not fair. I know exactly how much it’s not fair.
But this is the job we signed up for. We shoulder the things nobody else gets to know about so the rest of them can go on believing the world isn’t on fire.
That’s the whole deal, man. We don’t get to hand people the truth just because it would make our lives easier. ”
He jerked upright, glaring at his teammate.
“I know that, goddammit! It doesn’t mean I like watching her look at me as if I chose this because I didn’t want her.
Fuck!” He jolted to his feet and strode to the punching bag, delivering a brutal blow that stung his bare knuckles as they split under the force.
“You did choose it.” Rorke didn’t say it unkindly, but he didn’t soften it either. “Difference is, you chose it to keep her alive.”
Rivers opened his mouth, but he didn’t even know what was left to say. Maybe talking was better than sitting in silence with the heavy truth. The gym door swung open, cutting off any attempt he’d make anyway.
Caryssa stood in the doorway, wearing running shorts that showcased her toned legs and a tank top that hugged every inch of her torso.
Her gaze swept the room once—Rorke on the bench, Rivers shirtless and sweating in front of the punching bag that still swayed from his blow.
When she spotted him, she snapped her arms over her chest in a protective gesture and her jaw tightened.
All at once, the kiss crashed into his mind. Feeling Caryssa again—tasting her. Fuck. Need surged through his body.
She dragged her gaze over his body, settling for a brief heartbeat on his scar.
“Am I interrupting?” Her tone made it clear she didn’t care either way.
“Nope.” Rorke strode to the door as if he suddenly remembered he had urgent business elsewhere. “I was just leaving. Rivers, hydrate. You look like hell.”
He was gone before Rivers could call him back, the door swinging shut with a cruel finality.
Silence fogged the air, thick and thorny. Rivers grabbed a pair of boxing gloves and faced the heavy bag again, slightly turned so he could watch Caryssa out of the corner of his eye.
She stood there, looking unsure whether to leave or stay. He could leave and save her the trouble, but he’d spent every second since she walked onto base wanting to be in the same room with her.
He pretended to study the leather bag and the grain veining over the surface that had seen more blows than he wanted to count. He didn’t trust himself to move because his body was urging him to walk over there, cup Caryssa’s beautiful face and slam his mouth over hers.
The silence stretched so long it become a third presence in the room.
Dammit.
He swung on the bag, glove connecting with a thud that jarred his whole body.
To.
Another blow, harder this time.
Hell.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her there, arms crossed, jaw tilted, she was still his Caryssa, the woman who once was everything in the world to him.
But her expression told him loud and clear where he stood.
After a moment, she turned toward the row of treadmills, stepped onto one, and ran as though she could leave every unspoken word behind.
* * * * *
She should have walked out when she saw Reid in the gym. Why did she stay?
Her only defense had to be a level of insanity that would surely hold up in court.
At least she no longer wanted to threaten her former lover. Now nervous energy hummed through her body, awareness prickling over every inch of her skin. It even erased the pain of her bruised knee.
Reid was alive.
He was raining blows on the punching bag as if it personally did him wrong, and each thump of his fists seemed to stroke her senses from clear across the room.
She switched from a jog to a run uphill, at the steepest incline. Her running shoes pounded hard, and she fixed her stare on the only thing there was to see in this godforsaken base she was sent to work in—the concrete wall.
“You could at least get some windows around here.”
Reid stopped assaulting the punching bag. “What’s that?”
“I haven’t seen a single window in this place. Don’t you enjoy having a view when you jog?”
“There’s a hall.”
She snorted. “Still no windows. How do you function? Circadian rhythm is important to everyone’s health.”
He didn’t answer, just went back to working over the punching bag.
Her whole body prickled knowing that he was in the room. Feet away from her. Shirtless and sweaty and hot, and god, she wanted to leap off this machine and get a different kind of workout.
But she hated him.
She fixed her stare on the concrete and found it entirely smooth. There wasn’t even the tiniest imperfection to focus on.
And she needed to focus. She had a job to do. Pulling threads together to create one giant network of crime took concentration she didn’t have at the moment. She’d hoped to run off some energy and quiet her mind, but no such luck with Reid standing ten feet away.
As the door opened, her head snapped around just as another guy walked into the room.
He was tall, leaner than some of his teammates. Less bulky and more coiled energy, every inch of him built for speed. He had dark hair, a little longer than she’d expect on a military base, pushed back as though he’d raked a hand through it.
His gaze found her with a quick flick of assessment, and she swore she caught the twitch of his hard lips before she faced the wall again.
Then he looked to Rivers at the bag, gloves up, sweat-soaked and radiating tension.
“Too crowded in here for me.” He swung back to the door.
Rivers stopped him. “Stay. Caryssa, have you met O?”
She was forced to take her speed down two notches to hold a conversation. “O?” She was prodding for more so she could look him up like the others, though she could already guess there was a deceased beside his name too.
“Just O.”
She’d met some cocky guys before, but O seemed to have invented the letter just for his personal use. He strutted over to the leg machine.
She was still trying to figure out where to file O in her mental catalogue of this place when he called over to her. “Nice form, by the way. On the treadmill.”
The thud of fists on the punching bag stopped, and she felt the weight of Reid’s stare on her.
“Thanks,” she said with a measure of dryness. She was sure O was just stirring up trouble between them.
Turning back to the wall, she fought to find her rhythm again. She was used to running in a big facility with lots of windows and views, and she definitely needed more than a view of her almost/maybe fiancé.
“Seriously, though. We could at least get some windows around here.”
Reid didn’t break his pace. Thud, thud, thud. “I told her there’s a hall.” He was a little out of breath.
“A hall doesn’t count. I mean an actual view. Something to look at besides gray.” She hit the incline button again, pushing it steeper out of pure irritation. “Why do the treadmills even face the wall? You could angle them toward the door..”
She was breathing harder now too, sweat starting to bead at her hairline. “It’s borderline sensory deprivation.”
“Rivers doesn’t have a problem with the view,” O said casually.
She whipped around so fast she nearly lost her footing on the belt and shot off the back. She slapped the safety rail to catch herself. “You’re staring at my ass, aren’t you?”
“No.” Reid at least had the decency to look sheepish.
“More lies.” Her tone was flat though her chest had gone traitorously warm at knowing he was staring at her.
“Just a little one. A little white one.”
“Unbelievable.” She shook her head, making her ponytail swing. There was little heat behind her words now, and she hated that she wasn’t hating him the way she wanted to.
She heard O’s reps come to a finish. A second later came the low noise of the door closing again. She turned her head to see if someone else entered, but O was nowhere to be seen.
The treadmill hummed beneath her feet, and she kept running. Stopping meant facing what she refused to admit.
From the corner of her eye, she watched Reid strip off his gloves, slow and methodical. Buying time.
Then he crossed the room toward her, every step deliberate, and her pulse took off before her brain caught up.
He reached out and hit the stop button on her treadmill. Her momentum threatened to send her planting face first, but he caught her around the waist and cupped her jaw with his other hand before the belt fully slowed beneath her feet.
Then his mouth was on hers, hard and sure—nothing at all like the desperate, grief-soaked kiss she’d started in her room hours ago.
This kiss felt like a decision.
She let it happen for three full heartbeats before she found the sense to shove a hand against his chest. Breathless and furious with her own body, she glared at him.
“What was that for?” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth to erase the taste of him even as she wished for more of it.
Reid didn’t step back or look remotely sorry. “Payback.”
She opened her mouth to fire back, to voice the sharp words that would put distance right back where it belonged between them. But infuriatingly, nothing came out.
Her whole body was humming from the kiss, from his arm banded around her waist as if he deserved the right to touch her.
The grief she’d lived with collided head-on with the fact that he was standing right here, warm and real and looking at her that way.
“Get off the treadmill,” was all she managed, pushing out of his grip before she did something even more reckless.
He let her go.
But his gaze never left her as he crossed to the door, leaving the searing imprint of it long after he walked out.