TEN #2
She should be thinking about the case. What could be on those laptops. She should be hovering over O’s shoulder as he chewed through data that might crack this whole case open.
Instead, she lay with her head pillowed on her lover’s chest, basking in the afterglow of their lovemaking.
“You’ve changed,” he said, breath ruffling the hair on her temple.
She tensed for a beat before pushing out a sigh. “So have you.” He had a new penchant for pinning her to walls and beds—and she liked it. A lot. It made her analyze this newer, more alpha side of him that needed control.
He traced slow lines along her shoulder. “You were always serious. I used to have to work my ass off to get a smile out of you.” His fingers slowed. “But I could get one.”
She considered his words, weighing the version he was describing against the woman she was now.
She barely recognized that person anymore.
It was buried beneath years of case files and chained with a grief she’d never let herself fully feel because she didn’t know how to admit it was big enough to swallow her.
“I had a reason.” She said it simply, without digging for sympathy.
“I know.” His voice held a small catch.
She shifted against him and found his gaze in the low light. “You’ve changed too. I saw your handwriting on that board in the kitchen—the board with the bets on it.”
He studied her but didn’t speak.
“I never pictured you as a betting man.”
He huffed a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s not about the money. It’s a mental health thing. Something light to keep us all going. If I can do my part…” He trailed off and then picked up again. “In this line of work, you find outlets where you can.”
She filed that away with everything else she was slowly learning about who Reid Rivers had become. Long minutes passed in an easy silence.
When he spoke, she was totally unprepared for his question. “Do you keep in touch with my family?”
Her heart slammed to a stop. “I do.” An ache formed in her throat. “Your mom mostly. Your dad and brothers sometimes.”
Without hesitation, she pushed off the bed and located her phone in her discarded pants. She slipped back into bed beside Reid and searched through her phone until she found the images folder she’d built without ever admitting to herself why she kept adding to it.
She turned the screen toward him. “You’re an uncle. Twice.”
He stopped breathing. The silence stretched on so long she began to think she’d done the wrong thing in showing him.
He took the phone as if it might break and stared at the two small faces grinning up at the camera—his brother’s kids. She’d learned their names secondhand and had their birthdays marked on her calendar, though she never understood why she felt the need to remember them.
She studied his face and saw his eyes glistening with wetness.
He scrolled through the years he’d missed—birthday cakes, a Christmas morning, one blurry shot of his parents standing at the rail of a cruise ship.
For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. His thumb hovered over each photo as if he could draw the images through his fingerprints and draw them inside himself.
As he swallowed hard, his throat clicked.
“If you’re this sad about all of it, why did you do it?” Her words came out with the accusation she’d been holding back.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You keep saying that.” She sat up and stared down at him. “Is that supposed to explain everything?” Her voice rose a notch.
“Let me finish.” He set the phone down and pushed into a sitting position too. When he met her gaze, his eyes carried a weight that made her eyes flood with tears.
“There was an attack planned,” he said slowly, thickly. “A terrorist attack designed to wipe out an entire city.”
She sucked in a breath. “What city?”
“Philadelphia.”
Her mind whirled. Their city. The city that contained all the people they loved.
The city that contained all the people he loved, including her.
“The whole city would have been wiped out, Ryss. Gone. Everyone in it. My family. Your family. Everyone we’d ever known and a million more.”
“Oh god,” she rasped.
His jaw worked. “I found out on that last mission—the one I promised you would be the last. And I had to do something to help stop it. I couldn’t let everyone I loved die because I didn’t take a risk.
It meant giving my own life to Blackout—and I signed up for that when I joined the Navy anyway. This was just more extreme.”
Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. “You’re serious.”
He gave a single nod. Then he slid down on the bed and slung his arm over his eyes, shutting himself away from her even as he lay right beside her.
She finally saw what the last six years had cost him.
Years of carrying the full weight of a choice all alone, with no one to tell but his brothers in Sierra.
No one could ever know the life, the city and the people he grieved for while the rest of the world got to walk around blissfully unaware of how close it had come to ending.
Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes.
She’d spent all these years mourning a man she thought would never return and building an entire second self out of the wreckage. Even after she found him alive, it hadn’t once occurred to her that Reid might have been grieving too.
Grieving her. His family. The loss of his dreams.
He’d sacrificed everything to save the people he loved, and he’d had to live with that alone.
She reached for his arm, gently pulling it away from his face. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw with emotion.
Something shifted in her chest. This time it wasn’t the tearing sensation that came every time she’d heard his name, seen his handwriting or passed a restaurant they used to love.
Some old scab had finally lifted away from the wound she’d carried so long. And underneath it…instead of the raw ache she braced for every time it was ripped open…she found smooth skin.
Healed.
She didn’t have words yet for what that meant. But for the first time in years, she could think about Reid without bleeding all over again.