Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sutton
Sutton stood for a moment on the threshold of her apartment, taking in the cramped studio, the water-stained plaster ceiling, and listening to the rattling pipes.
Home, sweet home.
Sort of.
Two of the succulents on the windowsill had given up completely in her absence—their leaves now a dried brown pile at the base of the pots.
The thrift-store quilt was still tangled at the foot of the bed, the way she’d left it the day Ginger had died.
Dishes were stacked in the sink. A coffee mug was growing mold.
It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“Okay.” She dropped her duffel bag on the floor and put her hands on her hips, surveying the mess. “This is going to be a project.”
Sebastian followed her in with Penn’s box of sketchbooks tucked under one arm. He set it on the desk, then went to the front window, angled himself beside the frame, and looked down at the street.
She watched him assess everything, searching for threats. Even here, even now, after Claire had declared Sutton safe and the FBI was officially closing its protective mandate.
She’d expected him to relax once they left the compound. To breathe. To take off the operator mask and become the man who scrubbed her back in the shower and traced her tattoos with his lips.
He wasn’t doing that. He was doing the window thing.
Give him time. He’s been on alert for days. That kind of vigilance didn’t switch off in an afternoon.
She channeled her disappointment into cleaning.
The dishes came first. She ran hot water and scrubbed the coffee mug until the biology inside it surrendered.
She let the rest of the dishes soak while she wiped down the counter with the lemon-scented spray she’d bought on sale three months ago and had been rationing ever since.
The kitchen was restored to something like order within twenty minutes, and she felt better. The act of reclaiming her space, of asserting her presence after the past days of sterile compound rooms and someone else’s soap, was empowering.
The entire time, Sebastian stayed at the window.
“I’m going to go grab my mail,” she said. “And some milk and bread at the corner store.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Or I could go by myself. Two minutes, there and back.”
He turned, his blue eyes shadowed in a way she didn’t like. “Sutton.”
“Fine.” She grabbed her keys, annoyed in a way she couldn’t quite justify. “Let’s go.”
Mr. Han at the convenience store was relieved to see her. He told her through the bulletproof glass at the register that he’d heard about the shooting at Iron Rose on the news. He’d been worried about her.
She bought the milk and bread and accepted his concern with a smile. When she came out onto the sidewalk, Sebastian was positioned where he could see the corner store’s entire front, the entrance to her apartment building down the block, and the alley mouth.
She didn’t say anything about it.
Back home, she put the milk away and made the bed. She gathered the clothes draped over the back of the chair to hang in the small closet. She tossed out the two dead succulents, making a mental note to replace them. The thrift-store quilt got shaken out and folded.
Sebastian checked the front window. Then the window facing the alley. Then the hallway through the peephole. He hadn’t sat down since they’d arrived.
“Wine?” she asked.
“Not while I’m on—” He checked himself before he finished that sentence. “I’m fine.”
She poured herself a glass and carried it to the window. The setting sun was casting long shadows over the street. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, you’ve been weird since we pulled into the parking lot, and I’ve been giving you space because I figured you needed to decompress, but it’s been an hour, and you’re still doing the perimeter thing in my four-hundred-square-foot apartment. What’s going on?”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“So you always stand at windows and refuse to make eye contact with the woman you’ve been sleeping with.” She kept her voice level. Barely. “My mistake.”
His jaw flexed. He still didn’t look at her.
“Sebastian.”
Nothing.
“Lynx.”
He finally met her eyes. His face was the one she’d seen in the hospital corridor—the armored one, the version of him he wore when he didn’t want anyone to see what was underneath.
She set down her wine. “Are you unhappy that the protective mandate is over? That I don’t need a bodyguard anymore?”
“I’m glad you’re safe.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He flexed his hand at his side. His chest expanded on a slow inhale. “The media is going to find out you were the woman at the hospital with me,” he said. “Are you prepared for that fallout?”
She blinked. Of all the things she’d expected him to say—some version of I’m pulling back, or this is moving too fast, or I need space—she hadn’t expected this.
She’d known the media pressure was building.
Vivi and Garrett had briefed her on the cable news coverage, and Sebastian had warned her at the compound that the hospital incident would accelerate everything.
But she’d been processing it as something to deal with when it got closer, as the ambient hum of a world that had always been slightly hostile to her.
“I mean—I know they will, eventually,” she said. “Vivi said a week, maybe more. But the news cycle burns hot and moves on. I’ll be a story for a minute, and then they’ll forget me.”
“No.” His voice was quiet. Absolute. “They won’t.”
“Sebastian—”
“It could be months, a year. Longer. I’ve lived this, Sutton.
The attention doesn’t die; it mutates. One day you’re a headline and the next you’re a subject, and after that you’re a character in a story you never agreed to be in.
You lose your privacy. Not some of it—all of it.
People will crucify you more now than after Penn’s death.
They’ll find every photograph you ever posted, every old Tumblr post from high school, every relationship you’ve had.
Your website will get attacked. Trolls will target your shop, leave reviews, flag your account.
Your name will be splashed across every entertainment outlet, podcast, and clickbait aggregator that can monetize the association.
Your dream of going back to school on your own merit—gone.
Every admissions officer at every program will recognize your name before they open your application.
Every scholarship committee. Every peer in your cohort. ”
He paused. His voice got quieter. “Everything you do will be scrutinized to death. Every piece you post will be run through the filter of who you’re dating. Every interview you give will circle back to Penn and Ginger and me. Every success you achieve will have an asterisk. For years.”
The apartment was quiet except for the rattle of the laundromat dryers through the floor.
Sutton sat down slowly on the edge of her bed. The air in her lungs felt thin. She’d lived pieces of what he was describing after Penn’s death—the Googling professors, the whispered recognition, the sister-of-an-assassin asterisk that had chased her from D.C. to Blackridge.
But the shape of it had been small. The thing he was describing was something else—a national megaphone pointed at a life she’d just started rebuilding.
“Are you trying to get me to break up with you?” The words came out flat.
Sebastian’s face tightened, his jaw flexing. “I want you to walk into the future with your eyes open. If you want a fresh start, Sutton—a real one—it can’t involve me. My name is a spotlight. I can’t turn it off. I’ve tried. I moved two thousand miles and changed my entire life and here we are.”
“So that’s it.” Her voice was gaining an edge. “Was I just a fling, then? Something convenient while you were protecting me?”
“Of course not,” he said instantly. “You came in like a storm and bulldozed every wall I’ve built over the past six years.
You’re—” He stopped. Regrouped. “That’s the problem.
Whatever this is between us doesn’t negate the fact that I’m bad for you.
Being seen with me will cost you. And eventually, when the cost accumulates, it will lead to resentment. ”
Something hot and sharp rose in her chest. She stood, crossed her arms, and planted her feet on the scuffed wood floor of the apartment.
“You don’t get to decide what I feel,” she said.
“Or what decisions I should make. Give me a little credit, Sebastian. I’m not an idiot.
I know the media can be brutal. I’ve lived a version of what you’re describing—smaller, yes, but real.
I know what it is to walk into rooms where people already have opinions about me.
I’ve been doing that for six years, and I’m still standing.
I’m more prepared this time, not less. And I’m not walking away from whatever this is because you’ve suddenly decided you’re an inconvenience. ”
He flinched. She saw the slight widening of his eyes, the recalibration that happened when someone you cared about told you your assumption about them was wrong.
“I just want you to be happy,” he said quietly.
She closed the distance between them and stood in front of him close enough to feel the heat of his chest. She could smell the soap on his skin, and she was so close that he couldn’t look anywhere but at her face.
She put a hand on the solid heartbeat in his chest. “I am happy,” she said.
“More than I’ve been in years. But you have to tone down the overly protective lynx in you right now.
You can’t save me from everything. You can’t arrange my life to shield me from difficulty.
I’m stronger than you’re giving me credit for. ”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s my nature.”
“I get that, and you’re good at it. It’s one of the reasons I’m standing here instead of lying on a slab at the mortuary. But we made a pact, remember?” She held his gaze. “No more regrets about the past. We’re done letting it control what happens next.”
“Some things you can’t outrun, no matter how hard you try.”
Frustration spiked inside her. “Then we don’t outrun them,” she said.
“We face them. We confront them. We live the life we want and we don’t apologize for it.
I spent six years apologizing for existing, Sebastian.
For having Penn’s last name. For being in rooms where people had already decided what I was.
I’m done apologizing. And I’m not letting you apologize for me, either.
As long as I have you, I don’t care what people think. ”
She could see the war in his head playing out on his face—the part of him that wanted to believe her was fighting the part of him that had built his entire post-shooting identity around the conviction that distance was the only kindness he could offer the people he cared about.
“Your art means everything to you,” he said. “I don’t want that to end up tainted because of me. I can’t stand the idea of people looking at your work and talking about who you’re dating.”
“Are you kidding me?”
His eyebrows rose.
“You’ve inspired a whole new fantasy line.
” She waved a hand toward the desk, where the stolen notebook sat beside Penn’s sketchbooks.
“Bodyguard warriors. I’m pairing them with my existing women warriors series.
They’re going to have animal callsigns. It’s going to be epic.
The dragons are not going to know what hit them. ”
He stared at her. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Absolutely not.” She grinned, wicked and true. “You’re going to love it. The first one is definitely a lynx. Tall, dark, haunted expression, about to punch someone. Very mysterious. Very moody. A real heartthrob.”
“Sutton.”
“I’m thinking about calling the series ‘Callsigns.’ Or maybe ‘Perimeter.’ Something catchy. I’ll workshop it.”
He closed his eyes. She watched his jaw work. Then, slowly, the faintest crease appeared at the corner of his mouth—the ghost of a smile she’d been coaxing out of him in pieces since the compound tour.
“You’re impossible,” he said.
“I’m stubborn. You know this.”
The crease grew. Not quite a smile, but closer.
He opened his eyes. Looked past her at the apartment, cleaner now, but still small and cluttered with all of her things. A work in progress. An unfinished project. A life she was rebuilding out of pieces.
“You know,” he said, “the farmhouse is a lot roomier and doesn’t have the constant sound of running dryers.”
“Are you suggesting we abandon this mess?”
“I’m suggesting we stay at my place tonight. You can show me this new fantasy line of yours. I want to know what I’m getting into before the first one goes live.”
She laughed, the first full laugh she’d had in—she couldn’t remember how long. The relief of it ran through her like warm water.
The tiff wasn’t resolved. He’d come back to the doubt, she knew. Men like Sebastian didn’t shed years of isolation in a single afternoon, no matter how much she wanted him to. But right now, in this moment, the light had come back into his face, and that was enough.
“Let me grab some things,” she said, “and we can go.”
She moved to the dresser, pulled out a drawer, and started stuffing clothes into her duffel bag.
A clean pair of jeans. Two T-shirts. Pajamas, which she probably wouldn’t need.
A toothbrush. She glanced up once. Sebastian was watching her pack with an expression she couldn’t quite read—something fond, something wary, something that looked like a man who’d just been talked off a ledge and was still deciding whether to thank the person who pulled him back or worry about the next ledge.
She zipped the bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Just so we’re clear.” She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth, right where the split lip was nearly healed. “This isn’t over. The conversation. I mean it when I say I’m not walking away. You’re stuck with me, Callsigns line and all.”
His arm came around her waist and tightened. For a moment, he held her against him, his face in her hair, and she felt the long, slow exhale that meant—for this moment—he was choosing her instead of the doubt.
“Copy that, Ink,” he said.
Together, they walked down the narrow stairs past the laundromat and out onto the street, where the October evening had gone cold, and the stars were beginning to come out.