Chapter 6 Love & War
SIX
LOVE & WAR
ARIA
The first thing I feel is warmth. The second is the weight of being watched. I don’t open my eyes right away, just listen to the slow rhythm of another breath close enough to touch. It’s steady, familiar. Too familiar.
Dawn breaks soft and pink over the snow, the kind of light that doesn’t belong to a world like ours. The storm quieted, but the silence it left behind is heavier than before. The heater hums low, the fire barely alive in the barrel stove.
I open my eyes. Steel’s there, sitting against the workbench where he must’ve been all night, one arm draped over his knee, watching me. He looks like a man who hasn’t slept in months. His face is unreadable, all shadow and edges, haunted and beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he says, voice low and rough from whiskey and ghosts.
I sit up, the blanket slipping down my shoulders. “Good morning to you, too.”
His mouth almost curves. Almost. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Too late to fix that.” I stretch, bones stiff from sleeping half-curled on the floor. “You got coffee, or do Saints run on pure attitude now?”
He grunts, stands, and crosses to the counter. The motion’s too fluid, too controlled, like he’s doing it to avoid looking at me. “Pot’s busted. Power’s still down.”
I laugh, brittle. “Then stop looking at me like you’re glad I came.”
That stops him cold. His hand tightens on the mug he’s holding. The muscle in his jaw jumps once.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he says finally, but the lie lands softly.
“Right,” I murmur. “Because you’re all business. Always were.”
He sets the mug down hard enough that it rattles. “You left, Aria.”
The words drop like a blade. “I know.”
“No,” he snaps, turning. “You don’t. I buried him, and you vanished.”
My stomach twists. “You think I don’t live with that?”
“You think living with it’s the same as being here?” He slams his fist against the bench. The sound cracks through the garage like thunder.
The ring on his chain catches the light, swinging once before it settles. My voice shakes when I speak. “You were drowning, Steel. You were drowning, and I couldn’t…”
“You could’ve stayed,” he cuts in, voice sharp enough to bleed. “You could’ve said something instead of running.”
I stand, the cot creaking under me. “You wouldn’t have heard me. You only listen to engines and ghosts.”
He steps forward, anger and pain twisting together in his eyes. “And you only come back when it’s safe to play savior.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is life under a patch.”
The space between us burns. I shove him, hard. “You hide behind that gavel and call it duty. You think leadership’s an excuse for turning into him.”
He grabs my wrist before I can shove him again. The heat of his hand sears through my skin. “Let go.”
He doesn’t. “No.” The word’s a promise and a threat. My pulse jumps. His eyes drop to my mouth, and I forget what air feels like.
“Isaiah…”
“Stop saying my name like that,” he growls.
“Like what?”
“Like you still mean it.” The next second, he’s kissing me.
It’s not soft this time. It’s rough, desperate, full of everything we’ve been pretending isn’t still alive. My back hits the workbench, and the lamp flickers. His hand slides up my spine, the other fisting in my hair.
I taste whiskey, fire, and regret. He kisses like he’s starving for it. For me. For something that makes him feel alive again.
When I drag him closer, his breath catches. A sound that tears through both of us. His body cages mine against the wall, solid heat pressing through denim, restraint gone.
My fingers dig into his shoulders, nails biting through skin. He groans, low and broken, like the sound costs him.
“God, Aria…” His forehead drops to mine. “This is a bad idea.”
“Then stop.” Even my tone isn’t convincing.
He doesn’t. His mouth finds my throat, rough kisses trailing fire down my skin. Every inch of me aches for it, for him.
When he finally lifts me, setting me on the workbench, the world falls away. The fire pops, the storm sighs outside, but all I can hear is our breathing.
He kisses me again, slower this time, hands gentler but no less hungry. The kind of kiss that says I missed you, and I hate that I did.
When we finally break apart, our foreheads still touching, the air between us hums.
The firelight flickers across his face, painting him in gold and shadow. Snow falls outside, quiet and endless, sealing us in a world that can’t exist beyond this night.
My chest heaves. “This changes nothing.”
He stares at me, eyes dark, voice barely a whisper. “Changes everything.”
His hands map territory they once knew by heart. The curve of my waist, the hollow at the base of my throat where my pulse betrays me. Each touch is a question asked in a language we both forgot we spoke.
The workbench is cold and unforgiving beneath my jeans, but he's furnace-hot, all lean muscle and barely leashed restraint. The storm outside grows again, throwing shadows across his face. Dark, then gold, then dark again. Like watching him flicker between the man he was and the stranger he became.
"Look at me," I whisper, and when he does, I see it all. The hunger, the hurt, the months of wanting what he thought he'd destroyed.
Steel’s breath comes ragged against my collarbone. My fingers trace the ridge of his spine, feeling him shudder, feeling the armor crack. Every exhale is surrender. Every inhale, a prayer he's forgotten how to say.
The fire snaps. Embers spiral upward like falling stars in reverse.
Fabric whispers. Skin finds skin. The world narrows to his weight, my heartbeat, the way we fit together like a wound and its scar.
"Tell me to stop," he breathes against my mouth.
"Don't you dare."
When Isaiah enters me, a sudden gasp parts my lips.
The sensations flowing through me set my skin on fire, and my mind races.
He’s home. I’m home. We’re home. Time unmoors itself.
There's only awareness, the salt-taste of skin, the tremor in his shoulders, the way my name breaks open in his throat like something sacred, something ruined.
His touch is reverent and desperate, gentle and consuming, like he's trying to memorize me and destroy the memory all at once.
I arch into him, and he makes a raw, guttural sound, entirely undone. It echoes through my ribs, rewrites something fundamental in my chest.
The lamp flickers. Our shadows merge on the garage wall, two silhouettes bleeding into one.
We move together like an argument finally won, like a confession that can't be taken back. Every rise and fall is punctuated by gasped breaths, by the quiet devastation of rediscovering what we thought we'd lost.
Steel’s forehead presses to mine, and I feel him tremble, not from cold, not from weakness, but from the terrible relief of coming home to something he burned down himself.
"Aria…" My name is a plea, a curse, a hallelujah.
I pull him closer, deeper, until there's no space left for ghosts or grudges or the people we pretended to be. Until there's only the two of us, breaking and remaking each other in the firelight.
The storm howls. The world outside ceases to exist.
When the shaking starts, his or mine, impossible to tell, it tears through us both. A wave cresting, then crashing. I bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out, and he holds me like I'm the only solid thing in a world gone liquid.
Aftermath comes slowly.
Our breathing synchronizes. His weight settles, grounding me to the moment, to the choice we just made. Sweat cools on overheated skin. The fire pops, settling into embers.
He lifts his head, and his eyes are different now, stripped of everything except truth. "I never stopped…"
"I know." I touch his face, my thumb brushing his jaw. "I know."
Snow continues to fall outside, erasing our tracks, rewriting the landscape into something new.
The storm doesn’t stop, and neither do we.
Between the whispers and the silence, between touches that blur the lines we swore we’d never cross again, the hours disappear.
The wind screams, the fire dies, but the heat doesn’t fade.
When we finally slow down, it’s not exhaustion that takes us, it’s surrender.
The kind that feels like breathing after drowning.
For a long time, there’s nothing but the rhythm of our hearts and the sound of snow against glass. No past, no ghosts, no club, just this. Just us.
We stay tangled together all day and night as the fire burns low, learning every new scar, new groove, and dip in our skin. We part only for food and water, which Steel found in the back room.
Dawn arrives like an unwelcome witness. Gray light creeps through the frost-etched windows, turning the garage into something caught between dream and waking. The fire's died to ash and ember. The storm's fury has gentled to a whisper of wind through pine.
Steel and I are lying on a twin bed in the back of the garage, his flannel draped over my shoulders, my legs wrapped around his waist. Neither of us has moved. Neither of us wants to be the first to break the spell.
His thumb traces lazy circles on my hip bone. Back and forth. A meditation, a claim, a question he doesn't know how to ask.
"We should," he starts.
"Don't." My fingers thread through his hair, still damp at the temples. "Don't do that thing where you rationalize this away."
His jaw tightens. "Aria…"
"Steel." I force him to look at me. Really look. "I'm not sorry."
Something in his expression fractures. Relief, maybe. Or terror at what that means. He drops his forehead to my shoulder, and I feel him breathe out one long, shuddering exhale that seems to empty his lungs of years of holding back.
"I'm not either," he whispers against my skin. "God help me, I'm not."
The confession costs him. I feel it in the way his hands tighten on my thighs, the way his body goes rigid with the effort of admitting what he's spent so long denying.
I tilt his face up and kiss him softly this time. Slow. The kind of kiss that says I see you instead of I need you, though both are true.
When we finally pull apart, the world's gone solid again. The garage is cold. Our clothes are scattered like evidence of a crime we'll never regret committing.
"Come on." I slide off the bed on unsteady legs. His hand shoots out to secure me, and the tenderness in the gesture undoes me more than anything that came before.
He rebuilds the fire while I find my jeans and his shirt. We move around each other with a careful choreography. Too aware, too raw, dancing around the enormity of what just shifted between us.
The kindling catches. Flames lick upward, painting the room in amber.
He stands, wipes his hands on his jeans, and finally meets my eyes. The vulnerability there steals my breath. He looks younger somehow. Like he's shed a skin he'd been wearing too long.
"What happens now?" His voice is rough, uncertain.
I cross to him, rise on my toes, and press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Now we figure it out."
Steel’s arms stay around me long after the fire starts to crackle again. The world outside looks clean, untouched, like maybe we could start over.
He brushes a strand of hair from my cheek. “Maybe we finally caught a break.”
I almost smile. “Don’t jinx it.”
The sound hits first. My phone buzzes on the workbench. Once. Twice. He frowns, crosses the room, and picks it up. Color drains from his face.
“What?” I ask, throat tight. He turns the screen toward me. A message, no name. Just words that cut through the morning like glass.
Unknown Number: You weren’t supposed to survive the storm.
The silence after is worse than the wind.
Steel’s jaw tightens, and I know before he says a word, whatever peace we thought we earned just got buried under fresh snow.