Chapter 9
One in the morning, and the compound was silent.
Paige couldn't sleep. The bunkhouse room was warm enough, the bed comfortable enough, the quiet deep enough. But her mind wouldn't stop running routes—Henderson wedding logistics, Greer's next move, the way Tourniquet's eyes had found hers across the cookout fire.
She gave up at twelve-forty-five and pulled on jeans and a sweater.
The hallway was empty. The main building would be too, this time of night—brothers either sleeping or on watch rotation, old ladies in their own quarters. She just needed to move. Walk off the restless energy that wouldn't let her rest.
Light spilled from under the med bay door.
She paused. Considered walking past. Kept walking anyway.
The door was cracked open. Through the gap, she saw Tourniquet sitting at a steel table, surrounded by medical supplies. Gauze packets sorted into rows. Hemostatic agents lined up by expiration date. Tourniquets—actual tourniquets, the irony not lost on her—staged for rapid deployment.
His hands moved with mechanical precision, but his shoulders carried tension that had nothing to do with the task.
She pushed the door open.
He looked up, and something flickered across his face before he controlled it. Not surprise—he'd probably heard her coming. Something else. Something that looked almost like relief.
"Can't sleep either?"
"The preparedness loop." She moved into the room, letting the door swing shut behind her. "Checking locks. Checking routes. Checking everything three times because twice doesn't feel like enough."
"It never does."
She pulled a stool to the opposite side of the table and sat down. Between them lay the scattered contents of a trauma kit—the same items she'd learned to use in Helmand when soldiers bled out faster than medics could reach them.
"Show me how you want them organized."
His eyebrows rose. "You don't have to—"
"I know." She picked up a gauze packet, turned it over in her hands. "But I'm here, and you're here, and neither of us is sleeping. Might as well be useful."
For a long moment, he just looked at her. The fluorescent light caught the planes of his face, the intensity in his eyes, the tension in his jaw that never quite released.
Then he nodded.
"Gauze by size, left to right. Hemostatics by expiration, newest to the back. Tourniquets staged with the windlass pre-positioned."
They worked in silence for a while. The rhythm was familiar—hands sorting, organizing, preparing for emergencies that might never come but probably would. She'd done this in convoy staging areas. He'd done this in field hospitals. Different wars, same ritual.
"The phosphorus round," she said eventually. "The one that burned your hand. Tell me."
His hands paused on a tourniquet. "You read my scars?"
"I read everything." She met his eyes. "Occupational hazard."
The silence stretched. She thought he wouldn't answer.
Then: "Kandahar. IED hit a convoy three hundred meters from our position. I was running triage when a secondary device went off—phosphorus, designed to burn through armor. A piece landed next to a Marine who couldn't move."
"So you picked it up."
"It was burning through his vest. Another thirty seconds, it would have reached skin." He looked at his palm, at the white scarring that mapped the damage. "Thirty seconds is a long time when you're on fire."
"You held it for thirty seconds?"
"Long enough to throw it clear." His voice was flat, clinical. The voice of a man describing something that happened to someone else. "Third-degree burns. Eight weeks of recovery. The Marine lived."
"That's not in any official record."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I wasn't supposed to be there. I'd already exceeded my authorized treatment radius. Technically, I was AWOL from my assigned position." His mouth twisted. "They couldn't give me a medal without court-martialing me first. So they did neither."
Paige absorbed that. The bureaucratic absurdity of a system that punished heroism when it didn't fit the paperwork.
"The Silver Star," she said. "The one in my sock drawer. Same thing. I pulled a wounded soldier from a burning vehicle, but I wasn't supposed to leave my truck. Violated protocol. They gave me the medal anyway, but my CO made sure I knew I'd fucked up by saving someone."
"We're a matching set."
"Apparently."
The med supplies were organized now, everything in its place, ready for emergencies. But neither of them moved to leave.
"Reed," he said quietly.
She blinked. "What?"
"My name. Reed Maloney." He met her eyes, and the intensity there had shifted—still focused, but warmer. Vulnerable in a way she hadn't seen before. "Tourniquet's the patch. Reed's the man."
Reed.
The name settled into her chest, warm and unexpected.
"Paige," she said. "But you already knew that."
"I knew your file. Your service record. Your business license." He pushed back from the table, standing. "I didn't know you until you told me about the sock drawer."
He moved around the table, and suddenly the space between them was very small. Close enough to feel his warmth. Close enough to see the pulse in his throat.
"What are we doing here?" she asked.
"I don't know." His voice was rough. "I've been asking myself that since the moment you squared up to Shale's crew like you'd done it a thousand times."
"I had."
"I know." His hand rose, hovered near her face without touching. "I know exactly what you are. What you've survived. What you're capable of." His fingers brushed her jaw, feather-light. "That's the problem."
"Why is that a problem?"
"Because I'm supposed to be protecting you." His thumb traced her cheekbone, and she felt the slight tremor in his hand—the one he'd told her about, the one that lived between emergencies. "And every time I look at you, protection isn't what I'm thinking about."
She should pull back. Should maintain the professional distance that had already crumbled three days ago if she was honest with herself.
Instead, she turned her head and pressed her lips to his palm.
His breath caught. Just slightly. Just enough.
"Paige—"
"I'm not a package you're delivering," she said against his skin. "I'm not cargo. And I'm not someone who needs you to protect her from her own choices."
"What are you choosing?"
She stood, closing the last of the distance between them. Her hands found his chest, feeling the heartbeat under her palms—steady, but faster than before.
"You," she said. "Right now, in this room, I'm choosing you."
Something broke behind his eyes.
He kissed her like a man who'd been holding back for days—weeks—maybe his whole life. His hands cupped her face, tilted her head, took her mouth with a hunger that matched the intensity he brought to everything else.
She'd expected controlled. Clinical. The same precision he applied to med kits and threat assessment.
This wasn't that.
This was heat and desperation, his fingers threading through her hair, her back hitting the edge of the table as he pressed into her. The medical supplies scattered—gauze and packets and carefully organized chaos—and neither of them cared.
"Reed," she breathed against his mouth, and he groaned like the sound of his name in her voice was something he'd been starving for.
"Say it again."
"Reed."
His hands found the hem of her sweater, and she felt the tremor again—stronger now, the dangerous man undone by permission. She caught his wrists, held them still, made him meet her eyes.
"I'm not breakable."
"I know."
"Then stop treating me like I am."
Something shifted in his expression. The restraint cracking. The control he wore like armor finally giving way.
"If I stop—" His voice was rough. "If I let go—"
"Then let go."
He did.
The sweater disappeared. His shirt followed. And then it was skin against skin, heat against heat, his scarred palm flat against her back as he lifted her onto the table.
She wrapped her legs around him, pulled him closer, felt the groan that rumbled through his chest when her hips met his. His mouth traced her jaw, her neck, the sensitive spot below her ear that made her gasp.
"Mine," he said against her skin. The word vibrated through her. "Tell me you're mine."
"Yours."
"Again."
"Yours, Reed. I'm yours."
The words unlocked something. His hands stopped hesitating, stopped asking permission. They learned her with the same thorough attention he applied to everything—mapping her responses, cataloging what made her breath catch and her back arch.
She'd expected a medic's precision.
She got a soldier's intensity instead.
He laid her back against the steel table, and the cold metal was a shock against her heated skin. But his body covered hers immediately, warmth and weight, his mouth finding hers again while his hands continued their exploration.
"Beautiful," he murmured. "Every inch of you."
"Less talking."
His laugh was low, surprised. "Yes, ma'am."
And then there was no more talking—just breath and sensation and the overwhelming reality of finally, finally letting the tension break. His hands knew exactly where to touch, exactly how much pressure, exactly when to be gentle and when to push harder.
A man who assessed damage before threat knew exactly where to be careful.
And where not to be.
She came apart under his hands with a cry she couldn't contain, his mouth catching the sound, his body anchoring her through the tremors. And when she could breathe again, when she could think again, she pulled him down and showed him that convoy drivers knew a thing or two about logistics.
About knowing your cargo. About handling precious things with care.
About delivering exactly what was promised.
Afterward, they lay tangled together on the narrow table, medical supplies scattered across the floor like aftermath.
"We destroyed your organization system," she said.
"Worth it."
She turned her head to look at him. In the fluorescent light, his face was relaxed in a way she'd never seen—the constant vigilance quieted, the assessment engine finally still.
"Reed," she said, just because she could.
"Paige." His mouth curved. "We should probably find somewhere more comfortable."
"Probably."
Neither of them moved.
His hand traced patterns on her back, lazy and warm. The tremor was gone, she realized. For the first time since she'd known him, his hands were completely still.
"The preparedness loop," she said. "Is it quiet?"
He was silent for a moment. Then: "Yeah. It's quiet."
"Good."
She pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart, and let herself rest.
Tomorrow would bring Greer and violence and the war that never ended.
But tonight, in a med bay surrounded by scattered supplies, two broken people had found something that looked a lot like peace.