Chapter 34
They lay tangled together in the dark, his hand warm on her side, the heat of him sinking into her.
She wanted this. And that should have made it simple.
It didn’t.
Neither of them was sleeping. Neither ready to let the silence settle.
Jen turned her head, finding his profile in the dim light filtering through the windows.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“Why the Coast Guard?”
His hand stilled on her ribs. Tension moved through his body before he answered—tightening in his shoulders, his breathing changing rhythm.
“Seemed like the right move.” He sighed. “My family was here. The mountains were quiet. And the Coast Guard needed pilots.”
She waited.
“Six months after I left the Teams, Mom called.” His voice had gone quieter. “Said there was a kayaker missing off the coast. Storm had blown him out past the breakers. The conditions were bad and—”
He swallowed.
“I went anyway. Offered to help.”
Jen stayed silent, letting him take the space.
“We found him clinging to his overturned boat about two miles out. Hypothermic. Another hour and he would’ve been gone.” He fell silent for a second. “By the time we got him back, he couldn’t feel his hands or feet. Could barely talk.”
He exhaled slowly. “And for those few hours—getting him back, warming him up—I felt like myself again.”
In the silence between them, his bedside clock ticked.
Her throat tightened. She knew that feeling. The relief of being useful.
“I signed up the following week.” He stared at the ceiling. “Told myself it was different.” He released a humorless breath. “Turns out it’s just a different kind of crisis.”
She tilted her head, just enough to look at him.
“Still an instrument,” he said. “Just pointed at different problems.”
His hand resumed its leisurely path over her hip—slower now, as if he was anchoring himself.
She shifted, propping herself on one elbow so she could see his face properly. His eyes went to the ceiling, but his hand found hers under the covers, fingers threading together.
“You don’t have to save me, Wyatt.”
His eyes cut to hers. “I know.”
“So why are you here?”
The question hung between them, and his throat worked.
“Because I want to be,” he said finally.
“That scares you.”
“Yeah.” He drew a measured breath. “Because if I’m not saving you—if there’s no crisis, no mission—then this is just...” He gestured vaguely between them. “This. And I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Want something.” His voice dropped. “For myself. Not because someone needs help. Not because there’s a threat.”
He looked at her fully now, and the openness in his eyes made her chest ache. “Just because I want you. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
His confession settled between them, raw and unarmored. In the short time she’d known him, she’d never heard uncertainty in his voice—never seen him this exposed.
She brought her hand to his face, fingers tracing the strong line of his jaw. Stubble rasped beneath her palm.
“I understand that. More than you know.”
His eyes searched hers.
“When we were planting the charges, you asked me to tell you about my research,” she said. “The real story.”
He stilled.
Jen took a breath. It scraped on the way in, as if her body resisted saying it out loud. She’d learned how to lock things down. Compartmentalize. Move forward.
But he’d given her his truth. She owed him hers.
“Clive was my mentor. I trusted him completely.”
She stared at the shadows on the wall. The memories felt distant—like they belonged to someone she barely recognized.
“We were developing an engineering algorithm. A predictive model that could adapt in real time.” She hissed out a breath. “The core logic was mine. I shared it with him because I thought that’s what partners did.”
She could still feel that moment—the pride, the certainty, the sense of finally standing on solid ground.
“He went to the investors alone. Used my work. My language.”
A sigh escaped her.
“My idea got a logo before I got a conversation.” Her mouth curved without humor. Bitterness bloomed—sharper than she expected. She thought she’d burned it out years ago.
“I could’ve fought it,” she went on. “Lawyers. Claims. Noise.” She shook her head. “But I was young. And scared. And I thought—”
“What?” Wyatt asked quietly.
“That maybe he was right. That maybe I wasn’t the idea person. I was just the one who made it work. That the real value wasn’t mine to claim.”
His hand flattened against her ribs—warm and real.
“So I left. Found work as far from him—and from that version of me—as I could get. Seven.” A breath of dry laughter escaped her. “It wasn’t exactly a crowded field of options. But it was contained. Isolated. Predictable.”
Safe.
“I told myself it was a career move. But really, it was an exit route. A place where I didn’t have to defend myself.”
She went quiet.
For a long moment, he didn’t speak. His hand stroked her waist. As if his hands needed to keep touching her while his mind caught up.
“We make sense.” He reached up and smoothed loose hair from her cheek.
“How do you mean?”
“You were taken apart for what you could produce.” He tucked the hair behind her ear. “I was taken apart for what I could do. Different packaging. Same outcome.”
She hadn’t framed it that way before. Hadn’t seen how neatly their stories aligned until he laid them side by side.
“And now,” he continued, voice low, “we’re both here, wondering who we are when nobody’s pulling the strings.”
The truth of it settled in her—uncomfortable but also undeniable.
“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” she said after a beat.
He looked at her. “What’s the right one?”
She shifted closer, her feet bumping his, losing herself in the warmth of him. “Maybe it’s not about what we’re worth. Maybe it’s about who we choose to be.” A small breath. “When there’s no mission. No emergency. Just this.”
His gaze held hers. “And who are you, when it’s just this?”
“I don’t know yet.” A faint smile tugged at her mouth. “But I want to find out.”
“With me?”
“Yes.” The answer came easily. “With you.”
His thumb skimmed her lower lip. A quiet, careful touch, as if he was committing the shape of her to memory. They lay quiet for a while. Long enough that she thought he might have drifted off. But his breathing was too even, too controlled. He was awake. Thinking.
“Can I say something?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Something that might ruin this?”
His hand cupped her shoulder, calluses teasing her skin. “Yeah.”
She drew a breath she felt all the way down in her ribs. “We’ve known each other for barely forty-eight hours.”
The words hung in the dark.
“Yes.”
“We nearly died. More than once. Everything was loud—fear, urgency, the constant sense that everything could fall apart at any second.” A shiver raced down her spine despite his warmth. “People mistake intensity for meaning all the time.”
His breathing was regular, a constant in the dark, so she kept going.
“What if this is just that? Bodies reacting. Brains clinging to the nearest solid thing.” She shifted slightly, the sheet whispering. “When things are quiet—when there’s no countdown—what if this doesn’t hold?”
The question lingered—too close to something she didn’t want to touch.
She swallowed. “I trusted Clive.” The words stung on the way out. “Believed I was building something with him. A partnership. But I was just a resource. Something to mine until there was nothing left.”
His breath changed. Just a fraction.
“I didn’t see it because I wanted it to be real,” she went on. “I wanted it so badly that I ignored what it cost me.” She forced herself to look at him. To let him see the fear she’d carried for years. “What if I’m doing that again?”
His eyes held hers in the dark.
“What if this isn’t a connection?” she whispered. “What if it’s just proximity? Pressure. Relief dressed up as something bigger. What if I’m mistaking it for…”
“For what?” he asked.
“For something real.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
The quiet between them wasn’t empty—it was crowded with the hot beat of her pulse.
“You think that’s what this is, Jen? Adrenaline?”
“I don’t know.” She hated that her voice was small. “Do you?”
He let out a slow breath, as if he’d been holding it. “I don’t know either.”
The honesty didn’t soothe her. It clarified everything. Made the risk feel real instead of hypothetical.
“So, what do we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“We could walk away.” The words felt wrong even as she said them. “Tell ourselves it was the crisis. Say goodbye while it’s still clean.”
His arm tightened around her. As if his body had already rejected the idea.
“Is that what you want?” His voice roughened.
“No.” The word came out fast, unfiltered, but doubt followed hard on its heels. What if I’m seeing what I want to see? What if—
“There aren’t any red flags,” he said quietly, as if he’d felt the turn in her thoughts. “But I get why you’re asking.” His hand came up, cradling her face with careful pressure. “Because I can’t promise this is real either.”
Her breath hitched under his touch.
“I can’t promise it works when things are quiet. When there’s no urgency, no threat, no reason to hold on except choice.” He looked straight at her, with no evasion. “But I want to find out. With you.”