Chapter 25
LEXI
The night didn’t end when we boarded the jet.
It just changed shape.
Lucas sat across from me again, one arm stretched along the back of the seat, his expression unreadable. The envelope that had shaken him so completely was tucked away in his pocket now, but its echo stayed in the air between us.
The engines hummed low, steady. The cabin lights dimmed to a soft gold, wrapping everything in false calm.
I watched him while pretending not to, studying the places he held tension—the tightness in his jaw, the stillness in his shoulders.
Every line of him looked composed, but I’d learned enough to recognize when something underneath was ready to snap.
I should’ve been afraid. I was afraid. But not of him.
I was afraid of how quickly I’d fallen into believing that danger couldn’t touch me as long as he was near.
The realization felt childish, and I hated that.
He caught me looking. “What?”
“You changed,” I said. “Your face did. Right after the old man left.”
His eyes met mine, steady, assessing. “Just a minor complication.”
“Who are they?”
He hesitated. “Not your problem.”
A polite lie, wrapped in steel.
I didn’t push, because I suspected he’d only lock down further.
Instead, I leaned back, pressing my palms against the armrests and forcing my voice to steady.
“You said earlier you’re not used to money.
I get that. But this …” I gestured toward the world outside—the private jet, the bodyguards, the war I didn’t understand. “This isn’t about money, is it?”
“No,” he said simply.
“What’s it about?”
His gaze softened, almost regretful. “Survival.”
Something inside me went still.
The word meant one thing to me—a metaphor people used when they’d been through breakups or bad press cycles. For him, it was literal. A heartbeat. A code.
I wanted to ask what he’d survived, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. So, I said, “Tell me what it was like. Growing up.”
He tilted his head, studying me like he was deciding whether I could handle it. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
The hum of the engines filled the pause. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, less certain, like the sound of a memory that didn’t want to be remembered.
“We lived in a valley in Montana,” he said.
“You could drive for miles and never see another house. Winters were rough. Summers were work. My brothers and I split chores before the sun came up—hauling water, fixing fences, digging trenches when the snowmelt flooded the yard. We didn’t have much, but we had rules. My mom made sure of that.”
“Your dad?”
He looked away, toward the dark window. “Gone before I turned ten. Never said where he was going. My mom just said he’d gone to find peace. Whatever that means.”
I wanted to reach across the table and touch him, but something told me not to interrupt.
“When I was seventeen,” he went on, “I enlisted. Thought I’d find my own kind of peace. Turns out the world doesn’t give it away. You’ve got to earn it, and even then, it’s never yours for long.”
His tone wasn’t bitter—just matter-of-fact, which somehow made it worse.
“What was it like?” I asked. “The military.”
“Depends on the day.” His mouth curved faintly. “Some days, it felt like purpose. Other days, it felt like drowning.”
I thought of him standing on the yacht hours ago, looking at the horizon like he was trying to see the edge of the Earth. “And now?”
“Now, I guess I’m trying to figure out who I am when I’m not fighting.”
The honesty hit me harder than I expected. I felt it all the way down—past admiration, past fascination, into the quiet ache of understanding.
“I think we’re both doing that,” I said softly.
He looked at me then—really looked—and something unspoken passed between us. It felt dangerous in a different way, not the kind that comes from guns or threats, but the kind that comes from being known.
When he finally fell asleep on the flight, I couldn’t.
Lights blurred beneath us, a sprawl of gold veins pulsing across the dark. I unbuckled my belt, walked to the small mirror near the galley, and stared at my reflection.
I looked fine. Beautiful, even. That was the problem.
People always said beauty was power. They were wrong. Beauty was currency—and like any currency, it made you valuable only until it ran out.
The girl in the mirror looked like she had everything, but I could still see the small-town kid underneath—the one who used to sit on other people’s porch steps after dark, listening to crickets and waiting for headlights that never came.
That night came back to me now, vivid as film:
I was nine. My mother had promised to pick me up from a birthday sleepover.
Midnight came. Then one. Then two. The other girl’s father offered to drive me home, but pride made me say no.
I sat outside on the swing until the bugs got quiet and the sky started to pale.
When my mother finally arrived, mascara streaked and smelling of gin, she said the words I’d spent years trying to forget: “I’m sorry, baby. I lost track of time.”
That was the night I learned safety wasn’t something you were given. It was something you had to make for yourself.
Now, all these years later, I’d built an empire out of pretending to be safe. Out of selling the illusion that I had everything under control.
But the truth?
I was still that nine-year-old girl waiting for headlights.
And I’d just fallen for a man who carried war in his veins.
Where did that leave me?
With a sister who’d understood the same thing long before I did.
Hannah had been there that night, too—curled up on the sofa with a blanket over her knees, pretending not to hear our mother stumble through the door.
She’d learned the same lesson, only she’d translated it differently.
Where I’d chased escape, Hannah had built structure.
Where I ran toward chaos and called it opportunity, she’d built a life made of checklists and contingency plans.
I’d been avoiding her lately, ducking her calls and resenting her reminders.
She’d nag me about press schedules or media prep, about call times and interviews, and I’d turn her into an enemy in my mind because it was easier than admitting she was right.
She wanted to keep the world spinning while I pretended gravity didn’t apply to me.
But Hannah wasn’t the enemy. She’d felt the same hollow ache I had, waiting for headlights that didn’t come.
She’d just responded by grabbing the steering wheel and never letting go.
Everything she’d done—all the color-coded calendars, the late-night emails, the tough-love speeches—wasn’t control for its own sake. It was protection.
She’d dedicated her whole adult life to making sure my dreams came true, maybe because she never got the space to chase her own.
And I’d taken that for granted.
I’d taken her for granted.
Now, sitting in this world of quiet luxury and looming threats, I felt the pull of guilt twist inside me. Hannah was part of this, whether I liked it or not—whether she even knew it or not.
And for the first time in a long time, I wanted to call her. Not as my assistant. Not as the sister who kept me on schedule. But as the girl who used to sit beside me in the dark, waiting for the same pair of headlights.
I wanted to make sure she was safe, too.
When we landed, dawn was still hours away. The SUV waiting on the tarmac looked anonymous enough to be invisible. I slipped inside, the leather cold against the backs of my thighs. Lucas slid in after me, silent again, the soldier returning.
I reached for his hand without thinking. He hesitated only a second before lacing his fingers through mine.
“Do you ever get used to it?” I asked.
“To what?”
“The fear.”
He didn’t answer right away. His thumb traced slow circles on my palm, grounding and electric at once. “You don’t get used to it,” he said finally. “You just learn which parts to listen to.”
“Which parts are those?”
“The ones that keep you alive.”
I swallowed. “And the others?”
“The ones that keep you human.”
I smiled faintly, even as tears stung the backs of my eyes. “Sounds exhausting.”
He looked at me, and the steel in his expression softened. “It is.”
The honesty undid me a little. I leaned my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes. “You make it look easy.”
“It’s not.”
“I know,” I whispered.
The car rolled through the sleeping city, the streets empty. My mind wandered—to the letter, the old man, the phrase that had burned itself into memory: Welcome to the real war.
I didn’t know what war they meant.
But I knew it wasn’t over territory or politics. It was personal.
And somehow, I was in it.
Maybe that was what loving a man like Lucas meant—accepting that safety was a myth, that love was both refuge and battlefield.
I turned to look at him again. His eyes were half-closed, but I could tell he wasn’t asleep. “Tell me something good,” I said softly.
“Good?”
“Yeah. From before.”
He thought for a second. “My mom used to sing when she worked. Old country songs. I’d pretend to hate it, but I knew all the words.
When I got older and everything went to hell overseas, sometimes I’d hum one under my breath.
The guys thought it was superstition. It wasn’t.
It just reminded me I came from something that knew how to survive. ”
“What song?”
He smiled, small and private. “You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me.”
He started humming—a low, steady tune that sounded like open skies and hard winters. Something about it broke me open in the quietest way.
“You miss her,” I said.
“Every day.”
“I get that,” I said. “I miss mine, too. Even though she’s still alive.”
He looked at me, curious but patient.
“She wanted to be famous,” I explained. “She pushed me into acting because she thought it would fix everything she’d broken. When it actually worked—when I became the name instead of her—she couldn’t handle it. She stopped coming to premieres. Said the cameras gave her headaches.”
Lucas’s brow furrowed. “That’s rough.”
“She wasn’t cruel. Just … fragile. The kind of fragile that makes everyone around her feel responsible. And I’ve spent most of my life trying to make sure no one ever saw me break.”
He reached up, brushing his thumb across my jaw. “You can break with me.”
The words landed deep, almost too deep. I didn’t trust my voice, so I nodded instead.
For a while, we rode in silence. The road curved along the coast, the first suggestion of dawn lightening the horizon. The water flashed silver between trees.
I thought about the difference between him and me—between our kinds of survival. His was physical, sharp-edged, built on discipline and danger. Mine was performative, delicate, built on stories and smiles.
And yet, in some twisted way, they weren’t so different. Both demanded endurance. Both required pretending not to be scared.
Only now, sitting beside him, I didn’t have to pretend.
We reached the gates of Dominion Hall as the sky shifted from gray to pale pink. The mansion loomed like something half-awake, its windows glowing faintly.
Inside, the air smelled of rain and salt and the faintest trace of cedar. Familiar now. Safe, even.
Lucas carried my bag to the guest room, set it on the bench at the foot of the bed, and turned toward the door like he meant to leave.
“Stay,” I said before I could stop myself. The word came out small, almost embarrassed, but it hung between us like a truth that refused to be taken back.
Lucas paused in the doorway, the hallway light cutting a clean line down his shoulder. For a moment, I thought he might ignore it—pretend he hadn’t heard. But then he turned, and something in his face softened. The soldier retreated, leaving only the man.
“There’s nowhere else I want to be,” he said quietly. “You know that, right?”
I nodded, the lump in my throat making it impossible to speak.
He came back to the bed, sat on the edge, and brushed a strand of hair off my face.
His hand lingered at my temple, rough thumb tracing the curve of my cheek like he was memorizing it.
“I have to check in with Noah,” he said.
“Tell him what happened in New York, make sure everything’s locked down. After that, I’m here. With you.”
Something in me unclenched. I believed him. I didn’t know what kind of war was waiting for him out there—or who wanted to start it—but I knew that if he said he’d come back, he would.
“Will you do me a favor?” I asked.
He smiled faintly. “Anything.”
“It’s about Hannah.”
His brows drew together, just slightly.
“She’s my sister,” I said. “And she’s more than that—she’s everything that’s kept my life from unraveling.
I’ve been pushing her away lately, but she’s part of this now whether she knows it or not.
If someone’s watching me …” I swallowed hard.
“Then they might watch her, too. Please, Lucas. Make sure she’s safe. ”
He didn’t answer right away. His hand dropped from my cheek, fingers curling into his knee. Then he said, “Consider it done.”
“Promise me.”
He met my eyes, steady and unflinching. “Lexi. I won’t let anything happen to her. Or to you.”
The words shouldn’t have calmed me, but they did. Maybe because I wanted to believe in something stronger than fear. Maybe because I already did.
I reached for him, and he let me. When his arms came around me, the world felt smaller, quieter—like maybe it didn’t have to be so dangerous if we stayed right here.
He pressed his lips to my hair. “Get some sleep,” he whispered. “You’re safe here. And I’ll be right back, after I talk to Noah.”
“Don’t be long.”
“I won’t.”
He stood, and the room felt colder the moment he stepped away. I watched the door close softly behind him, the latch catching with a click that sounded like a promise kept.
Outside, the wind pressed against the windows, low and rhythmic, like the ocean breathing. I lay back on the bed, still tasting the salt of him, still hearing the hum of the plane, still seeing the flash of the old man’s envelope in the streetlight.
Somewhere down the hall, Lucas’s voice rumbled—a steady murmur, low and certain. He was checking in, doing what he had to do. Protecting. Planning.
And me? I was trying to sleep, but all I could think about was how love and fear could exist so easily in the same space.
I closed my eyes and pictured Hannah’s face—her focus, her lists, her steady hands. I hoped she was asleep somewhere safe. I hoped she knew how much I loved her, even if I didn’t say it enough.
Maybe tomorrow, I’d tell her.
For now, I let the exhaustion pull me under, holding on to the sound of his voice in the next room and the quiet promises he’d made.