Chapter 22 #2
"No." I was so angry I could barely see straight.
Not at her. At every person who'd ever let her believe this—her family, the FBI, hell, even me.
"You just stood there and listed every reason you think you're not enough, and every single one of them is wrong, and I can't let that stand. I physically cannot."
She was staring at me. Her hands had gone still around the mug.
"You said Naomi was strong. She was. She was one of the best operatives I ever worked with, and I respected the hell out of her professionally. But living with her was hard, Sera. She was hard. She liked the fight more than she liked the quiet. She didn't want closeness. She wanted competition."
"She was my sister."
"I know she was. And I know you loved her. But you also know what she was like."
Sera's jaw tightened, but she gave a brief nod.
"You said you're soft. Yeah, you are. And I want that.
I have wanted that for longer than I'm comfortable admitting. After years of hard, of everything being a battle, of never being able to just sit in a room with someone without it turning into a contest, soft is what I wanted. Soft is why I love being around you.”
I was pacing now. Three steps one way, three steps back. The kitchen wasn't big enough for what was trying to get out of me. “And make no goddamned mistake. Soft is not the same as being weak.”
She watched me pace.
“Naomi didn’t give a shit about any data analysis.
She never wanted to see the whole picture, only wanted whatever allowed her to bust through doors and kick some ass.
She definitely never cared about the delicacy of it all.
The patterns, the connections, the hunt for the thing nobody else can see.
I could watch you do that for hours. I have watched you do that for hours. It’s fucking sexy.”
"Travis."
“Naomi was a bitch, Sera. I know I shouldn’t say that out loud since she’s dead, but we both know it’s true.
” I stopped pacing. Looked at her. "Naomi was a great operative. But she was unkind to you, Sera. She let you live in her shadow, and she never once reached down to pull you up. She could have made things easier for you, and she chose not to. Every time. If roles were reversed, you would’ve never done that. ”
Sera's eyes were wet. She didn't wipe them.
“So don’t talk about yourself like you’re less. You’re not less. You’ve never been less. You were the reason I looked at the life I'd built with your sister and saw what was missing. Not a different version of Naomi. The opposite. You."
The room was quiet. My heart was slamming against my ribs hard enough that I could feel it in the wound, and I didn't care.
This wasn't guilt. This wasn't confession. This was something I'd kept sealed for years, and it was coming out whether my throat cooperated or not.
"I was attracted to you while she was alive. While I was lying next to her. And the guilt of that is part of what has been driving me to penance. But the want was there first. Before the guilt. Before any of it. So don’t talk about yourself as if you’re less.”
Sera stood against the counter with tears running down her face and her bruised hand wrapped around her mug, and she didn't say anything for a long time.
Then she said something I didn't expect.
"I know."
I stared at her.
"Not that you wanted me. I didn't know that. But you’re right, I knew Naomi was a bitch. I knew she could be cruel when being kind would’ve cost her nothing.
" She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"She was my sister, and I loved her, but I also grew up with her, and I know exactly who she was. "
She set the mug down and wrapped her arms around herself. Holding herself together. Holding herself in.
"I wanted you while she was alive."
The words hung in the kitchen.
"I wanted you, and I hated myself for it. I pulled away from both of you because I couldn't be in the same room with you and keep it off my face. Every family dinner, every holiday, every time Naomi brought you around and I had to sit across the table and pretend I didn’t wish I was the one with my sister’s boyfriend.
So, I stopped coming. I made excuses. I let the distance grow until Naomi stopped asking. "
She turned away from me. Faced the counter, her hands braced on the edge, her head dropped forward.
"And when she died, part of what I carried, alongside the grief, alongside everything you're supposed to feel when you lose your sister..." She stopped. Started again. "Part of what I felt was relief."
The word dropped into the room and sat there.
"Not that she was dead. And not even that you wouldn’t be dating her anymore.
I was relieved I didn't have to watch my parents light up when she walked in the room anymore.
Didn't have to hear how brave she was, how brilliant, how extraordinary, and know that nobody had ever once used those words about me. "
She turned back and looked up at me. Her face was open in a way I'd never seen from her. No composure. No steadiness. No wall.
"I loved my sister, and I resented her. I grieved her, and I was relieved. I wanted you, and I hated myself for wanting you. And when she died, the guilt of all three of those things folded together into something I couldn't separate. So, who’s really the bitch?”
I stood in the kitchen and looked at her, and the ground beneath me shifted. Not the sick, lurching shift of guilt. Something that felt like the floor leveling after years of standing on a slope.
Her guilt and mine. The same weight carried from opposite sides.
She'd spent the time since Naomi's death believing she was a terrible person for wanting me and for not mourning purely enough, and I'd spent the same time believing I deserved exile for wanting her and for contributing to Naomi's death.
We'd been carrying the same thing. Punishing ourselves for the same thing. And neither of us was the worse person because we were both exactly as wrecked and exactly as human.
We moved at the same time. I don't know who took the first step, and it didn't matter because the distance collapsed from both directions, and when my mouth found hers the taste was coffee and tears and something that had been locked up for years finally letting go.
I kissed her and she kissed me back, and it was nothing like the first time, nothing like the desperation in the control room or the raw hunger of the shower. This was slower. Her hands came up to my face and held me there, her palms against my jaw, and I felt her fingers tremble against my skin.
I pulled back enough to see her. Her eyes were open. Mine were open. Everything exposed, and she was still here. Still choosing this.
“I want you,” I whispered the words against her lips. “No guilt this time. No secrets. Just you and me and no more ghosts.”
“Yes.”
“And for the record, you’re definitely not a bitch.”
She laughed and it might have been the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. “Bedroom.”
We didn't make it there cleanly. I kissed her again in the hallway, and she pulled my shirt over my head, and her hands found my chest, and I felt her fingers trace the edge of the bandage along my ribs without pressing, gentle, as was in her very nature.
I got her shirt and bra off, groaning at the contact of her skin against mine. Both of our pants soon followed suit.
We made it to the bedroom, and we fell into the bed together, a tangle of skin and hands and mouths that sorted itself out without choreography.
The wound caught me when I tried to brace over her. A sharp pull along my ribs that locked my breath and sent a white flash behind my eyes. I'd been ignoring it, and my body had finally decided to file a formal complaint.
Sera saw it. She put her hand flat on my chest and pushed gently, and I rolled onto my right side and she followed, turning to face me. Side by side. Her body against mine, close enough that I could feel her breathing.
This was better. Face to face, eye to eye. Neither above the other. Her leg settled against my hip, moving her closer, and she made a sound against my mouth that went straight through me.
My hand found her pussy, thumb circling her clit. Thrust one, two fingers inside, making sure she was ready. I lifted her leg higher and slid into her in one slow motion and we both went still.
She held my gaze. I could see every fleck of color in her eyes, every tiny shift in her expression as her body adjusted to me. Her lips parted and her breath came out uneven and her hand found the back of my neck and held.
I briefly closed my eyes at the feel of my cock sheathed in her wet heat. I never thought I’d have this. “Fuck, you feel incredible.”
I pulled back, started to press forward again and froze.
“Sera. Condom.”
“It’s okay. I’m on the pill.” Her hand smoothed along my jaw. “I trust you, Travis.”
I shifted back, read the truth in her eyes. What neither of us were ready to share.
I moved slowly. Slower than anything I'd ever done.
Her fingers curled against my skin. Her hips matched my rhythm, slow, deliberate, a conversation between two bodies that didn't need speed or force. Every movement was a sentence. Every breath was an answer.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said. Quiet. Against my mouth. "You hear me? I'm not going anywhere."
Everyone I had ever loved had left or died or been destroyed by proximity to me. That was the math that had started the Ghost. The equation that made exile logical and penance necessary and wanting someone a form of endangering them.
Sera knew the math. She'd seen every variable. And she was pressing closer, not pulling away.
The shame that had been sitting in the center of my chest for years loosened its grip. Not gone. Not fixed. But the seal that had kept it compressed and airless broke, and something warm flooded into the space it left.
The pleasure built slowly. Not the sharp urgency of the first time but something that moved through my body in long waves, starting where we were connected and radiating outward. She was trembling against me. I was trembling against her. Neither of us trying to stop it.
Her breathing changed. I felt it against my mouth, the shift from steady to fractured, and I stayed exactly where I was, the same rhythm, the same depth, because her body was telling me this was right, and I was listening.
"Travis." My name in her throat. Not a request.
She pressed her forehead against mine and came with her eyes open, and I held her and felt every second of it move through both of us. The way her lips parted. The way her hand tightened on my neck. The way her whole body pulled tight against me and then released.
I followed her. The orgasm broke through me, and I buried my face against her neck and for the first time I let myself want something without reaching for the punishment that was supposed to follow.
It didn't follow.
There was just Sera.
I pulled back enough to see her face. She looked at me and what I saw wasn't pity or forgiveness or any of the things I'd braced for. It was recognition. One person seeing another, all the way through, all the way down, and staying.
I pressed my mouth to her forehead and closed my eyes and held her and let the silence be enough.