Chapter 5 - Nico #2
"But you still live here. Still come up to sit by the pool."
She shrugs. "I thought someday I'd be brave enough. But every time I look at it, I see her face. And then I see…"
She wraps her arms around herself, and something in my chest pulls tight. Distant traffic hums below, the city that never sleeps providing white noise to her confession. She wraps her arms tighter around herself, and I see it building—the panic, the spiral, the break.
"What else do you see?"
"Nothing."
"You said Gabriel in your sleep. You said there was a girl."
"Stop."
"You said you helped him fix something, Marisol?"
The words rip from her throat: "Yes." The words fall like bodies. "And what we did… what I helped him do… I CAN'T!"
She breaks. The words come out in a rush, like water through a dam.
"My perfect, beloved brother who everyone loves, who my mother praised with her dying breath, and I can't talk about this, I CAN'T—"
The panic attack hits like a storm. She's gasping, hyperventilating, hands clawing at her chest like she's trying to tear through to her lungs. She staggers, nearly falls into the pool—I catch her, pull her back, but she's gone, lost in whatever horror lives in her memory.
"I can't breathe—Gabriel—I can't—she wouldn't wake up—"
"You're okay. You're here. Look at me."
But she can't. She's gasping for air that won't come, clawing at her own throat now. I try everything—her name, breathing counts. Grounding techniques from too many nights with soldiers lost in their own minds. Nothing works. She's drowning in memory, and I'm watching her sink.
She's spiraling deeper, face going pale, lips turning blue.
Every protocol I've ever learned screams against what I'm about to do. You don't touch assets. You don't cross lines. You maintain professional distance at all costs.
This is a mistake. Touching her is a mistake. But she's dying in front of me and I've seen enough death. Not her. Not on my watch.
The kiss isn't a decision. It's desperate, tactical. My body moving before my brain catches up.
I grab her face with both hands and crush my mouth to hers.
It's not gentle. Not romantic. It's a shock to the system, a live wire to cut through the spiral, desperation made physical. Her lips are soft beneath mine, tasting of tears and terror and something sweet underneath that makes my chest tight in ways I can't afford.
She freezes. Completely. Stops breathing, stops clawing, stops everything.
Then she gasps against my mouth, air rushing into her lungs in one desperate pull. Her hands stop clawing at her throat and grab my shirt instead, fisting the fabric like I'm the only solid thing in a world that's tilting.
I pull back just enough to see her eyes. She's here now, present, seeing me instead of ghosts. Her chest heaves against mine, heart hammering so hard I feel it through both our clothes.
"Breathe," I tell her.
She does, shaky and ragged but real.
"Again."
Another breath, steadier.
"Good. Keep going."
We stay like that, her gripping my shirt, my hands still framing her face, bodies pressed together in ways I shouldn't catalog but do anyway—the softness of her against my chest, the heat of her skin, the way she fits against me like she was designed for it.
Stop. She's just an asset. A mission.
Her heartbeat gradually slows from hummingbird-fast to merely racing. The panic recedes like tide going out, leaving her exhausted and shaking but breathing, breathing, breathing.
"You kissed me." Her voice is wrecked.
"You were suffocating."
"That's not—panic attacks don't usually—you can't just kiss someone better."
"It worked, didn't it?"
She almost laughs. Almost. It comes out as something between a sob and surrender. "I'm so tired, Nico. I'm so fucking tired of being afraid all the time."
"I know."
"You don't. You don't know what I did. What I helped him do."
"Then tell me."
She shakes her head, but she doesn't pull away. If anything, she leans in closer, and every point where her body touches mine feels like a breach in my defenses.
"No, I can't."
"Okay."
"Okay?" She pulls back enough to look at me, confused. "That's it? No interrogation? No tactical assessment of my psychological state?"
"When you're ready. I'll be here."
She stares at me like I've spoken in tongues. "Why?"
"Because I don't look away. Remember?"
Something shifts in her eyes. Like she's seeing me for the first time.
I walk her to her bedroom door, her hand in mine. She hasn't let go since the pool, like I'm anchoring her to the present.
"You broke the rule," she says at her door. "Twice now. My bedroom, and then… the kiss."
"You can report me to management."
"I don't think tactical kisses are in your contract."
"Probably not."
She looks up at me, and there's something fragile in her expression. "Was it just tactical? The kiss?"
I could lie. Should lie. Keep the boundaries clear. I haven't kissed anyone in three years, and when she couldn't breathe, I couldn't either.
"I don't know what it was," I say, which is almost the truth.
"That's not very comforting."
"I'm not a comforting person."
"No," she agrees, and something shifts in her eyes—something warmer, more dangerous than the panic. "But you're here. That's something."
She nods like that makes sense, though we both know it doesn't. "Goodnight, Horse Man."
"Goodnight, Marisol."
She goes into her room, closes the door soft as a whisper. I stand in the hallway, the taste of her still on my lips. Salt from tears, something sweet underneath. Vanilla maybe, or just her.
I should go to the guest room. Maintain distance. Remember what she is: an asset. A mission. Someone else's daughter in someone else's war.
Instead, I sink down outside her door, back against the wall. The Glock presses against my hip, a reminder of what I am. What this is supposed to be.
Through the door, silence. No nightmares. No thrashing. No screams about Gabriel. Maybe she's finally sleeping. Maybe she's lying awake touching her lips, wondering what the hell just happened.
Marco's words echo: She's not Sofia. Don't make her a replacement.
She's not. She's nothing like Sofia. My sister was ice and steel, a weapon I helped forge. Marisol is chaos and sunshine and something broken that keeps trying to bloom anyway.
She's not a replacement. She's something else entirely.
And sitting here guarding a threshold I've already crossed twice, tasting her tears on my lips, I realize I've stopped counting the days since Sofia left.