Chapter 8 #2
She shook her head. “I can’t sleep, I’m too wired.”
“Come on.” He took her by the hand and lead her to the room that housed the only bed she’d managed to clean off before the world had exploded around her.
She wanted to believe she could do this on her own, that she didn’t need anyone.
But the truth pressed down like the dark around them—he was the only one left who could help her, and if she was honest with herself, she didn’t want to face all of this alone.
“It’s not your duty to protect me. You don’t owe me that. ”
His jaw flexed, his gaze lowering to the foot of the bed as if he couldn’t stand the weight of her words. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me.”
He let out a long breath, the kind that sounded like it scraped his ribs on the way out.
“I can’t stand to feel something for someone only to fail them again.
I did that once—stood there while the world took someone I cared about—and I can’t…
” He shook his head, voice breaking low.
“I can’t do it again, Isobel. I tried not to notice you, but I did. I noticed your bravery and beauty.”
She dared to put a palm to his chest and look up at him. “I noticed your honesty and your honor. And you probably already know how handsome you are.”
A boyish grin tugged at his lips, making him even more endearing. Her heart twisted, the ache of it stealing her next breath. “You didn’t fail Torres.”
In the dim light of the moon shining through the portholes, cutting through the fog, she saw the full grief and exhaustion and something that looked dangerously close to tenderness in his eyes.
“Didn’t I? Shade’s dead. My partner, my best friend.
I told myself I could protect her. I couldn’t.
And now you’re in this—his mess, my guilt—and I’m supposed to stand by and let you face Laurel Tide? ”
Her throat tightened. “That’s not your choice to make.”
He gave a small, humorless laugh. “You think I don’t know that?
You think I haven’t tried to keep my distance?
I lost that battle the moment you walked onto the docks.
I wanted you gone because I never wanted to feel for anyone again.
I don’t want family or friends or… you. But I can’t walk away now. ”
She didn’t answer. The space between them pulsed with everything unsaid.
Then, without another word, Rone moved to the bed and lowered himself onto the edge. The mattress dipped under his weight. He patted the space beside him, his voice rougher now, quieter. “You should get some rest.”
For a long moment, she just stood there, torn between instinct and exhaustion. Then she gave in, not because she was weak, but because she was tired of being strong every second of her life. She climbed onto the bed, careful not to brush against him—but he didn’t make her keep her distance.
When her head hit the pillow, he shifted, stretching one arm along the headboard, the other resting lightly over the blanket between them. It was protective, not possessive. A gesture of promise, not claim.
Still, when the silence grew too long, when her pulse wouldn’t slow, she whispered, “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to protect me.”
He turned toward her then, and his hand found hers. His thumb brushed her knuckles, slow, steady. “Maybe not,” he said. “But I want to.”
Something in her chest splintered—hope, maybe. Or fear.
He hesitated, then lifted his hand, letting it trail up her arm until it settled lightly against her back. The warmth of him seeped through the thin fabric of her shirt, easing the chill that had burrowed deep in her bones.
She exhaled, a shaky breath that turned into something close to surrender. Then, with a small, uncertain movement, she curled into his side. His arm came around her, solid and sure, and she felt the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek.
The steady beat of his heart grounded her. His body heat pushed back the cold that had been sitting inside her since the shooting. When his fingers stroked slow circles along her side, her muscles finally began to loosen, her breathing to even out.
Her eyes fluttered closed—but before she drifted off, his lips brushed the crown of her head. It was barely a kiss, more breath than contact, but it sent a wave of warmth through her body, a pulse that had nothing to do with fear.
She longed to turn, to hold him, to forget the danger outside these thin walls and the monsters beyond. But then his voice came, rough and quiet in the dark.
“I can’t fail you,” he whispered. “I won’t let you take a bullet. It’s my turn to die.”
She wanted to tell him that love wasn’t armor, that he couldn’t keep the world at bay by sheer will. But the words tangled somewhere in her throat, lost to the quiet rhythm of his heartbeat under her ear.
And though she told herself she wouldn’t—couldn’t—trust that kind of closeness, she stayed right where she was.
The room seemed to shrink around them, the air too thick, too still.
His breath stirred a strand of her hair against his chin, and that small, human thing unraveled the distance she’d tried to keep.
When she finally looked up, his gaze was waiting—steady, unguarded, threaded through with something she didn’t dare name.
“Isobel,” he said, low, rough, like her name had edges that cut his throat on the way out.
Her heart stuttered. “Don’t,” she whispered, though her voice betrayed her, soft where it should have been steel.
“I’m trying not to,” he said. His hand lifted, hovering near her cheek but not quite touching, as if even that might break the fragile truce between them. “But you keep looking at me like you want me to fail.”
A shaky laugh escaped her, part disbelief, part longing. “And if you do?”
His answer came trembling between confession and prayer. “Then it’s already too late.”
She should’ve stopped him. Should’ve pulled away before his fingers brushed the side of her face, before his thumb traced the line of her jaw like it was something sacred.
But the world outside had fallen away—no danger, no past, no lies.
Just this moment, this man, and the truth neither of them wanted to face.
He leaned in, slow, giving her every chance to move. She didn’t.
His lips found hers—warm, careful, heartbreakingly gentle. The kiss wasn’t desperate; it was surrender. A promise they shouldn’t make and couldn’t keep.
For a breathless moment, Rone forgot the world.
Forgot the gunfire. The files. The lies. The tide that had carried them here.
Her lips were soft against his, hesitant at first, then searching, the kind of touch that asked for truth and forgiveness all at once.
His hand slid to the back of her neck, feeling the tremor there, the pulse that matched his own.
Every instinct that had been honed toward survival flared and twisted into something more dangerous—want.
He’d been cold for so long. Too long.
And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he let himself feel.
Her fingers clutched his shirt, holding him like she was afraid the moment might break if she let go. He deepened the kiss—not rough, not rushed, but certain, a claiming of something neither of them had any right to want.
But then the boat rolled, a slow, lazy tilt as the tide shifted beneath them.
The motion broke through the haze. The scent of salt and oil hit him, grounding him in the truth of where they were and what waited outside these thin walls. The danger. The lies. The past.
He tore his mouth from hers, breathing hard, his forehead pressed to hers. “This—” His voice rasped low, broken. “This isn’t right.”
Her breath hitched, her hand still fisted in his shirt. “Rone—”
He pulled back farther, enough to see her eyes. They were wide, confused, glimmering in the dim light like the reflection of a storm. “You’re scared,” he said. “Tired. We both are. That’s what this is. Just two people trying to find something steady in the middle of a hurricane.”
“That’s not what it felt like,” she whispered.
His chest clenched. “I know.”
Silence stretched, full of things they’d never be able to take back.
He pushed to sit up, dragging a hand over his face as if he could scrub away the heat still lingering there. “When this is over,” he said, keeping his voice even though every word scraped his throat raw, “I don’t want you looking back and regretting me.”
She flinched as if the words had been a blow. “Regret you? You think that’s what this is?”
“You say you want honesty, well, here it is. I think we’re both running on fumes and fear. And when people do that, they grab for the nearest warmth. Doesn’t mean it’s real.”
Her eyes hardened, hurt slipping behind something sharper. “Maybe not to you.”
The words cut deep, and he didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t make it worse. He turned away, bracing a hand on the bulkhead, staring out the small, salt-streaked porthole.
He settled in the bed facing the opposite direction, hands clasped tight to avoid temptation. She shifted on the bed, then silence again—except for the creak of the boat and the uneven rhythm of two hearts caught between truth and temptation.
He exhaled slowly. “Get some sleep, Isobel,” he said, without turning. “We move with the tide.”
She didn’t answer. But when he finally risked a glance back, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arms wrapped around herself, staring at the floor as if the ocean itself had just betrayed her.
The sight gutted him.
He wanted to go to her. To take back what he’d said. To tell her it was real, that maybe that was what scared him most.
Instead, he turned back to his side of the bed and left the distance between them, because that was safer.
Sometime in the night, Rone stirred on the berth, caught between the edge of dream and the echo of everything he’d tried to bury.