Chapter 14
Fourteen
Ava
I do what he told me and stay put, my foot propped on a chair with a melting bag of ice numbing the damage. When thirty minutes pass, and I’ve exceeded the recommended icing window, there’s no therapeutic gain in staying in here.
I limp back into the living room carrying an elastic bandage from my medical bag, when the air in the cabin suddenly snaps.
It isn't the timber-straining groan of the wind or the random snap of ice shedding from the pines. It’s too flat, too final.
The bandage slips from my fingers, unraveling on the floorboards.
I stop breathing. My entire nervous system tunes to the storm's frequency, straining to parse the silence that follows.
Nothing.
My pulse is a frantic, erratic drumming in my throat, vibrating against my jaw. That was a gunshot.
I drag myself across the room, my bad foot trailing like dead weight. Every movement sends a fresh jolt, but the dread is stronger. My palms hit the glass—cold enough to sear—and I press my face to the pane, searching the gray, churning chaos of the yard.
I lean into the freezing glass, my breath ghosting over the pane until the whiteout clears. A dark silhouette cuts through the swirling drift. It moves with a rhythmic, measured cadence—a predator’s gait, steady and unhurried.
He halts, a shadow swallowed by the storm. For a heartbeat, he’s gone, then he emerges again—the same lethal stride, the same way he holds his shoulders like he’s bracing against the weight of the world.
My stomach drops into a hollow pit. He doesn’t look like he’s fighting the wind; he’s part of it. He pauses, his head snapping toward the cabin as though he sees me.
I stop breathing. I press my palms harder against the glass, knuckles throbbing, certain any second the latch will give and the nightmare will be standing in the room.
He reaches toward his hip, a slow, deliberate motion that freezes the blood in my veins.
My mind searches for a hiding spot, anything, because there’s no mistaking that silhouette.
He’s here. He’s found me.
I barely register the agony in my ankle as I scramble back, looking for the gun I’m going to have to use.
My breath comes in ragged hitches, fogging the glass and turning the figure into a hulking wraith.
He’s at the porch. He’s going to kick the door in.
My vision narrows, the world shrinking to the sound of my heartbeat.
The silhouette steps into the faint orange spill of the porch light. He isn’t reaching for a weapon—he’s reaching for the door handle. A heavy metal-on-metal clack vibrates through the floorboards.
I’m paralyzed, my hand hovering over the cold steel of the gun, my finger trembling on the safety. This is it. I brace for the door to splinter, for the barrel of a rifle to force its way through, for the end of everything I’ve been running from.
The first knock makes me jump.
Then another comes. Followed by two. Then a pause. And a one-two.
The air leaves my lungs in a soundless rush. It isn’t the frantic pounding of an intruder. It’s the precise sequence Silas said he’d use.
The terror in my chest collapses into a surge of relief so sharp it almost hurts. I don’t think—I scramble, clawing across the floor to the door. My fingers are clumsy as I yank the door open.
Silas looms there, filling the doorway, a wall of dark wool and ice. He kicks the door shut behind him, the force rattling the frames, and slams the bolt home. He’s heaving, his face masked by melting snow and wind-whipped exhaustion.
Whatever he hunted out there, whoever he fired at, it wasn’t Reagan. The realization doesn’t chase the fear away; it only changes it, turning the cold terror into a restless, burning energy.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he says.
Even his body language screams he’s lying. Moments ago, I was certain the crack I heard was my world shattering. The relief is a physical force now—violent, demanding, irrational.
I don’t think. I hobble toward him, the throbbing in my ankle fading beneath the desperate gravity pulling me into his orbit. I grab his lapels, my fingers sinking into the freezing fabric.
I don’t wait for an explanation. I press my mouth to his.
For a heartbeat, he’s still. Then a low, broken sound tears from his throat—a ragged growl. His hands lock around my waist, heat burning through my shirt as he crushes me against him, lifting me until my toes leave the floor.
He tastes of the storm—sharp ozone and the bitter scent of cordite. His lips are hard and frantic, moving against mine with a raw honesty that strips away every barrier he’s built.
His stubble scrapes my jaw, rough against the slick cold of his coat. Every line of his body presses into mine, his heart a frantic hammer against my ribs that matches the violent rhythm of my own.
Outside is nothing but ice and noise, but here, against his hard, shaking frame, the room tilts. The realization cracks through me, staggering and terrifying.
I don’t just need his protection.
I need him.
Silas
For a ragged half-second, my mind is still anchored in the tree line, the ghost of an enemy in the whiteout. Then the storm clears, replaced by her perfume and I’m drowning in her.
She fumbles with my zipper, the metal rasping in the sudden quiet. My coat hits the floor with a heavy thud. The cabin’s draft bites through my thermal, but I burn under the heat of her palms sliding up my sides.
I pivot, pinning her against the door frame. Kissing her with starving intensity, trying to pour every regret I carry into the friction of our mouths—every mission, every casualty, every cold night I’d spent convincing myself I was better off alone.
Ten years. Ten years.
Her fingers slip beneath my shirt, palms flat against the rigid muscle of my stomach.
My entire frame locks. Her skin is impossibly soft, blistering heat mapping the topography of my scars, her trembling touch tracing the lines where my armor usually sits.
I’ve jumped from transport planes, breached doors in the dead of night, stared down men who wanted me dead without my pulse hitting this cadence.
But Ava’s touch is a surgical strike, unraveling me thread by thread.
This is an unmitigated disaster. The most dangerous thing I’ve ever invited into my life.
Ten years. Ten years. 3,650 days since I last gave in to temptation.
Ten years since I made a vow. On my knees. A covenant between God and me.
Ten years since I promised to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
I can’t do this. I won’t do this.
Mustering every ounce of discipline I have, I pull back, chest heaving as if I’ve just finished a forced march through the peaks, my lungs burning. My forehead drops to hers, and I clamp my eyes shut, struggling to remember how to breathe.
Ava’s eyes flutter open, her pupils blown wide, her lips swollen from my mouth. She looks completely undone. I know I look the same—wrecked, exposed, and terrified.
I can’t deny it anymore.
This was never about a favor. Never about duty. And the realization that I am now incapable of walking away from her is a kind of terror that makes the storm outside feel like child’s play.
Ava
Silas sets me down on the cushions as if I’m made of glass, his movements heavy and precise. The moment his hands leave my shoulders, the sudden void feels like a splash of glacial water, a stark contrast to the fever still humming beneath my skin.
He retreats, the floorboards groaning under his weight as he puts distance between us—not just physical, but emotional. He keeps his back to me, stance defensive, hands locked at his sides.
"I need to keep you safe," he says, his voice a rasp, like stone dragged over gravel. "That means keeping my head clear."
Heat surges into my cheeks. I can’t look at him; I stare at the flicker of the fire, at my own hands, anywhere but at the man who just pulled the foundation out from under me.
He thinks it was an error. To him, my kiss was nothing more than a lapse in discipline, a failure to maintain the perimeter of his restraint.
And maybe, in the cold light of his world, he’s right.
Maybe I was just spiraling—terrified, desperate for an anchor, grabbing him because the world felt like it was ending.
But my skin still burns where he touched me, a phantom fire that mocks his distance. It didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt like coming back to life.
"Right," I manage, my voice thin against the howl of the gale. "Of course."
The silence in the cabin thickens with the things he refuses to say.
He moves to the kitchen area, footsteps deliberate, stripped of the frantic energy from moments ago.
I sit rigid on the couch, hands clenched in my lap, trying to ignore the way my lips still throb and my heart still pounds against my ribs.
"I shot an elk," he says finally, his gaze darting across the room, refusing to settle.
"Why?"
"Visibility was compromised," he says, his tone shifting into a flat monotone. "Couldn't confirm the target. Had to neutralize the threat."
The clinical language cuts through me. Is this how he survives? By turning his world into reports, turning human emotion into data. He’s filed away what happened in the doorway, labeled it non-essential, and locked it in a drawer.
"I'll reheat the leftovers," he continues, his voice drained of color. "We need to eat and ration the fuel."
He’s treating me like a subordinate, not the woman he just pulled into a collision that cracked something open inside me. His movements are too controlled as he measures the oats; his shoulders locked in a rigid frame.
“Silas, we should talk about what happened. We’re both adults—"
"Storm's not letting up," he says, ignoring me completely, adjusting the flame on the stove with an intensity that borders on manic. "I'll do another perimeter check after we eat. Make sure there are no other... compromised sight lines."