Chapter 16
Kenzi
We find a motel an hour past the rail yard, the kind of place that doesn't ask questions and doesn't have working ice machines, which suits us fine given our recent history with vending machines and things that go wrong near them.
One room. Not by design, exactly as the place only has one available, but Dozer isn’t about to let me out of his sight. His side is still tender, but I’ve applied fresh gauze and I am absolutely exhausted from everything that has happened. Emotionally and physically.
The clerk doesn't look up for more than three seconds when Dozer slides cash across the counter. I appreciate him immediately. Some people have survival instincts. Some people have excellent customer-service instincts. This man has both.
I carry the bags inside while Dozer does another sweep of the parking lot, because apparently getting shot at, bleeding through his shirt, and crossing an active rail yard hasn't changed his opinion that every door, window, and suspicious-looking shrub is personally plotting against us. I have a feeling that this is Dozer’s default personality and even if we weren’t on a mission, he’d be doing the exact same thing.
I wonder if the man ever relaxes, like truly relaxes.
I check his bandage again once we're inside, mostly because checking things gives me something to do besides notice how small the room actually is and how close the two narrow beds sit to each.
"You keep checking it," he says, sitting on the edge of the bed while I peel back the tape to look at the wound underneath. "It's fine."
"I'll decide when it's fine. That's how field medicine works. I don't just take your word for it because you're stubborn about being looked after."
"I'm not stubborn."
I look up at him. He looks back. "You're extremely stubborn. You're the most stubborn patient I've ever treated, and I've treated corpses who argued less."
That gets the ghost of something out of him, not quite a laugh, I've stopped expecting a full one by now, but the warm exhale version I've started to expect. I find myself watching his face longer than the bandage strictly requires.
He is close. Closer than actually demands, if I'm being honest with myself, which I'm trying to be more of lately. It’s some new habit I've apparently picked up somewhere between the morgue and a rail yard.
I can feel the warmth coming off him. I can see the fine details I usually only notice on people who aren't breathing, like the small scar above his eyebrow, the faint shadow along his jaw, the tension still sitting there even now, hours past any active threat. There is something unsettling about realizing how much I like looking at him when he's not actively trying to kill somebody. I might like looking at him when he’s actively killing someone, but generally, I’m too terrified to think about that in those moments.
Which, to be honest, there has been entirely too many of in the last few days.
"It's clean," I say, quieter than I mean to, taping the gauze back down with hands that have gone slower than the task requires.
"Good. I’d be shocked if it wasn’t with how often you’ve checked."
I smooth the edge of the tape with my thumb.
His eyes drop to my hand. Mine do the same.
There's a minute where neither of us says anything.
Then his fingers close gently around my wrist. Not hard.
Not the way he grabs me when we're moving through danger.
Just enough to stop my hand from pulling away. My pulse immediately speeds up.
"You're shaking," he says.
"I am not,” I argue.
He looks at my wrist. I look at it too. My fingers are, in fact, trembling slightly.
"Okay," I concede. "Maybe a little."
"You're allowed."
"That sounds suspiciously like something you told me in a parking lot."
"I repeat myself when it matters."
I smile despite myself. His thumb moves once against the inside of my wrist. The gesture is so small I could pretend it didn't happen. I don't. Neither does he.
"You're still bleeding," I say, because apparently my brain has decided medical observations are the appropriate response to whatever is happening here.
"Not much."
"That's not the point."
"What is the point then?"
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out, which is becoming a problem.
I always have something to say. What is wrong with me around this man?
How has he disarmed my defenses in this way?
Talking is absolutely a defensive trait of mine, offensive too, when necessary.
I can explain malware architecture to a hostile congressional committee.
I can fill a four-hour drive with enough useless information to make a grown man contemplate jumping from a moving vehicle.
I can talk my way through fear, grief, awkwardness, silence, and approximately every uncomfortable emotion known to science.
But right now, with his fingers around my wrist and his eyes on mine, I've got absolutely nothing.
So, I say the only honest thing I can find. "I don't know."
Something shifts in his expression. Not much, because with Dozer, nothing ever shifts much, but I see it. His grip loosens, though he doesn't let go completely.
"Kenzi." My name comes out low, rougher than I've heard him say it before, and I look up from our hands into eyes that aren't doing their usual careful rationing of expression. Not right now. Not with both of us worn thin enough that the walls have slipped without either of us deciding to let them. I see actual emotion in his eyes. I can’t tell if it’s pure lust, exasperation or what… but there’s something… there. Something deep and telling, although I’m not sure I’m ready for whatever it is I see.
"Yeah?"
He doesn't answer with words. His free hand comes up, slow and deliberate, and brushes a piece of hair back from my face.
The touch is so gentle it almost hurts. These are the same hands that put a man through a motel door.
The same hands that pulled me behind a rail car while bullets tore through steel.
The same hands that have spent days positioning themselves between me and every threat we've encountered. And now one of them is touching my cheek like I'm something worth being careful with, like I’m a fragile piece of porcelain that could break if handled too roughly. The contrast isn’t lost on me.
I lean into it before I can stop myself. His eyes darken. That's all the warning I get.
He leans in. I do too. The distance between us goes from careful to nearly nothing, close enough that I can feel his breath, close enough that the question between us doesn't need to be spoken.
I've thought about kissing him, more than once.
I've thought about it in cars and motel rooms and parking lots and once, embarrassingly, while he was cleaning a weapon, because apparently my brain enjoys making terrible decisions at inconvenient times.
But thinking about it and being here are two entirely different things.
And I want him to kiss me, I want it more than I currently want oxygen in my lungs.
Yes, there is something decidedly wrong with me.
His thumb brushes once along my cheek. My hand comes up and catches lightly against his wrist. His gaze drops to my mouth. We are maybe a heartbeat away. I close my eyes. I want to feel this moment and remember it.
A car door slams outside.
We both go still. The moment shatters so completely it's almost funny.
Almost. His hand drops from my face to the weapon on the nightstand in the same motion.
Mine reaches instinctively for the case at the foot of the bed.
My brain has gone from wanting to be kissed to alert, focused and ready to move.
My heart, however, apparently hasn't received the memo.
"Stay back," he says, already at the window, weapon low but ready, watching through a gap in the curtain.
I stay back. Mostly because he's right. Partly because my knees aren't entirely convinced, they remember their job and will support my weight if I try to do anything else.
"Anything?" I ask.
"Hold."
I watch him from across the room, every line of him suddenly sharpened into something lethal again. It's strange how quickly he changes. Stranger still how safe I feel watching him do it.
"Just another guest," he says after a long moment, lowering the weapon. "Two doors down. Looks like a couple fighting between themselves. Man left pissed off. Not us."
I exhale. The tension doesn't fully leave the room. Neither does the almost. I can still feel the ghost of his fingers against my cheek, the warmth of his thumb along my skin, the particular quality of a kiss that didn't happen but somehow feels like it did. I wish it did. Will there be another moment like that? God, I hope so. For one that isn’t interrupted next time. There is a sexual tension between us that I really want to explore… maybe this isn’t the time or the place for it, but hopefully…
when the mission is over, we can make time.
I am scared Dozer will turn into a what if or what could have been.
My phone buzzes before either of us says anything.
Dozer's phone, actually, and I see Hunter's contact number flashes across the screen he'd set on the nightstand. He looks from the phone to me. Something crosses his face I can't fully name. I’m not sure if it’s regret or frustration.
Or possibly the same thing I'm feeling, which is the very specific irritation of being interrupted at what had been shaping up to be a pretty excellent decision.
"I have to take this," he says.
"I know."
He answers, voice shifting instantly back into the flat, controlled register I recognize as his work tone.
I sit on my bed and watch him pace once near the window while Hunter talks.
I shouldn't be staring at his mouth. I am.
I shouldn't be thinking about how close it came to kissing me.
I am. I shouldn't be wondering how that kiss would have felt if that damn car door hadn't slammed. I absolutely am.
This is becoming a problem. A very specific, very six-foot-three, very stubborn problem. A problem unlike any I’ve had before. I am good at solving problems, an expert really. Why should this problem be any different?
The call ends and he looks at me. For one second, neither of us says anything. Then he sets the phone down.
"We should sleep." He tells me.
"Probably."
Neither of us moves.
"Dozer?"
"Yeah?"
"You were going to kiss me." It's not a question.
His jaw tightens. "Yeah." One word and it’s not a denial. My stomach flips.
"Okay." I don’t even know what I’m saying at this point.
His eyes stay on mine. "Okay?"
"I just needed to know I wasn't imagining it."
"You weren't."
That does more to me than the almost-kiss did. Maybe because there is no room for interpretation anymore. Whatever this is, it's real. Our conversation just cemented that. I’m not imagining the attraction between us or making up the chemistry I feel. It’s real and it’s there for both of us.
We settle into the narrow beds and the space between us suddenly feels much smaller than it did when we walked in. I lie there staring at the ceiling. Across the room, I hear him shift.
"Goodnight, Kenzi."
"Goodnight, Dozer."
Silence. Then, after a minute he speaks again.
"Kenzi?"
"Yeah?"
"I would've."
I smile into the darkness. "I know."
And for once, I don't need to say anything else. Some things are better left uncatalogued for a little while longer. Especially the things that might be worth waiting for.