Chapter 13
Everyone crashed except them.
The compound went down hard after the cleanup—brothers who'd fought in the dark dropping into sleep like stones into water. Doors shut. Snoring started. The building settled into the heavy silence of men who'd earned their rest.
Nina stood in the kitchen she'd claimed, hands flat on the steel counter, vibrating.
Not shaking. Vibrating. A low-frequency hum running through her muscles that wouldn't stop, like her body was still braced for the next shot, the next explosion, the next wave of men coming through the fence.
She'd scrubbed the kitchen. Twice. Made coffee nobody was awake to drink. Reorganized the pantry. Cleaned the shotgun Maeve had shown her how to break down.
None of it worked.
The energy was still there. Coiled in her chest, wound through her limbs, buzzing behind her eyes. Her body didn't know the fight was over.
Where is he?
She knew the answer before she asked the question. The same place he always went when the world was loud and he needed it to be quiet.
The roof.
She climbed the stairs on legs that felt like live wires—too much energy, nowhere to put it, every step a reminder that she was alive and awake and humming with something that had no name.
The roof access door was propped open with a brick.
Grave sat on the ledge with his boots hanging over the edge. Three stories up, nothing between him and the ground but gravity. The sunrise was painting everything gold and pink, and the smoke from the night's violence was still drifting across the rooftops.
He didn't turn when she came through the door. Didn't have to.
"Can't sleep either," he said.
"Can't stop moving." She crossed to the ledge. Sat beside him. Their shoulders touched, and the contact jolted through her like she'd grabbed a live wire. "My hands won't stop."
He took her hand. Turned it over in his. Studied her fingers—still blackened with gunpowder residue, nails bitten short, calluses from years of coffee pots and grill handles.
"Adrenaline," he said. "Your body doesn't know it's over."
"When does it figure it out?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
He looked at her.
The sunrise was in his eyes. Gold light on gray, turning the shadows underneath into something almost warm.
He looked wrecked—smoke in his hair, a cut across his cheekbone she hadn't noticed before, the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who'd been awake for thirty hours and fought a war in the middle of them.
He looked wrecked, and he looked at her like she was the only thing holding him together.
"Come here," she said.
"Nina—"
"Come here."
She kissed him.
Not like the first time—not slow, not exploratory, not two tired people meeting in the middle of a dark room. This was the adrenaline finding its outlet. Her hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him to her, needing the proof of his mouth on hers and his heart beating against her chest.
He made a sound—low, broken—and his hands found her hips.
Rough. Harder than before. His fingers digging in with a grip that said I almost lost this tonight without a single word.
She pulled back just far enough to breathe.
"Inside," she said. "Now."
They barely made it through the roof access door.
His hands were on her before it closed—pushing her against the stairwell wall, his body pressing into hers, his mouth on her neck with an urgency that hadn't been there the first time. The first time had been gentle. Patient. Two insomniacs discovering each other in the dark.
This was something else.
This was two people who'd just survived something terrible, and their bodies had decided that the only acceptable proof of life was each other.
"My room," she managed.
"Too far."
"Grave—"
"Mine's closer."
It was. Twelve steps down the hall, the door kicked shut behind them, and then they were in the blackout dark again—his room, his space, the place where he didn't sleep and she'd learned to.
He pinned her against the door. His hands found the hem of her shirt, pulled it over her head, and she heard his breath leave him the same way it had the first time.
But he didn't slow down.
His mouth traced fire across her collarbone, her shoulder, the curve of her neck where her pulse hammered.
She arched into him, her fingers raking through his hair, pulling him closer because closer wasn't close enough—would never be close enough after a night of watching windows for muzzle flashes and listening for his voice in the chaos.
"I watched you fight," she said against his ear. "From the window. I saw you cross that courtyard—"
"Don't."
"Bullets everywhere and you just moved—"
"Nina." His forehead dropped against hers. "Don't tell me that right now."
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying not to lose my mind and you're making it very difficult."
She pulled back enough to see his face in the dark. His eyes were wild—nothing like the careful, controlled man who watched his coffee go cold. This was the man underneath. The one the war had made and the insomnia had sharpened and the night had claimed as its own.
"Then lose it," she said.
He lost it.
His control came apart like a dam breaking—everything he'd held together through the fight, the cleanup, the thirty hours of being awake and ready and responsible for everyone in this building. It all let go, and what was left was raw.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing. She wrapped around him—legs, arms, everything—and they hit the bed hard enough to make the frame protest. His weight settled over her, and she felt the full scope of him—muscle and bone and the barely leashed power of a man who broke people for a living and was holding her like she was the only thing keeping him human.
"Mine," he said. Not the quiet certainty of the first time. This was guttural. Desperate. A man staking his claim with his body because words weren't enough.
"Prove it."
He proved it.
The adrenaline should have made it fast. Frantic. The desperate collision of two wired bodies chasing the chemical high.
Instead, it burned slow.
Not gentle—there was nothing gentle about the way his hands gripped her, the way his mouth claimed every inch of skin it could reach, the way he moved with her like he was trying to memorize the shape of alive.
But slow, despite everything. Despite the thirty hours.
Despite the combat still ringing in their blood.
Because they were both creatures of the dark. And the dark didn't rush.
She matched him. Everywhere his hands went, hers followed. Every sound he pulled from her, she pulled from him. Not being handled—meeting him. Demanding. Taking as much as she gave.
"Colin—" His real name, raw in her throat.
His whole body shuddered.
"Say it again."
"Colin."
He buried his face in her neck and the sound he made wasn't a word. It was the sound of a man who'd been called one thing for so long he'd forgotten there was anything underneath, hearing the proof that someone had found it.
She held him. Pulled him deeper. Let the rhythm they'd built take them somewhere the adrenaline couldn't follow—past the fight, past the fear, past the smoke and the gunfire and the bodies in the courtyard.
When it broke, it broke them both.
She felt it in her spine. In the backs of her eyes. In the place behind her ribs where she kept every grief and every fear and every sleepless hour she'd ever survived. It all cracked open, and what rushed in wasn't pain.
It was rest.
The deepest kind. The kind that lived underneath exhaustion, underneath insomnia, underneath everything her body had been carrying since her father died on the floor of his diner and left her alone with his legacy.
Rest.
They lay in the wreckage of the sheets, breathing hard, the adrenaline finally—finally—gone.
Grave's arm was across her waist. His face was in her hair. She could feel his heart against her back—still fast, still pounding, but slowing now. Coming down.
"Tell me," she said.
He was quiet.
"About Afghanistan. About what broke your sleep."
More quiet. The kind where she could feel him deciding—how much to give, how deep to go, whether the darkness of this room and this woman was safe enough to hold what he'd been carrying.
"Kandahar," he said finally. "Forward operating base. Little place in the valley, nothing around but dust and mountains."
She didn't move. Didn't turn to face him. Just lay with her back against his chest and listened to his voice rumble through his ribs.
"We did night patrols. Every night, same routes, same hours. Three, four in the morning. Walking through dark that was darker than anything you've ever seen—no streetlights, no buildings, nothing. Just the stars and the dust and the sound of your own breathing."
His arm tightened around her waist.
"You learn to live in that dark. Learn to see in it, move in it, trust it. But you never stop being afraid of it. Because the things that happened—the IEDs, the ambushes, the nights where you'd lose someone between one step and the next—they always happened in the dark."
"So the dark is where you're comfortable and where you're most afraid."
"Yeah." He exhaled against her hair. "Both at the same time. Always."
"That's why you can't sleep."
"My body learned that closing your eyes in the dark gets people killed. Fifteen years, and it won't unlearn it."
She turned then. Faced him. His eyes were open—always open—and in the thin line of light leaking past the blackout curtains, she could see the landscape of everything he'd just told her.
Written in the shadows under his eyes, in the lines of his face, in the way he held himself even lying down—alert. Watchful. Ready.
She put her hand on his face. Cupped his jaw. Let her thumb trace the cut on his cheekbone that had already stopped bleeding.
"You slept with me," she said. "That first night. I woke up and you were still awake, but you told me I slept seven hours. You stayed."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because if I'm watching you, I don't need to watch the dark."
Something inside her chest folded in on itself—not breaking, not cracking. Folding. Like a piece of paper becoming something new. An origami of grief and tenderness and the fierce, consuming need to be enough for this man who'd given her his real name and his worst memories in the same week.
"Then watch me," she said. "Every night. I don't care if you never sleep again. Just stay."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise."
"Nina." He kissed her forehead. Slow. Certain. "I've been looking for somewhere to be at 3 AM my whole life. You think I'm leaving now?"
She pressed into him. Wrapped herself around him the way she'd wrapped herself around his bike that first ride to the compound—tight, trusting, holding on because the alternative was unthinkable.
The sun was fully up now. She could feel it even through the blackout curtains—the warmth pressing against the window, the world outside waking up and starting its day. Normal people making coffee, driving to work, living on schedules that made sense.
Not them.
They lived in the dark hours. The 3 AM hours. The hours when the world was quiet and the only people awake were the ones who'd learned to survive it.
Nina closed her eyes.
Grave held her.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, they both went under—tangled together, still smelling like smoke and gunpowder, falling asleep as the rest of Boston opened its eyes.
Two night shift workers, finally resting.