Chapter 12
You Don’t Get to Touch Me
Mira
It didn’t take long to notice the shift.
At first, it was subtle enough to write off if I hadn’t already been looking for it. Ironhand didn’t run clean on a good day, so small corrections weren’t unusual. Routes changed, schedules adjusted, people got moved around for reasons no one bothered to explain unless it affected the money.
But this wasn’t random, and it wasn’t sloppy. It was precise in a way that made it stand out the more I paid attention to it. The same way it had before.
Only this time, the pressure didn’t land where it should have. It slid.
Problems that should’ve stacked against me didn’t.
A supply delay that should’ve put me in direct contact with one of Silas’ watchers was rerouted before I ever crossed that corridor.
A shift change that should’ve overlapped me with the wrong handler got corrected just enough to keep us from being in the same place at the same time.
Even the communication lag I’d been tracking smoothed out in the exact windows where it would’ve forced me to improvise.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant. It took someone who knew exactly how this place worked. Someone who knew how I moved inside it.
My jaw tightened as I moved through the lower level, expression neutral, posture loose, playing my role like nothing had changed, even as everything under the surface shifted into something I couldn’t ignore.
Aiden was doing this. Of course he was.
Aiden didn’t just walk into a system and leave it alone. He mapped it, controlled it, bent it until it worked the way he needed it to. I’d seen it before, felt it when we were on the same side of something instead of circling each other like this.
Now I was on the receiving end … and I hated it.
Not because it didn’t work. That was the worst part. It worked too well. Every adjustment landed exactly where it needed to, reducing exposure without shutting me down completely.
From the outside, it looked like Ironhand correcting itself. From where I stood, it felt like someone was guiding my path without asking if I wanted the help … without asking if I needed it.
I turned down a side corridor, and kept my pace steady as I ran through the last few hours again, lining up every shift, every correction, every moment where something should have gone wrong and didn’t.
None of it was accidental. None of it was a coincidence. And none of it was something I’d done.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath, the words barely audible, swallowed by the noise bleeding in from the main floor.
He didn’t learn a damn thing.
Two years. Two fucking years — of silence, of grief, of thinking he was dead — and the second he was back in my orbit, he slid right back into the same pattern like nothing changed.
Like I was still someone he could manage, someone he could protect without asking, someone he could control the environment around, because he thought he knew better.
My hands curled slightly at my sides as I forced myself to keep moving, to stay in character, to not react in a way that would draw the wrong kind of attention.
I wasn’t some liability he needed to account for. I wasn’t a problem he needed to solve. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him dictate how I operated inside a situation I’d put myself in long before he showed up and decided to play ghost again.
If he thought he could manage me from the shadows, he was about to learn really quickly that I didn’t play that game.
Not anymore. Not with him. Not after everything he’d already taken from me.
Avoiding him would’ve been the smart move. Ironhand didn’t reward smart moves. It forced proximity, whether you liked it or not, and no matter how carefully I adjusted my routes or timed my movements, the system kept dragging us back into the same space, as if it had a point to prove.
The first time it happened after I clocked what he was doing, it was in a supply room off the lower corridor.
I stepped in to grab inventory that had just been rerouted, already irritated because I knew damn well why it had been moved, and the door shut behind me with a dull click that echoed just a little too loudly in the quiet.
He was already inside. Of course he was.
For a second, neither of us moved. The room was small, stacked with metal shelving and crates. It left just enough space to navigate without touching if you were careful. We weren’t careful.
I turned to leave, already deciding I wasn’t doing this again, not like the last time, not in another closed space where everything got too loud and too real.
The handle didn’t move.
I frowned, gave it another pull, harder this time, and the door stayed locked like it had a personal vendetta.
“Don’t,” he said behind me, voice low, controlled, like he already anticipated my next move.
I ignored him and tried again anyway. Nothing.
A sharp breath left my chest as I stepped back from the door, turning just enough to face him. Irritation flared right along with everything else I’d been trying to keep buried.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I muttered, more to myself than him.
“Give it a second,” he replied, tone even, like this wasn’t a problem, like being locked in a room together wasn’t the exact situation we both should’ve been avoiding.
The space felt smaller by the second. Not because it actually was, but because he was there — too close, too solid, too present — in a way that made it impossible to pretend he wasn’t affecting me.
I moved past him, aiming for the opposite wall just to put distance between us, but there wasn’t enough room for that to mean anything. My shoulder brushed his chest as I went by, the contact light but immediate, and my body reacted before my brain could shut it down.
Heat.
Tension.
Awareness that snapped into place like it had been waiting for an excuse.
I stilled for half a second, just long enough to feel it, then forced myself to keep moving like it didn’t matter. Like he didn’t matter.
Neither of us spoke again before the handle finally gave.
The door unlocked with a dull click that broke the moment before it could turn into something worse.
I didn’t wait. I was out of that room in a second, back into the noise and movement of Ironhand like I could shake the tension off by putting space between us.
It didn’t work.
Because not ten minutes later, I was kneeling beside a fighter who’d taken a bad hit to the ribs, focused on cleaning the blood and assessing the damage while he hissed through his teeth and tried to pretend it didn’t hurt as much as it did.
“Hold still,” I told him, pressing a little harder than necessary just to keep him from moving, my tone sharp enough to cut through his bullshit.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grunted, glaring up at the ceiling like it had personally offended him.
I reached for the gauze on the tray beside me and came up short. “Where the hell—”
“It’s here.”
His voice. Again.
I didn’t look up. I felt him before I saw him, stepping into my space, close enough that I had to shift back on my heels to avoid leaning into him.
He held out the supplies, steady, like this was normal, like he hadn’t just pinned me against a wall not that long ago and kissed me like he had no intention of stopping.
I took them from him.
Our fingers brushed. It was quick. Barely there. Just contact as the gauze passed from his hand to mine.
It hit anyway.
My breath caught for a fraction of a second. Something tightened low in my chest before I forced it back down, forcing my focus back onto the fighter in front of me like that was the only thing that mattered.
“Thanks,” I said, clipped, professional, like I was talking to anyone else.
He didn’t respond right away, and I could feel his attention on me even without looking, steady and focused in a way that made it hard to ignore.
The fighter shifted under my hands, pulling my attention back where it needed to be, and I used that, leaned into it, let it ground me before the tension between us could spike any higher.
Because being this close? Being forced into contact over and over again, as if the system had a sick sense of humor? It wasn’t making anything easier. If anything, it was pushing us closer to a line neither of us could afford to cross again.
And the worst part? I wasn’t sure whether either of us actually wanted to stop it.
I kept my focus on the fighter, forcing my hands steady as I worked, even as I felt him shift closer behind me. I didn’t need to look to know exactly where he was, how close he was standing, how aware he was of every movement I made.
“Angle it,” he said quietly, voice low enough that it didn’t carry past us, but close enough that it brushed against my ear in a way that made my grip tighten.
Before I could adjust on my own, his hand closed around my wrist. Not rough. Not forceful. Just firm enough to guide the motion, to correct the angle of the bandage like he’d done it a hundred times before.
Like he had the right to.
The contact hit instantly, sharp and electric. It dragged my attention off the task in front of me and straight to the fact that he was touching me again like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t vanished.
I pulled my wrist out of his grip faster than I meant to, the movement controlled but edged with something a lot less steady.
“Don’t,” I snapped under my breath, not loud enough to draw attention, but sharp enough that there was no mistaking it.
I finally looked up at him. Anger flashed hard and immediate. “Don’t touch me like you didn’t disappear.”
I turned back to the fighter before anything else could slip. I forced my hands steady as I finished the wrap like nothing had just happened. My movements stayed precise, controlled, exactly what they needed to be, even as everything beneath the surface felt anything but.
“Hold that,” I told him, pressing his hand into place before pushing to my feet.
My voice didn’t shake. It didn’t crack. If anything, it came out sharper, cleaner, like I’d cut out everything unnecessary to keep it from giving me away.
I didn’t look at Aiden again right away. I didn’t want to. Because I already knew what I’d see. That same controlled expression. That same steady focus, like he wasn’t the one who’d just touched me, like he wasn’t the one who’d just made my body react before my brain could catch up.
And that was the part that pissed me off the most.
Not him.
Not even what he did.
Me.
I hated that it still hit like that. Hated that something as simple as his hand on my wrist could drag every memory, every feeling I’d buried right back to the surface like they’d never left.
Hated that my pulse kicked up, that my breath caught, that my body remembered him even when my head was screaming at me not to.
I finally glanced up, just for a second, and it was a mistake.
Because he was watching me. Not casually. Not like anyone else in this room.
Focused. Aware. Like he knew exactly what that did to me.
My jaw tightened as I broke eye contact first … turned away before he could read anything else off my face.
I was furious. At him. At myself … at the fact that no matter how much time had passed, no matter how much I’d convinced myself I was over it, over him, my body hadn’t gotten the memo.
And the worst part?
It didn’t want to.