Chapter 24
You Were There
Mira
By the time we got back to Ironhand, the entire place felt different.
Not visibly. The fights still ran, money still changed hands, bodies still moved through the halls like this place operated on nothing but violence and adrenaline. On the surface, it looked the same as it had before I left.
But I felt the shift anyway.
The transport had gone too unevenly for me to ignore it.
Too many pauses. Too many adjustments to movement that didn’t align with the tight control the operation had maintained at the start.
The convoy hadn’t broken, but it had been pushed, nudged off rhythm in small ways that forced everyone inside it to react.
That didn’t happen by accident.
I moved through the lower corridor toward the med wing without rushing, posture steady, expression blank, like I was returning from another assignment instead of replaying every second of that drive in my head.
My body ached from the tension of holding myself together for hours inside that truck … from standing in the middle of something horrifying while pretending none of it touched me.
But underneath all of that sat something sharper. Recognition.
Because I knew disruption like that. Knew the feel of it. Knew the way pressure could be applied without exposing the hand behind it.
Aiden.
The thought settled hard in my chest as I rounded the corner toward the supply stations, my pulse ticking once before evening back out.
I never saw him. Not once. But the longer I replayed the route in my head, the clearer it became that someone had interfered just enough to buy space without collapsing the operation entirely.
Controlled chaos. Exactly his style.
My jaw tightened as I grabbed a bottle of water off the counter. I twisted the cap harder than necessary while my thoughts kept circling the same conclusion, whether I wanted them to or not.
He’d been there.
Somewhere outside the convoy, he threaded himself into the movement without revealing himself directly. It explained the route hesitation. The spacing shifts. The way tension inside the truck redirected outward for those crucial few minutes, instead of staying locked on us.
On me.
Part of me wanted to be angry about it. Actually, most of me did. Because if I was right, then he’d done exactly what he always did, inserted himself into the situation, and decided he knew best without giving me any say in it. He’d interfered without trusting me to handle it myself.
Again.
But the anger didn’t land cleanly. Not after what I’d seen inside that truck. Not after I realized just how massive this operation actually was.
A slow breath left my lungs as I leaned back against the counter for a second. Exhaustion tried to creep in around the edges now that adrenaline had somewhere to go. Faces from the transport flashed through my mind again, restrained hands, terrified eyes, the dead silence inside that metal box.
People.
Not cargo. Not product.
People.
And whatever Aiden had done out there, however much it pissed me off that he couldn’t stop trying to control the situation around me, one thing sat underneath all of it now with brutal clarity.
He’d known it was dangerous enough to follow anyway.
That thought stayed with me as I pushed off the counter and headed deeper into Ironhand, back into the noise and heat and violence of a place that suddenly felt smaller than it had before.
Because now I knew the truth.
Ironhand wasn’t the monster. It was just feeding one.
I found him faster than I expected. Part of me thought he’d disappear again after the transport, that he’d sink back into the shadows, and pretend distance counted as protection. That seemed to be his favorite move whenever things got too real between us.
But when I stepped onto the upper catwalk that overlooked the secondary ring, he was already there, leaning against the railing with that same controlled stillness that always made him look more dangerous than everyone else in the room combined.
Watching. Always fucking watching.
The crowd below us roared as a fighter hit the mat hard enough to shake the cage, but up here the noise felt distant, muffled beneath the tension already tightening in my chest. He glanced toward me the second I approached, expression unreadable in that way that used to drive me insane long before he disappeared.
I stopped beside him instead of in front of him this time.
Not confrontational. Not explosive. Just close enough that he’d know exactly why I came up here.
For a second, neither of us spoke. My eyes stayed on the fight below, tracking movement I didn’t actually care about while the silence stretched between us.
Normally, I would’ve filled it with anger by now, with accusations and sharp edges and all the things that had been bleeding out of me since he came back from the dead.
This felt different.
Quieter.
Heavier.
Because now I knew something I hadn’t before.
“You were there.”
The words left me calm, certain, without hesitation or doubt. Not a question. Not bait. Just the truth spoken out loud between us.
Beside me, his posture shifted almost imperceptibly.
Most people wouldn’t have caught it. I did.
My gaze finally moved to him. I studied the hard line of his jaw, the way his eyes stayed fixed on the ring below instead of turning toward me immediately. That alone told me enough.
“You interfered with the convoy,” I continued, voice low enough not to carry past us. “The route shifts, the delays, the pressure pulling outward instead of inward.” I shook my head slightly, not angry now so much as exhausted by how well I knew him. “That was you.”
Silence again. But not denial. Never denial.
A bitter sort of understanding settled in my chest as I leaned against the railing beside him, shoulders almost brushing.
“You really can’t help yourself, can you?
” I murmured, watching blood smear across the mat below while the crowd cheered for it like animals.
“Even after everything, you still think it’s your job to throw yourself in front of danger for me. ”
That finally got his attention. His head turned slightly, green eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that hit just as hard as it always had.
And there it was again.
That feeling.
The one that made me furious at him for leaving, while at the same time made me feel safer the second I realized he’d been close enough to protect me anyway. I hated how tangled together those emotions had become.
“You almost exposed yourself,” I said quietly, searching his face for something softer than the walls he kept throwing back up between us. “For me.”
The words hung there between us, heavier than I intended. Because underneath the frustration and anger and unresolved damage sitting between us, there was another truth neither of us seemed capable of escaping anymore.
He followed me out there. And part of me had known he would.
Something in him softened after that. Not visibly.
Not enough that anyone else would’ve noticed if they’d been standing close enough to watch us.
But I felt it in the silence that followed, in the way the tension between us shifted from sharp edges into something quieter and infinitely more dangerous.
Exhaustion.
Not physical. Not completely.
The kind that came from carrying too much for too long and finally running out of energy to keep fighting every second of it.
I leaned harder against the railing. My eyes drifted back toward the ring below, even though I wasn’t really watching it anymore. The fighters blurred together into noise and movement, meaningless compared to the weight pressing down between us up here.
“We’re tired, aren’t we?” I murmured, finally, the words slipped out before I could stop them.
Beside me, Aiden exhaled quietly through his nose, not quite a laugh, not quite a disagreement either.
That alone said enough.
Because we were.
Tired of fighting each other. Tired of pretending we didn’t feel this. Tired of carrying anger that never actually killed whatever still existed underneath it.
My shoulder brushed his when I shifted, accidental enough that I could’ve ignored it if I wanted to.
I didn’t. Neither did he.
The contact lingered, warm and solid, and something in my chest tightened painfully at how familiar it felt—two years hadn’t erased this. They hadn’t erased him. No matter how badly I wanted to pretend otherwise sometimes, my body still knew exactly what it felt like to stand this close to him.
And his body remembered me, too.
I felt it in the way his attention settled more heavily against me, in the slight shift of his posture as he turned just enough that the space between us narrowed naturally instead of intentionally.
No fight. No explosion. Just gravity pulling us together again because neither of us had enough left in us to keep resisting it.
My fingers curled loosely against the railing before I finally turned toward him fully.
I searched his face in the dim light above the ring.
He looked tired, too. Not weak, never that.
But worn down around the edges in a way I hadn’t seen before …
like the weight of everything happening inside and outside Ironhand was finally starting to show.
It made him feel real again.
Not Ghost.
Aiden.
My hand lifted before I could second-guess it. My fingertips brushed lightly along the rough edge of his jaw. The contact was soft, almost cautious, and somehow that felt more intimate than all the bruising desperation between us before.
His eyes closed briefly at the touch. That nearly undid me.
Because there was no manipulation in this moment. No strategy. No power struggle. Just two exhausted people standing too close together while the world around them kept getting darker.
When his hand slid around my waist and pulled me closer slowly instead of demanding it, I let him. And for once? Neither of us tried to pretend we didn’t need the other there.
His hand lingered at my waist. Warm. Solid. Familiar enough to ache.
I should’ve pulled away when he touched me like that, the second it happened, before it became something harder to pull away from.
That would’ve been sensible. Safe. We were already out here with too much fucking unfinished business between us and too much chaos bearing down from all sides.
Every time we did this, it only knotted us closer together when it didn’t pull us further apart.
But I stayed put. And he didn’t release his grip.
The clamor that rose from the ring beneath us faded away completely, replaced by footsteps and shouting that sounded like they were miles away, until we existed in a vacuum of our own making…
for a moment, swallowed up by everything except each other in that heavy silence that hovered between calamity and yielding.
My hand still pressed against his jaw, his thumbs swept across my cheek while he stared back intently with those damn half-lidded eyes of his that always made me feel like he knew too much.
Words weren’t spoken.
There wasn’t anything left to say that we hadn’t either said to each other or screamed at each other in one way or another.
His thumb dragged softly down the curve of my hip through my shirt instead; feather light, really, but it pressed against every nerve ending in my body all at once and hit me harder than it should’ve.
My breath hissed out quietly. My chest tightened painfully as my insides flared hot again, alarmingly fast.
Aiden licked his lips, and his gaze flicked down to my mouth for a split second before it returned to my eyes. That second look was enough to crush what was left of my self-control.
Not desire, per se. Something far worse.
Longing. Desperation. The kind we were both too damn stubborn to voice because when we did, there was no taking the bargaining speech back.
“You should walk away from this,” he murmured against my lips when he finally spoke. His words groaned against the tightness in his throat like it hurt him to say them.
I wanted to laugh … never a good sign.
But it was so far past that point that hearing him actually say those words out loud made me want to laugh. If either one of us could walk away like we said we would have years ago. Instead, I moved forward.
I let myself get closer until his fingertips at my waist tightened without thinking, and he drew me nearer, pressing flush against me while every fiber of tension between us coiled tight.
“This is the stupidest damn thing you’ve ever done,” I countered quietly, as I pressed my forehead against his instead.
He shuddered. But I didn’t relent.
“I know,” I agreed, fingers sliding possessively along his jaw.
And then I kissed him. Bruising and desperate, like the future we’d probably just shot to shit.