Chapter 9 #2
“You don’t know my life.”
“Lark, last time you made toast at Gage’s place you set off the fire alarm.”
“That toaster was faulty.”
“You put a fork in it.”
“I was retrieving the bread!” she protests. “And for the record, I can follow instructions on a box.”
She squints at the back of the pancake mix. “See? Just add water. Even you could do this.”
“I’m very good at adding water.”
“Then we’re a team.”
She pushes the box into my hands, then starts pulling out bowls. I find a measuring cup, read the instructions, and, with the kind of focus I usually reserve for tracking criminal IPs, measure water and mix into the powder.
Lark leans on the counter, chin in her hands, watching me.
“What?” I ask.
“Domestic Knight is my new favorite Knight,” she says. “Look at you. Cabin. Pancakes. Apocalypse this, apocalypse that.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“Affectionately.”
I roll my eyes and stir the batter. It’s lumpy, but not catastrophic. The cabin’s frying pan is hanging on a hook above the stove. I grab it, add a little oil from the cabinet, and set it on the burner.
“You know,” Lark muses, “if people could see you right now, the bounty would probably double.”
I arch a brow. “Why?”
“Because no one expects vigilante hacker boy to also be borderline competent at breakfast.”
“Borderline competent is generous.”
She smiles. “I’m a generous girl.”
The words hang between us, and for a second, last night crashes back in.
Her hands on my shoulders.
Her mouth under mine.
The way she pulled back and gave me an out.
That matters more than I want to admit.
I clear my throat, focus on pouring batter circles into the pan. “How are you feeling?” I ask, keeping my gaze on the stove. “After last night. The warehouse. The bounty. Not… the other stuff.”
“The other stuff being you finally kissing me?” she says lightly.
My grip tightens on the spatula.
She must read something in my shoulders because her tone softens. “I’m okay,” she says. “Really. Scared in a… aware way, not a paralyzed way. If that makes sense.”
“It does,” I say quietly.
“And about the other stuff…” She trails off. I can feel her eyes on my back. “I told you, Knight. I’m not regretting it. I’m not pretending it didn’t happen. But I also get that this is probably the worst possible timing and you’re trying to keep us both alive.”
I flip the pancakes. They actually look… decent.
“You could say that,” I admit.
“So.” She lets out a breath. “Call it… a bookmark. We put a little note in the page that says, ‘Come back to this once we’re not being hunted by faceless criminals.’”
Despite everything, a faint smile pulls at my mouth. “You and your metaphors.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“I noticed.”
Silence falls for a beat.
It’s not awkward.
Just… charged.
“How bad is it?” she asks. “The bounty. Don’t sugarcoat it.”
I plate the first pancake and slide it onto the counter for her. “High enough that we assume there will be people looking. Not just locals. People willing to travel.”
“Because we interfered?”
“Because we made them look weak,” I say. “And because someone in their hierarchy flagged us as more than just a nuisance. Dean thinks they’ve got a list of names that piss them off enough to warrant… action.”
“We’re on that list,” she says.
“Yeah.”
She picks at the edge of the pancake, thoughtful. Then, quieter: “Is this the part where you tell me you regret letting me in?”
I set the pan aside and turn to face her.
She’s looking at the batter, not me.
“No,” I say.
She glances up, surprised.
“I regret that you’re in danger,” I clarify. “I regret that they saw your face. That pisses me off more than I can articulate. But letting you in?” I shake my head. “That was inevitable. You were already here, Lark. This just made it official.”
Something loosens in her shoulders.
“Good,” she says softly. “Because I’d hate to have to blackmail you into keeping me.”
I huff out a laugh. She keeps surprising me. “You’d do it, too.”
“Obviously.”
She takes a bite of pancake. Her eyes go wide. “Wait. This is… good.”
I blink. “Of course it’s good.”
“No, like—actually good. Like, if we survive this, you could get a side hustle at a brunch place.”
“Yeah,” I deadpan. “That’s my dream. Retire from vigilante work and open a pancake food truck.”
She points her fork at me. “You’re joking, but I would absolutely eat at that food truck.”
I make my own plate, pour more batter into the pan to keep my hands busy.
It would be easy to pretend this is normal.
Two people in a cabin, making breakfast, trading banter.
If I didn’t know what was waiting on the other side of this quiet—
Faces in the dark.
Numbers next to our names.
Cathedral’s attention.
“So what’s the plan?” she asks between bites. “For today. Besides achieving pancake supremacy.”
“Today, we rest,” I say. “We keep our heads down. We let Dean and the others punch holes in Cathedral’s systems and find out who posted us. Then, once we have a name, we figure out how to make them regret it.”
“Vengeance brunch,” she says. “I like it.”
“No more fieldwork until we know exactly what we’re up against,” I add.
“Knight.”
“Non-negotiable.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s less heat in it than there would’ve been a week ago. “Fine,” she says. “We’ll lay low. But I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing.”
“I know.”
“I can dig from here,” she continues, already gearing up. “If Ozzy and Arrow feed me partial data, I can run local scripts, analyze patterns, scrub metadata. No internet required. Sneaker-net for vigilantes.”
I consider it.
With anyone else, I’d shut it down.
With her…
Her brain is a weapon. Keeping it holstered would be a waste.
“We’ll set up a controlled pipeline,” I concede. “Ozzy drops packets into the box, we fetch, we work offline, we send results back during the check-in window. No live browsing. No outbound traffic we don’t directly control.”
Her eyes light up. “Look at us, innovating crime-fighting workflows.”
“At least one of us is excited.”
“That’s because one of us still has faith in our combined ability to wreak havoc and survive.”
I meet her gaze. The warmth there hits me square in the chest. “You really believe that, don’t you?” I ask.
“That we’ll get through this?” she says. “Yeah. I do.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Because I know you. And because you’re not alone anymore. It’s not just you and your code against the world. You’ve got Arrow. Gage. Ozzy. Dean. Me.”
She taps her chest with the fork. “We’re not letting you go down for this.”
It’s a dangerous thing she’s offering.
Belonging.
I’ve spent years keeping people at a safe distance. Letting their voices into my life, not their hands. Letting them sit on my couch, not in my heart.
And now here’s Lark, stomping through every boundary I built like they were made of wet cardboard.
I should be more afraid of that than I am.
Instead, I just feel… tired.
And weirdly relieved.
I finish my pancake, rinse the plates in the sink, and lean back against the counter.
She watches me. Her eyes dip to my mouth. My body remembers last night like it was carved into my bones.
The way she tasted.
The way she made a little noise in the back of her throat when I pulled her closer.
Don’t start.
Not now.
Not with a bounty on our heads and Dean Maddox tearing down the dark web for us.
“Lark,” I say, voice lower than I intend.
“Yeah?”
“About last night,” I start. “About the kiss—”
She lifts a hand. “If you’re about to say it was a mistake, I’m leaving you alone with the canned bread.”
“It wasn’t a mistake.” The words come out before I can edit them. “That’s the problem.”
She smiles. Slow. Wicked. Soft around the edges. “Good,” she says.
“We can’t… lose focus,” I add. “We can’t afford to get sloppy. Not now.”
“I know.”
“But when this is over…”
Her breath catches.
“When this is over,” I say quietly, “I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want more.”
Her eyes shine with something bright and hot and terrifyingly hopeful. “Deal,” she murmurs.
We stand there for a second, letting that promise settle between us.
Then she claps her hands once. “Okay. Enough feelings.”
I huff out a laugh despite myself. “Always ruining the mood,” I say.
“You’ll survive.”
She’s right.
I don’t know what the hell we’re walking into next.
I don’t know who’s hunting us, or how many layers we’ll have to peel back before we get to the rot at the center of this.
I know one thing:
As long as she’s here, alive and defiant and completely impossible,
I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep it that way.