Chapter 16 After
SIXTEEN
AFTER
LARK
The cabin gets quiet in a different way at night.
Morning quiet is heavy with dread and coffee and bad news waiting inside encrypted files. Night quiet is… softer. The forest noise turns into a hush, and the little space around us feels less like a hideout and more like a bubble.
Knight gets the fire going in the tiny stone hearth, feeding it kindling with practiced hands. Orange light spills into the room, banishing the last of the gray. Shadows climb the wood-paneled walls.
I sit cross-legged on the rug with a blanket around my shoulders, mug of tea cooling between my palms, watching him like a creep.
He’s in sweatpants and a black t-shirt, bare feet, hair mussed from his fingers.
The hard lines in his face are a little softer in this light.
He looks less like the scary anonymous vigilante, and more like Knight Hayes, the boy who once drove me to a 7-Eleven at midnight because I’d never had a Slurpee and decided that was a life crisis.
My heart does that stupid flip it keeps doing now.
I’m so far gone it’s not even funny.
He tosses the last piece of kindling on, waits until the flames catch, then drops down onto the rug beside me with a little groan, stretching his long legs out toward the fire.
“Back okay?” I ask.
“Back’s fine,” he says. “Brain’s fried. Soul’s questionable. But my back is a temple.”
I snort into my mug. “You’re such an idiot.”
“You like that about me,” he says, leaning sideways until our shoulders touch.
I do.
Too much.
For a minute, we just sit there, staring at the fire. The flames crackle and pop, the sound almost hypnotic. For the first time all day, no one is talking in my ear. No ping from Arrow. No new bounty updates. No ghost of Luka’s smug face in my head.
It’s just… this.
Him.
Me.
And a future I’m half afraid to look at straight on.
“You’re doing the face,” Knight says quietly.
I blink. “What face?”
“The one where you’re somewhere three months ahead, arguing with a version of me that hasn’t happened yet,” he says. “What’s going on in there, Birdie?”
I take a sip of tea to buy time.
It’s lukewarm and tastes like cardboard and comfort.
“If I tell you,” I say slowly, “you have to promise not to make fun of me.”
“Oh, this is going to be good,” he murmurs, turning slightly to face me. The firelight catches the stubble on his jaw, the curve of his mouth. “Proceed.”
I roll my eyes, then pull the blanket tighter and look straight into the fire. “I was thinking about home,” I say. “About… afterward. If we get one.”
“If?” he echoes, a quiet warning.
“When,” I correct, because I know he needs me to. “When we get one.”
His fingers find the edge of the blanket where it pools on the rug. He fiddles with the fringe, like he’s trying not to spook me. “And?” he prompts.
“And I was…” I swallow. “I was wondering what happens when we go back. To, you know. Real life. Gage. The apartment. Work.”
“Mm.” He nods slowly. “You’re worried things will go back to exactly how they were.”
The idea makes my chest hurt.
“Yeah,” I admit. “Except, no, not really, because they can’t. I don’t… I don’t think I can go back to pretending you’re just my brother’s best friend and ignores my crush like it’s his full-time job.”
He winces. “Ouch. Brutal but fair.”
“And I don’t want to,” I blur out before I lose my nerve. “I don’t want to go back to that. I want… this. You. All the way. Outside of murder cabins. Outside of trauma.”
My voice wobbles on the last word.
I hate that.
Knight stills.
The fire snaps in the silence.
“You’re talking about a real relationship,” he says softly. “Not just… safe house logic.”
I stare at my hands, at the mug, at the tiny chips in the ceramic.
“I’ve wanted a real relationship with you since I figured out what my feelings were,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “When I was a kid, it was a crush. A… ‘you’re cool and older and broody and you smell good’ situation.”
He snorts.
I keep going.
“But I didn’t… know you then the way I do now.
I didn’t know about your dad, or the stuff you did to survive, or how hard you’ve been trying to aim yourself at better targets.
I didn’t know the way you look at people when you’re worried they’re going to break and you’re pretending you’re not worried.
I didn’t know that under all the sarcasm and code and hoodie, you’re just this huge, ridiculous heart with a firewall. ”
My throat tightens.
“Now I know,” I say. “And I still… want you. More. Not less. And if we go home and you decide this was just a bunker fluke, I’m going to—”
“Stop,” he says, sharp enough that I do.
I glance over.
His eyes are darker now, jaw clenched like he’s holding something back.
“This is not a bunker fluke,” he says, enunciating each word. “This isn’t some weird trauma bond I’m going to regret when we get back to soggy takeout and your brother yelling at the game.”
“You sure?” I ask, because I have to. “Because I am a lot. In enclosed spaces, especially.”
“You are a lot,” he says. “That’s one of the first things I loved about you.”
The word hits me like a physical thing.
I suck in a breath.
His mouth twitches.
“Yeah, I said it,” he murmurs. “I’m not… good at it yet. Saying it. But I’m practicing.”
My heart goes crazy.
“Say it again,” I whisper.
He turns toward me fully now, one knee bent, our legs pressed together. The firelight makes his eyes look molten.
“Lark Dawson,” he says, voice low and sure, “I love you. Not because of this cabin. Not because of the bounty. Not because you weaseled your way into my missions with blackmail and snacks. I love you because you’re you. Smart and loud and stubborn and brave.”
He reaches up, fingers curling around the back of my neck, thumb brushing just under my jaw.
“I love that you argue with me,” he goes on. “That you push me. That you see things I miss and call me on my bullshit. I love that you make everything louder, even the parts that scare me. And I want…” He swallows. “I want all of that in my real life too. Not just in temporary crisis mode.”
Tears sting behind my eyes so fast it’s embarrassing. “You’re not allowed to make me cry in a murder cabin,” I warn, voice thick.
He smiles, soft and crooked. “Too late,” he whispers.
I set my mug aside before I drop it and lean into him, pressing my forehead to his. “You know Gage is going to have an aneurysm,” I say, because if I don’t joke I’m going to sob.
“Oh, Gage is going to absolutely lose his shit,” Knight says, no hesitation. “He’s going to do the big brother posture, threaten to break my nose, ask me what my intentions are like we’re in a Victorian novel.”
“Probably labeled with spreadsheets,” I mutter.
“Definitely,” Knight agrees.
He slips his hand under the blanket, finding my waist, fingers splaying over the thin cotton of my shirt.
“But here’s the thing,” he says quietly. “He doesn’t get a vote. Not really. He gets an opinion. He gets input. But you’re not his to give away. You’re not a side quest in his game. You’re your own—and if you want me in your future, I’m there. No matter how loudly he yells about it.”
“Even if it makes things weird?” I ask. “At home? With all of us?”
He huffs a soft, humorless laugh.
“Things have been weird for a long time, Birdie,” he says.
“Me trying not to look at you for too long so he wouldn’t notice.
You tiptoeing around. Him pretending he didn’t see any of it.
That’s already weird. This—” his thumb strokes my side, tender “—is honest. I’d rather deal with honest weird than keep lying to all three of us. ”
I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to hear that until now.
Something inside me loosens.
“I want that too,” I say. “The honest kind. The… waking up in the same bed and getting coffee and arguing over whose turn it is to do dishes kind. Real life. With you.”
He smiles. Not his usual smirk. Something softer, almost shy.
“You’re going to hate living with me,” he warns. “I leave charging cables everywhere and forget laundry exists until it becomes a structural problem.”
“We’ll manage,” I tell him.
I turn to face him completely, drawing my knees up, the blanket sliding a little. His gaze drops, then snaps back up, heat flaring in his eyes.
“Hey, Knight?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“You get that we’re, like, disgustingly in it now, right?” I ask. “Like, beyond ‘I like you’ weird. We’re at ‘I picked out future coffee fights’ level.”
He laughs, low and real. “Yeah,” he says. “Trust me, I’m painfully aware.”
I reach for him, fingers curling in the front of his shirt, tugging him closer until our noses brush. “Good,” I whisper. “Because I really want to kiss my future coffee-fight partner right now.”
“Tragic,” he murmurs. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
He kisses me, and it feels different than earlier.
Less like we’re burning off fear.
More like we’re staking a claim.
His mouth is warm and slow on mine, the kind of kiss you could get addicted to—unhurried, thorough, tasting like firelight and tea and the promise of more tomorrows than either of us deserves.
I shift closer, swinging one leg over his lap so I’m straddling him. The blanket slips down, pooling around my hips. His hands slide instinctively to my thighs, fingers curling into the soft flesh there, anchoring me.
Heat coils low in my belly.
He pulls back just enough to breathe, breath fanning over my lips. “I need you,” he murmurs.
“I need you too,” I whisper back.
He trails one hand up my spine, under my shirt, fingertips tracing each notch, making me shiver. The other stays firmly on my hip, holding me steady.
“You keep looking at me like that,” he says quietly, “and I’m going to forget we were talking about dishes and futures and just ruin you right here on this rug.”
A bolt of heat shoots through me.
“Promises,” I breathe.