Chapter 18 The Scar Story
EIGHTEEN
The Scar Story
EVIE
The deck is empty when I find it.
Someone—Mitzy, probably—pointed me here after dinner. "He's been out there for an hour," she said, not specifying who. She didn't need to.
The sun is sinking toward the ocean, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that seem too beautiful to be real. After everything that's happened, the world has no right to be this gorgeous. But it is anyway, indifferent to the chaos of human lives unfolding beneath it.
Riot is leaning against the railing, his back to me. He's changed clothes—dark jeans, a gray Henley that stretches across his shoulders—and his hair is damp from a shower. He looks softer like this. Less like a weapon, more like a man.
He doesn't turn when the door opens, but his shoulders shift. He knows I'm here.
"Hey," I say.
"Hey." He still doesn't turn. "Rosie get settled?"
"Out cold. Mitzy found her some pajamas with rockets on them. She was asleep before Sera finished the first chapter of Goodnight Moon."
"Good. Kid's had a hell of a day."
"We all have."
I cross to the railing and stand beside him. The salt air fills my lungs—clean, cold, nothing like the pine and granite of the mountains.
"Debrief go okay?" I ask.
"Well enough. CJ's coordinating with SA Yates—turns out she's been building a case against Harmon for months. Your testimony is the missing piece." He pauses. "She's good people. She'll make sure this sticks."
"And the cartel?"
"Still looking for you in Sacramento. By the time they figure out you're gone, it won't matter." His jaw tightens. "Harmon's going down. The FBI agents who sold out—they'll go down too. It won't bring back Judge Castellano, but it's something."
We stand in silence for a while. The sun sinks lower, bleeding red across the water.
"You should be sleeping," he says finally. "When's the last time you actually slept?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"I'm used to it."
"That's not an answer."
He almost smiles. "No. I guess it's not."
The breeze picks up, carrying the scent of salt and something floral—the planters near the building, maybe. I shiver, and Riot notices immediately.
"Here." He's already shrugging out of a jacket I didn't notice him holding—leather, worn soft, draped over the railing beside him. He settles it around my shoulders without asking permission.
The leather is warm from his body. It smells like him—gunpowder and soap and something underneath that I'm starting to associate with safety.
"Thanks."
"Can't have you freezing to death after I went to all that trouble keeping you alive."
The joke lands softly. We're both too tired for real banter.
"Jon." His name feels natural now. More real than Riot, which is a costume he wears. "You don't have to stay out here with me. If you need to sleep—"
"I don't want to sleep." He turns to face me, finally. His eyes are tired but alert, searching my face for something I can't name. "I want to be here. With you."
The words settle between us. Simple. True.
"Okay," I say. "Then stay."
He turns back to the ocean. The silence stretches, but it's not uncomfortable. It's the silence of two people who don't need to fill the space with noise.
"I meant what I said earlier," he says eventually. “I’d like to take you out.”
“I’d like that."
“Fair warning, though. I’m not easy. I've got baggage that would fill a cargo plane. Nightmares. Walls. A history of pushing people away before they can get close enough to matter."
I consider this. "Have you ever managed eighteen five-year-olds on finger painting day?"
He blinks. "What?"
"Finger painting day. Eighteen kids. Three colors of paint, which somehow become twelve colors of paint because they mix everything together.
One kid eats the blue. Another dumps the red in someone's hair.
A third has a meltdown because his tree doesn't look like a tree, and meanwhile you've got paint on the ceiling—the ceiling—and no one can explain how it got there. "
He's staring at me like I've lost my mind.
"My point is," I continue, "I handle chaos every day. I'm not scared of complicated."
A laugh escapes him—surprised, genuine. "You're comparing my psychological damage to kindergarten arts and crafts?"
"I'm saying I've seen worse."
"That's..." He shakes his head, but he's smiling. "That's either the most reassuring thing anyone's ever said to me or deeply insulting."
"Can't it be both?"
The smile reaches his eyes this time. "Yeah. I think it can."
He turns to look at the water again. When he speaks, his voice is quieter.
"What I told you in the car. About Joey.
About Deacon." He pauses, his hands tightening on the railing. "What I told you... it’s the truth. The whole, ugly thing. I’ve never told anyone that version.
Not CJ, not the guys on the team. Everyone else gets the sanitized report or the dark humor that buries the lead. "
He turns his head, his gaze heavy and unwavering.
"In my line of work, you don't hand people a map of your weaknesses.
You don't show them exactly where to strike if they want to tear you apart. It’s like handing someone a loaded gun and pointing it at your own chest." He takes a step closer, his voice dropping to a rough whisper.
"But I'm handing it to you. The real story.
No jokes, no operator mask. I'm trusting you with the only thing that can actually hurt me. "
The admission lands somewhere deep. I reach for his hand. He lets me take it.
"For what it's worth," I say, "I'm glad you told me. About all of it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It helps. Knowing where the wounds are."
His fingers tighten on mine. "I could say the same about you. Daniel. The way he made you disappear."
The name still carries weight, even now. But less than it used to.
"I almost didn't leave," I admit. "Even after I found the texts—three women, the whole time we were together—I almost stayed. Because he spent so long convincing me that I couldn't trust my own judgment, that what I was seeing wasn't real."
"But you did leave."
"I did." I take a breath. "And then I found climbing. Found this version of myself that Daniel never touched. The version that hangs two hundred feet above nothing and feels more alive than she ever felt on the ground."
"That version saved both our lives."
"She did, didn't she?” The thought still feels strange. Wonderful, but strange. "I spent so long hiding her. Keeping her separate from the rest of my life. Like she was too wild, too intense, too much for normal people to handle."
Jon turns to face me fully. His expression has shifted—softer now, more open.
"You know what I see when I look at you?
" His voice is low, serious. "A woman who walked into a kill site and walked back out.
Who led a trained operator up a wall he never could've climbed alone.
Who ran into her best friend's house knowing the cartel was hunting her, because protecting the people she loves matters more than protecting herself. "
"Jon—"
"That's not too much. That's not too intense." He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle. "That's someone worth knowing. All of her. Every version."
The words hit somewhere that's been bruised for so long I forgot it could feel anything else.
"We're a mess," I whisper. "Both of us."
"Yeah." His mouth quirks. "But maybe we're the kind of mess that fits together."
He's close now. Close enough that I can see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the way his pupils have dilated in the fading light. Close enough that his breath warms my lips.
"There is one thing you could do for me," I say.
"Name it."
"Don't let me sleep alone tonight." I hold his gaze. "And maybe make up for the cramped accommodations on the cliff."
His eyes darken. Heat flares in them, barely controlled.
"Evie." His voice has gone rough. "I'm trying to be a gentleman here."
"I noticed." I smile. "I figured I'd have to ask. Or drag you to bed myself."
Something shifts in his expression. The gentleman disappears. What's left is the man I met in that cabin—dangerous, certain, absolutely in control.
"Sweetheart." He steps closer, crowding into my space. "There will be no dragging."
Before I can respond, he bends, catches me around the thighs, and hoists me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing.
I yelp. "Jon!"
"You want to go to bed." He's already moving toward the door, one arm locked across the backs of my legs. "I'm taking you to bed."
"This is not what I—put me down—"
"Nope." He shoulders through the door and carries me down the hallway. His hand slides higher on my thigh, proprietary and warm. "You asked for this. You're getting it."
I'm laughing now, breathless and ridiculous, my hair hanging in my face as the hallway passes upside down. A door opens somewhere behind us—Mitzy's voice calls out, "Get it, Riot!"—and I bury my burning face against his back.
His door opens. Closes. He tosses me onto the bed like I'm cargo, and then he's over me, caging me in with his arms, grinning down at me with a look that makes my stomach flip.
"Now." He lowers his head and brushes his lips against my jaw. "About those cramped accommodations."
"They were very cramped."
"Terrible, really." His mouth finds my throat. "No room to move."
"Exactly." My voice is already breathless. "Very limiting."
"Mmm." His teeth graze my pulse point. "I've got a lot more room here."
"Show me."
He does.
This time, there's no cold rock at my back, no fear of being heard, no danger pressing at the edges.
Just his hands learning me again—slower now, more thorough.
Just his mouth mapping every inch of skin as he peels away my clothes.
Just his voice, rough and reverent, telling me exactly what he's going to do before he does it.
He takes his time. Drives me to the edge and holds me there until I'm begging—actually begging, words I didn't know I had in me spilling out against his shoulder. And when he finally lets me fall, he watches my face like it's the only thing in the world worth seeing.
When he finally slides inside me, we both go still. The fit is different like this—deeper, more intense, nothing between us but skin and heat and the growing certainty that this is something neither of us expected to find.
"Evie." My name on his lips sounds like a vow.
"I'm here." I pull him closer, wrap myself around him. "I'm right here."
We move together. Slow at first, then faster as the need builds.
His hands grip my hips, my thighs, my wrists pinned above my head.
I arch into him, meet him stroke for stroke, and when the wave finally crests, we break together—his groan swallowed by my gasp, both of us shaking apart in each other's arms.
After, we lie tangled in his sheets, sweat cooling on our skin, my head on his chest, and his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my back. The ocean crashes against the cliffs below, a rhythm as old as time.
"Stay," he says. "Tonight. Stay with me.”
"I wasn't planning on leaving."
"Good." His arms tighten around me. "Because I'm not sure I could let you go."
I smile against his skin. "That's very dramatic."
"I'm a dramatic person. Ask anyone."
"I thought you were all jokes and deflection."
"I contain multitudes." His hand slides up my spine, cups the back of my neck. "Evie?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you threw that rock."
I laugh—soft, surprised, genuine. "Me too."
"And I'm glad you made me climb that cliff."
"You're welcome."
"And I'm glad—" He stops. When he speaks again, his voice has gone serious. "I'm glad you're here. That this—whatever this is—exists."
I lift my head to look at him. In the darkness, his face is all shadows and planes, the scar through his eyebrow a pale line. He looks younger like this. Unguarded. Real.
"It's something," I tell him. "I don't know what yet. But it's something."
"Something." He tests the word. Nods. "I can work with something."
He kisses me again—soft, sweet, a promise more than a demand. Then he tucks me against his chest and pulls the blanket over us both.
"Sleep," he murmurs. "I've got you."
And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I believe it.
I close my eyes and let go.