Chapter Fifteen
Kristin heard the shower running when she let herself into Ripcord's room.
The compound had settled into its late-night quiet—brothers on guard rotation, the rest sleeping off the adrenaline of another successful operation.
She'd tried to sleep in her own quarters.
Made it twenty minutes staring at the ceiling before giving up and walking down the hallway in bare feet and one of his shirts.
She didn't knock.
The bathroom door was open, steam curling into the bedroom. Through the frosted glass of the shower stall, she could see his outline—head bowed under the water, hands braced against the tile, letting the heat pound into his shoulders.
Washing off the night.
She sat on the edge of his bed and waited.
He came out ten minutes later, towel around his waist, water still running down the scars that mapped his spine. He stopped when he saw her.
"Couldn't sleep," she said.
"Me neither." He stood in the doorway, steam rising off his skin, watching her with an expression she'd learned to read over the past week.
The sharp edges were gone. The combat focus, the tactical calculation, the cold precision he wore like armor—all of it stripped away by hot water and exhaustion. What was left was just the man.
"You don't have to be here," he said.
"I know."
"I killed someone tonight."
"I know that too." She pulled her knees up, resting her chin on them. "Come sit down."
He crossed the room and sat beside her. Close but not touching. Leaving the space between them for her to close or keep.
She closed it.
Her hand found his, fingers threading through his on the mattress. His skin was warm from the shower, his pulse steady under her thumb. Not the racing beat of a man coming down from violence—the measured rhythm of someone who'd made peace with what the night had required.
"How do you do it?" she asked. "How do you come back from that and just... be here? Be normal?"
"I'm not normal." A tired almost-smile. "But you already knew that."
"You know what I mean."
He was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing circles on her palm.
"You compartmentalize. The things you do in the field stay in the field. What comes after is separate." He looked at her. "Tonight I killed a man who was planning to burn more buildings with people inside. That stays in the field. This—you, here, your hand in mine—this is what comes after."
"And it works? Keeping them separate?"
"It didn't used to." His voice dropped. "For three years, nothing stayed in its box. Kyle bled into everything—every quiet moment, every good thing, every reason I might have had to stop running. Couldn't compartmentalize because the guilt wouldn't let me."
"And now?"
"Now I've got something worth protecting the compartment for." His fingers tightened on hers. "Now there's an after that matters."
Kristin shifted on the bed, turning to face him. The lamplight caught the water still beading on his shoulders, the scars running down his back, the lean muscle of a man built for falling fast and far.
She reached up and traced the longest scar—the one that started at his left shoulder blade and ran to his lower back like a zipper.
"Parachute malfunction," he said without her asking. "Training jump, six years ago. Reserve deployed hard and the risers caught me across the spine."
"And you jumped again."
"Next week."
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to the top of the scar. Felt him go still beneath her touch. Not tense—still. The particular stillness of a man who wasn't used to tenderness applied to the places that hurt.
"I accept this." She said it against his skin, her mouth tracing down the scar's path. "All of it. The jumping, the fighting, the killing when killing is what's needed. I accept who you are, Kenny. Not in spite of it. Because of it."
His breath caught when she used his name.
It always did.
He turned, and his hands found her face—both hands, cradling her jaw, tilting her up to look at him. His eyes were dark and open, stripped of every defense he'd ever built.
"I want a future with you." The words came out rough, unpolished, the kind of confession that couldn't survive being rehearsed.
"Not just surviving this war. Not just getting your airfield back.
I want mornings and arguments and the boring stuff that comes with building a life.
I want to learn what your coffee order is and which side of the bed you sleep on and what your face looks like when nothing's wrong. "
Her eyes burned.
"Left side," she said. "And black, two sugars."
He laughed—a broken, beautiful sound—and kissed her.
This kiss was different from every one that had come before. Not the tentative exploration of the rooftop. Not the desperate collision after combat. This was slow. Deliberate. The kiss of a man who'd decided to stop running and wanted her to feel every inch of that decision.
Kristin melted into it.
Her hands found his chest, palms flat against warm skin, feeling his heartbeat accelerate under her touch. She'd mapped this body before—twice now, in the dark and in the moonlight. She knew the geography of his scars, the places that made him tense, the places that made him groan.
But tonight wasn't about geography. Tonight was about staying.
"I want to rebuild Blair-Hadley with you," she said between kisses. "Not just as my airfield. As ours. A place where we both belong."
His hands slid from her face to her waist, pulling her onto his lap. The towel was the only thing between them, and it wasn't much.
"I don't know anything about running an airfield."
"You know about parachutes and precision and showing up when it matters." She settled against him, her legs wrapping around his hips. "I'll teach you the rest."
"You'll teach me to fly." His mouth found her throat, and the sound she made wasn't quiet.
"I'll teach you to choose the sky instead of needing it.
" She arched into his touch as his hands slid beneath the shirt she'd borrowed—his shirt, smelling like him, the one she'd started sleeping in because it made the nights easier.
"There's a difference between running toward something and running from something.
I want to show you what the sky looks like when you're not using it to escape. "
"What does it look like?"
"Like freedom." She pulled back to meet his eyes. "Real freedom. Not the kind you chase because the ground hurts too much. The kind you choose because you love it."
Something shifted in his expression. The last shadow of guilt—the one he carried like a second skin, the one that whispered he didn't deserve anything that didn't hurt—flickered and dimmed.
Not gone. Maybe never fully gone.
But quieter.
"I want that," he said. "I want to love the sky without needing to escape into it. I want to land and be glad I'm on the ground because you're standing on it."
"Then stay." She pulled his shirt over her head and let it fall. "Stay grounded. Stay with me."
His eyes moved over her—not with the frantic hunger of their first time, not with the desperate possession of the second. With something deeper. Something that saw her completely and chose her anyway.
"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." His voice was raw. "And I've seen the earth from thirty thousand feet."
"Flatterer."
"Truth-teller." His hands found her hips, gentle and sure. "I've spent my whole life looking down. At drop zones, at targets, at the ground coming up to meet me. But you make me want to look forward instead."
She kissed him to stop the words before they made her cry.
They came together slowly this time. No urgency, no desperation, no adrenaline demanding release. Just skin against skin, breath mingling, the steady build of two people who knew each other's rhythms and chose to move together.
Kristin let herself be present in every sensation. The warmth of him beneath her. The strength in his hands as they guided her hips. The way his breath stuttered when she rolled against him, finding the angle that made them both gasp.
"Kristin." Her name in his mouth like something sacred. "God, Kristin—"
"I'm here." She pressed her forehead to his, holding his gaze while they moved together. "I'm not going anywhere."
His hands traced up her spine, pulling her closer until there was no space left between them. She felt his heartbeat against her chest, felt the tremble in his arms as he held her like she was the only solid thing in a world that had been freefall for three years.
"Yours." The word came from deep in his chest. Not desperate. Not a revelation. A fact. Settled and permanent as gravity. "I'm yours, Kristin. Whatever comes after this—whatever Stanton throws at us, whatever the future looks like—I'm yours."
"And I'm yours." She moved against him, feeling the intensity build, feeling them both approach the edge of something vast. "Not because I need protection. Not because I'm scared. Because you're the man who makes the ground feel like home."
He groaned—low, broken, the sound of a man surrendering to something stronger than survival instinct—and pulled her impossibly closer. The rhythm between them deepened, slowed, each movement deliberate and devastating.
This wasn't collision. This was communion.
Kristin felt the climax building like weather—pressure and heat and the particular electricity that preceded a storm. She held his gaze through all of it, refusing to close her eyes, refusing to hide from the intensity of what was happening between them.
"Kenny." His real name, the one nobody used, the one she'd claimed for herself. "Stay with me."
"Always." His voice shattered on the word.
They broke together—not the explosive crash of their previous times, but a slow, devastating wave that rolled through them both and left everything changed in its wake.
Kristin heard herself cry out, felt him bury his face in her neck, felt the tremors running through both their bodies as the world narrowed to this single point of connection.
For a long time after, neither of them moved.
They stayed tangled together on his bed, her head on his chest, his arms wrapped around her, both of them breathing in the same rhythm. The lamp cast warm light across the room. The compound was silent around them.
"I'm going to rebuild that airfield," Kristin said into the quiet. "New sign. New partnership. No Danny, no ghosts, no secrets hidden in the walls."
"Blair-Thompson Airfield." His voice was drowsy, content. "Has a ring to it."
She lifted her head. "You're serious."
"About putting my name next to yours on a building?" His hand traced lazy circles on her back. "Dead serious. I don't know how to teach civilians to fly or maintain Cessnas or schedule jump operations. But I know how to show up, and I know how to stay. Teach me the rest."
"It'll take years."
"Good." He kissed the top of her head. "I've got years. First time that's felt like a gift instead of a sentence."
She settled back against his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow beneath her ear. Outside, the distant drone of aircraft filled the Carolina night—C-130s banking toward Fort Liberty, the constant pulse of military aviation that never stopped.
The sky was still there. Would always be there.
But for the first time, Kristin didn't ache for it.
She had something better than altitude. Something that couldn't be measured in feet above ground or hours of flight time or the distance between herself and everything that hurt.
She had a man who'd stopped falling.
And she had a future worth landing for.
"Two days," she said quietly. "Then Stanton."
"Then Stanton." His arms tightened. "And then we start building."
"Together."
"Together."
She closed her eyes and let sleep pull her under, wrapped in warmth and certainty and the steady heartbeat of a man who'd finally chosen the ground.
Tomorrow would bring war planning and tactical briefings and the grim preparation for ending a drug lord's empire.
But tonight was theirs.
And it was enough.