CHAPTER 35
Gemma
The fire in the massive stone hearth crackles, sending a shower of bright orange sparks drifting up the dark chimney.
I am sitting on the thick, woven rug in the center of the living room, my back resting against the base of the leather sofa.
Outside the ballistic glass windows, the Icelandic night is absolute.
There is no moon tonight. The North Atlantic is a black, churning void, completely invisible, but I can hear the heavy, rhythmic crash of the waves against the shoreline.
I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs.
The heat from the fire warms the bare skin of my feet and the thick denim of my jeans. The house smells like roasted garlic, the remnants of the pasta Callum cooked for dinner, and the sharp, clean scent of burning birch wood.
I turn my head slightly, looking over my shoulder.
Callum is sitting on the rug a few feet away.
He is leaning forward, resting his forearms on his knees, watching the flames.
The orange light plays across the sharp angles of his face, highlighting the faint, faded scar on his jaw.
He is wearing a dark, long-sleeved shirt, the sleeves pushed up to reveal the heavy, corded muscles of his forearms.
He looks entirely at peace.
It is still a strange thing to witness. For the first few weeks we lived here, his stillness always felt coiled, like a spring pulled tight and waiting to snap. He would sit in rooms facing the door. He would track the sound of the wind.
But tonight, his shoulders are relaxed. His breathing is slow and even. The lethal, hyper-vigilant ghost that dragged me out of a burning airplane and fought a war on a black sand beach is finally asleep.
I shift my weight on the rug.
Callum’s eyes snap to me instantly. The protective instinct doesn't disappear—it never will—but the coldness is gone. His gaze is warm, heavy, and entirely focused on me.
"Are you cold?" he asks, his voice a low rumble that blends perfectly with the sound of the ocean outside.
"No," I say, uncrossing my arms and stretching my legs out toward the hearth. "I’m just thinking."
He doesn't ask what I am thinking about.
He simply shifts his position, moving across the rug until he is sitting directly behind me.
He pulls me back, positioning my body between his legs, and wraps his arms around my waist. He rests his broad chest against my back, his chin dropping to rest lightly on the top of my head.
I let out a long, slow exhale, melting completely into his solid warmth.
I lace my fingers through his where his hands rest flat against my stomach. His skin is rough, marked by a lifetime of violence, but his touch is the safest place I have ever known.
"I was thinking about my apartment in New York," I say quietly, watching the flames dance over the logs.
Callum’s hands tighten slightly around my waist. "Do you miss it?"
"God, no. The plumbing was terrible, and the landlord was a criminal." I tilt my head back, resting it against his shoulder. "I was thinking about the night you broke in. The night you were supposed to kill me."
The silence in the room stretches for a long moment. It isn't a tense silence. It is just heavy with the weight of the history between us.
"It was a standard retrieval contract," Callum murmurs, his breath stirring the hair at the nape of my neck. "I had the floor plans. I had the security codes. I had the exact layout of your living room memorized."
"You sat on my thrift-store sofa in a five-thousand-dollar suit."
"It was Tom Ford."
I laugh softly, the sound echoing in the quiet house. "You had a gun pointed at my chest, Callum. You were the scariest thing I had ever seen in my life."
"I am still the scariest thing you have ever seen," he points out, though there is a faint trace of dark amusement in his tone.
"No, you aren't." I turn my hands over, tracing the lines of his knuckles. "Arthur Vance was scary. Elias was scary. Because they didn't care about anything. They were empty. You were never empty."
Callum is quiet. He presses a slow, deliberate kiss against the crown of my head.
"I was empty before I walked into that apartment," he confesses, the admission rough and incredibly vulnerable. "I operated on a series of tactical algorithms. Threat assessment. Risk mitigation. Elimination. There was no margin for error, and there was no margin for humanity."
"And then?" I prompt softly.
"And then you complained about the lock on your door and threatened to leave a bad review on Yelp while I was kidnapping you." He shifts his weight, pulling me tighter against him. "You broke the algorithm, Gemma. You introduced a variable I couldn't calculate."
I close my eyes, a fierce, overwhelming ache expanding in the center of my chest.
I remember the absolute terror of that night.
I remember the cold, clinical way he looked at me.
If someone had told me then that six months later I would be sitting on the floor of a glass house in Iceland, anchored to the chest of the man who was hired to murder me, I would have thought they were insane.
But the path from that apartment to this fireplace wasn't a straight line. It was forged in blood, freezing rain, and a desperate, agonizing need to survive.
We didn't fall in love in a normal way. We collided.
"Do you ever regret it?" I ask, opening my eyes to watch the fire. "Throwing away your career. Burning your reputation. You had an entire empire of logistics and safe houses, and you gave it all up for a hacker who didn't even have sugar in her kitchen."
Callum doesn't answer immediately.
He slides his right hand up my stomach, his palm flattening over the left side of my ribs. He traces the thick, raised line of the scar through my shirt. The movement is so incredibly gentle, so full of reverence, that it makes my breath catch.
"My reputation was built on death," he says, his voice dropping to a harsh, absolute whisper near my ear. "My career was a cage. I don't regret burning it to the ground. I would burn it down a thousand times over if it meant I got to keep you."
The dark, possessive certainty in his words sends a shiver straight down my spine.
He isn't a hero. He will never be a hero. He is a man who is entirely comfortable with violence, and he will use it without a second of hesitation to protect the boundary of our life.
And I love him for it.
I turn my head, shifting my body within the circle of his arms so I can look at his face. The firelight casts deep shadows over his eyes, making them look entirely black.
"You kept me," I whisper, reaching up to cup his jaw.
He leans into my hand, his eyes fluttering shut for a fraction of a second before opening again. The raw, unfiltered devotion in his gaze is staggering.
"I did," he agrees.
He leans down, capturing my mouth in a slow, deep kiss.
There is no rush. There is no frantic, desperate need to consume each other before the clock runs out.
We have all the time in the world. His lips are warm, moving against mine with a steady, intoxicating rhythm.
I open my mouth, letting him deepen the kiss, my fingers sliding into the thick, dark hair at the nape of his neck.
He shifts his weight, gently pushing me backward until my shoulders hit the soft wool of the rug. He follows me down, his body covering mine, his forearms bracketing my head to support his weight.
The heat of the fire radiates against my side, but it is nothing compared to the heat of the man pressing me into the floor.
He breaks the kiss, trailing his mouth down my jawline, pressing open-mouthed kisses against the sensitive skin of my throat. I let out a soft, breathless gasp, my hands gripping his broad shoulders.
"We are going to Rome in the spring," Callum murmurs against my collarbone, his voice a dark, vibrating rumble that sinks straight into my bones. "We are going to drink wine. We are going to visit Ben and Pippa. And then we are coming back here."
"Okay," I breathe, my eyes fluttering shut as his lips move lower.
"You are going to write your code," he continues, his hands sliding under my shirt, his rough palms mapping the curve of my waist. "I am going to build a greenhouse in the back. We are going to live, Gemma."
I open my eyes, looking up at him.
He is hovering over me, his face framed by the shadows of the room and the flickering light of the fire. He looks lethal. He looks beautiful. He looks like mine.
"We are going to live," I echo, the truth of the words finally, completely settling into my soul.
He kisses me again, sealing the promise.
The wind outside the glass house begins to howl, a brutal, freezing gale sweeping off the North Atlantic, threatening to tear the world apart.
I don't care.
I wrap my arms around the monster who carried me out of the dark, pulling him closer, and let the storm rage outside.
We are safe.
We are home.