18. Leah
LEAH
Iknow he’s back before I see him.
It’s not the comms ping, not the alert on the perimeter grid. It’s something else—cell-deep awareness, a shift in the air that pulls my spine straight like a wire’s been tripped.
And then he’s there.
Six paces into the command deck, just inside the secondary door like he belongs, like he never left. Kalev in full tactical black, a travel-worn jacket slung over one shoulder, eyes scanning and landing—on me.
I freeze.
My hand stills over the surveillance console. Heat floods my chest, blooming into my throat, and for a second I can’t breathe past the pounding in my ears. He's real. He's here.
No warning. No protocol. Just a man carved in steel and regret, standing in the place he walked away from without a word.
“What the hell,” I say.
He blinks, slow and deliberate. “I’m back.”
“No shit.” I shove away from the desk, boots scraping loud against the grating. “You couldn’t message? One line, Kalev. You know how to type.”
“I sent a burst.”
“Yeah, I got it,” I bite out. “Three cryptic lines. ‘The stars mean nothing,’ what even is that? You ghosted me.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.” My voice cracks around the edges, a sharp thing trying to sound steady. “You just didn’t pick me.”
Silence.
The kind that presses against your ribs and won’t let up.
He steps forward. “It wasn’t safe.”
“And this is?”
“I was under black anchor. There were no goodbyes. No context. Just in, execute, extract.”
I cross my arms, but my hands won’t stop trembling. “I ran this op alone. You left me holding the bag without even a tactical handoff.”
“You held it,” he says quietly. “Better than anyone else would’ve.”
My laugh comes brittle. “Don’t flatter me.”
“It’s not flattery. It’s fact.”
I stare at him—at the crease between his brows, the tension in his shoulders, the bruise darkening along his jaw. He looks like hell.
But he’s here.
That counts for something. It has to.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I thought—” My voice chokes off. I swallow hard. “I don’t know what I thought.”
Kalev steps closer. The air between us turns molten, heavy with everything unsaid.
“I kept thinking about you,” he says. “Between bullets. Between choices.”
I laugh again, softer this time. “That’s romantic. 'Between body counts, I remembered your coffee order.'”
He shakes his head, lips twitching despite himself. “More like… between nightmares, I remembered what it felt like to breathe.”
Silence again, but it’s different now. Not heavy. Loaded.
His fingers twitch at his side like he wants to reach for me and isn’t sure if he should.
I do it first.
Just the hem of his jacket—rough, dust-crusted, real.
“You look like you crawled through hell,” I murmur.
“Pretty sure I did.”
“And you came back.”
“I had to.”
My throat tightens.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to punch you or kiss you,” I whisper.
“Do both.”
I step in.
Fingers curl in his collar. His mouth brushes mine like a secret, soft at first—almost reverent—and then not at all. There’s nothing careful about the second kiss. No protocol, no pretense. Just hunger and ache and weeks of pretending we were fine without this.
I back him into the wall beside the console.
His hands find my hips, anchoring me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold on.
I kiss him until my lungs burn, until the sharp edge of fury softens into something raw and unguarded.
When I pull back, he rests his forehead against mine.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admits.
“Me neither.”
“But I want to.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Me too.”
Another silence.
This one stays.
Warm.
I trace the line of his jaw, thumb brushing the fading bruise. “You gonna vanish again?”
“Not unless they drag me off-world in chains.”
“Good.”
We stay like that for a long time, just breathing the same air.
Then I pull away—just enough to meet his eyes.
“We’re not pretending anymore,” I say.
“No.”
“I’m not a safe choice.”
“Neither am I.”
“Then let’s be reckless,” I murmur.
He smiles—small, real, aching at the edges. “Reckless sounds a lot like home.”