Chapter 29 Julia
Julia
The aircraft dipped slightly as it began its slow descent, but inside the cabin, the world felt strangely still. Boone shifted in his seat. Miles typed quietly. Aaron spoke in low tones with the pilots up front.
But Hawk…
Hawk wasn’t looking at any of them.
He sat across from me, relaxed and ready for a fight, his head lowered just enough that a shadow cut across his eyes. The kind of posture a man adopts when he is thinking too hard, carrying too much, and trying to hide both.
I unbuckled my harness and moved across the narrow aisle. “Scoot,” I murmured.
He glanced up, brow raised. “Scoot?”
“You heard me.”
A faint twitch hit the corner of his mouth—there and gone—but he shifted, making room on the bench beside him. I sat close, knees brushing his. Warm. Solid. Real.
Outside the small window, Missouri rolled by in ribbons of green and gold. Peaceful. Undisturbed. Completely unaware of the nightmare humming beneath its soil.
“You’ve been quiet,” I said softly.
He didn’t answer right away. Then:
“Reese being alive changes things.”
“Only because you blame yourself for him.”
His jaw flexed. “I trained him. I vouched for him. I missed the signs that he was slipping.”
“You missed nothing,” I countered. “Reese didn’t fall—he jumped. That’s on him, Hawk. Not on you. He got greedy for money, and the more he got the more he wanted.”
His gaze slid to mine, slow and piercing. “Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Cut through the noise.”
Because you let me, I wanted to say. Because you never look away when I look at you. Because you’re the one person I can’t lose.
Instead, I shrugged lightly. “Someone has to keep you sane.”
He huffed a quiet breath. “You’re doing a terrible job.”
I leaned in just a little. “You don’t seem that crazy to me.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. Just a flicker—but more than enough to light a fire low in my stomach. He didn’t move. Neither did I. The engine noise faded. The hum of equipment, the muted voices, the world beyond—it all blurred.
Only him.
Only me.
Only the charged inches between us.
“Julia…” His voice was sandpaper soft. A warning. A confession. A plea.
I touched his hand. Not his wrist, not his forearm—his hand. Fingers brushing, then settling, then threading into his.
His breath hitched.
“We’re walking into something designed to hurt you,” I said quietly. “Reese knows how you think. He knows how you move. He knows where to strike.”
“And you shouldn’t be anywhere near that,” he murmured.
“Then I’m exactly where I belong.”
His fingers tightened around mine—hard enough to anchor, gentle enough that I could’ve pulled away if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
“Julia…” he tried again.
“I’m not leaving you,” I said. “So stop wasting energy wishing I would.”
He looked down at our hands. Looked back at me. Something cracked in his expression—subtle but powerful, the kind of fracture only people who love too hard ever show.
Then he lifted our joined hands and pressed them to his chest. Right over his heartbeat. Strong. Unsteady. Too human for the man everyone believed was unbreakable.
“You scare the hell out of me,” he said.
“You return the favor.”
His mouth brushed the back of my fingers—just enough to steal my breath, not enough to be called a kiss. Then he lowered our hands carefully, as if letting go too fast would shatter something between us.
“Thirty seconds,” Aaron called from the cockpit.
The moment broke, but the heat didn’t leave us.
The truth didn’t either. We buckled up, until the plane coasted to a stop.
Hawk stood, offered his hand to pull me up. When I took it, he didn’t let go. Not right away.
“Stay close,” he said.
“Try to get rid of me.”
A flicker of a smile crossed his mouth—the kind that made my pulse kick—and then the plane leveled out. The rear hatch clicked. Wind roared in.
Time to go.
But the storm that waited for us outside?
It had nothing on the one he stirred inside me.