Chapter 34
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
We’re done with our dinner—second bowl for me, third for Graham—and I’m ready to crawl into a borrowed bunk and sleep for two days straight.
Orla and James have told us their entire life story, from meeting at sixteen, to marriage and children, to the day Orla decided to live on the boat with James.
“He’d been gone for months at a time since we got married,” she explained, “and once the children were grown and gone, I knew exactly where I wanted to be.”
I smiled each time Captain Byrne flirted with her—which was every moment he got—and laughed when she tutted or smacked him on the hand in response. A few times, I caught myself thinking, this is it.
This is what I missed out on.
Noah and I met when I was ten and he was nine, only six months apart, but I never let him forget it.
In some ways, we were lucky—old enough to stick together at a long-term foster home where the couple cared more about the monthly stipend than bothering us.
Waking to police lights and a case worker pulling us from bed was normal for much of our lives until then.
When we met, though, we were old enough to realize that most of the other kids in school always had new shoes and full bellies and clean hair.
Something changes in a kid’s brain when they realize they’re different from everyone else. We could’ve grown bitter. Instead we clung to each other, buoys in a world no one else seemed to understand.
And then we were fourteen, on the verge of becoming a product of the system.
Too old to hope for adoption, the future growing bleaker each year.
Too young to fully grasp what we’d never have, or the fact that there were other possibilities besides handing our independence to the man who made all the right promises.
When I was young, choices felt crushingly imminent.
As if all the decisions to make had to be made right then.
The hubris of youth made me confident that signing my name in blood wasn’t permanent, simply because I couldn’t fathom the future yet.
I was manipulated into paving an immovable path for myself before I could even grasp who I might be when I’m on it.
And some, unlucky few of us, never get to see that day.
Now that the ISA’s cloud has parted and the sun is on my face for the first time in years, I can’t keep myself from thinking about that girl. The one who was so fixated on survival, the concept of actually living felt more foreign than skipping holidays and lying like I breathed.
When is it too late to start over?
Can I finally confront my wants, dreams, and desires without shying away?
I’ve been holding Graham’s hand, clutching it like a lifeline, listening to Orla and James unfold the story of their lives for us. A strange sharpness—that needling sensation between my ribs—returns each time Orla kisses his cheek and James scoots her chair impossibly closer to his.
This is the source of that ache. The hollow feeling I’ve carried around and accepted as the standard.
Someone to love and rely on, and vice versa.
Someone who will watch deep lines form on my face and silver hairs sprout from my scalp and still hold me, cry with me, laugh with me.
Someone I can trust to hold this heart of mine—recently resuscitated after years of dormancy, marked by jagged scars and dark bruises.
Someone who sees the sharp, bloody fragments of my past and doesn’t turn away.
Graham tugs my hand toward him and leaves a kiss on my knuckles. He sends me a sidelong smile, my pulse responding with that funny skittering it’s been doing lately.
And in a single heartbeat, I know the first thing that Sloane wants.
“You two are precious,” Orla is saying. “Reminds me of James and myself when we first married.”
Captain Byrne huffs, mustache twitching. “Don’t be daft, woman, we’re like a fine whisky.”
“Aye, of course—but there’s something about the newlywed glow.” She sighs and pats James on the hand. “Everything was new, and fresh, and… oh, there was nothing quite like the kissin’, if you remember.” Her cheeks color as she winks at me across the table.
I can’t help the heat that rises across my face, like I’m thirteen-years-old and not a woman who just threw a dagger into someone’s skull.
It’s not unusual for a spy to have to flirt and fake attraction while on assignment.
I’ve had my fair share of one-sided relationships and high-stakes missions that justified some terrible kisses.
The last real boyfriend I had was Petyr, mainly because we were both sixteen and bored.
Although, it was short-lived and, uh… didn’t exactly end well.
Needless to say, romance has never been on my mind as much as it is at this exact moment.
And I could swear it’s sending my body into a tailspin, like someone’s first taste of cake after a very, very long diet.
James smacks a good, long kiss on his wife, sitting back in his chair with a triumphant grin. “How’s that for kissin’, love?”
“Grand,” Orla replies with a girlish titter.
“I think we should get some rest,” Graham says, standing and pulling me along with him. “It’s been an… eventful few days, and I think we’re both eager to?—”
“C’mon, then, show us one of those newlywed kisses before you’re off to bed,” Orla interjects.
My heart, previously nestled safely in my chest cavity, begins an impressive gymnastics routine up my throat and down to my toes. Somewhere in there, I manage to find my voice again.
“We’re incredibly grateful for your hospitality.” I gently yank at Graham’s hand, as if to lead him away, but his feet are planted. When I look at him, as if to telepathically communicate my plan to flee, he’s staring at the floor, the muscles of his jaw twitching.
Captain Byrne nudges his wife. “I think they’re shy.”
“Oh, that can’t be true,” she responds, “when we were on our honeymoon, we couldna keep our hands off each other.”
James groans and turns to Graham, slinging an arm across the back of his wife’s chair. “Do a lad a favor, aye? Plant one on Sloane, here, so Orla can finally stop yammerin’ about newlyweds and honeymoons.”
Orla tuts at him and smacks his shoulder.
Graham meets my eyes, rubbing the back of his neck, a thousand indiscernible emotions flashing in his stare. I’m not sure how many moments pass while he searches my face. I can feel my cheeks flaming, hear my pulse raging, the creaks and groans of the ship fading beneath a distant buzzing.
He wants to know if it’s okay, I know, either because he’s a gentleman or because he’s worried about which finger I’ll break if it’s not. Possibly both.
I give an inconspicuous nod.
Graham’s gaze falls to my lips in an instant, as if the dam has broken or a door, somewhere, has yawned open. He’s looking at me—no, studying me—like I’m an antique painting that might crumble if mishandled, not a blunt instrument who’s fought and killed and lied to survive.
And I have no idea how I’m staring back.
I’ve lost all control of my muscles as his arm snakes around my waist and the warmth I’ve leaned on seeps into my skin.
I don’t care about controlling how I react or how I’m perceived as his other hand cradles my jaw, then the back of my neck, drawing me closer.
I tell myself it’ll be just like the rest of my kisses when his cologne—woodsy, expensive, precisely Graham—invades my senses.
Another terrible kiss to finish the mission. That’s all.
Except that survival is the last thing that’s on my mind when his lips drag across mine. Tender, fleeting, like more force might break me.
Which is when I decide the second thing Sloane wants.
My arms loop around his neck right as he begins to pull away, my fingers tangling in that perpetually messy, distracting hair.
Goosebumps erupt down my back as his lips move against mine.
His hands, searing through my sweater, meet at my waist and grip as if he’s worried I might run.
I kiss Graham Baudelaire, infamous thief and infuriating flirt, because I want to.
Because I finally found something I needed to do before I died.
And it’s going to be the first of a long, long list.
I’m consumed—wrapped up and swept away and attached all at once—all the things a proper spy should never be. I want to be reminded every day that I’m still alive, not simply surviving.
What is survival without something to live for?
Graham’s lips tear from mine, and I would stumble away if he didn’t steady me.
I’m in a daze, barely able to register when his hands drop from my waist and he takes a step back, fixing the mess I made of his hair.
And my senses are so overloaded that I barely register the steel wall slide into place behind his gaze.
Now I know what people mean when they say they’ve been thoroughly kissed.
I’m branded, marked by this moment, like my story moving forward will be sorted by before Graham and after Graham.
“Well, I’ll be,” Captain Byrne mutters. I’d forgotten we had an audience. “Turns out my wife may’ve been right for the first time in our whole marriage.” In my peripheral, he casts her a teasing wink.
Orla rolls her eyes. “Oh, hush.”