Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
“Helios,” I mutter. “That pretentious prick.”
SIXTEEN
AFTER
LARK
The cabin gets quiet in a different way at night.
Morning quiet is heavy with dread and coffee and bad news waiting inside encrypted files. Night quiet is… softer. The forest noise turns into a hush, and the little space around us feels less like a hideout and more like a bubble.
Knight gets the fire going in the tiny stone hearth, feeding it kindling with practiced hands. Orange light spills into the room, banishing the last of the gray. Shadows climb the wood-paneled walls.
I sit cross-legged on the rug with a blanket around my shoulders, mug of tea cooling between my palms, watching him like a creep.
He’s in sweatpants and a black t-shirt, bare feet, hair mussed from his fingers. The hard lines in his face are a little softer in this light. He looks less like the scary anonymous vigilante, and more like Knight Hayes, the boy who once drove me to a 7-Eleven at midnight because I’d never had a Slurpee and decided that was a life crisis.
My heart does that stupid flip it keeps doing now.
I’m so far gone it’s not even funny.
He tosses the last piece of kindling on, waits until the flames catch, then drops down onto the rug beside me with a little groan, stretching his long legs out toward the fire.
“Back okay?” I ask.
“Back’s fine,” he says. “Brain’s fried. Soul’s questionable. But my back is a temple.”
I snort into my mug. “You’re such an idiot.”
“You like that about me,” he says, leaning sideways until our shoulders touch.
I do.
Too much.
For a minute, we just sit there, staring at the fire. The flames crackle and pop, the sound almost hypnotic. For the first time all day, no one is talking in my ear. No ping from Arrow. No new bounty updates. No ghost of Luka’s smug face in my head.
It’s just… this.
Him.
Me.
And a future I’m half afraid to look at straight on.
“You’re doing the face,” Knight says quietly.
I blink. “What face?”
“The one where you’re somewhere three months ahead, arguing with a version of me that hasn’t happened yet,” he says. “What’s going on in there, Birdie?”
I take a sip of tea to buy time.
It’s lukewarm and tastes like cardboard and comfort.
“If I tell you,” I say slowly, “you have to promise not to make fun of me.”
“Oh, this is going to be good,” he murmurs, turning slightly to face me. The firelight catches the stubble on his jaw, the curve of his mouth. “Proceed.”
I roll my eyes, then pull the blanket tighter and look straight into the fire. “I was thinking about home,” I say. “About… afterward. If we get one.”
“If?” he echoes, a quiet warning.
“When,” I correct, because I know he needs me to. “When we get one.”
His fingers find the edge of the blanket where it pools on the rug. He fiddles with the fringe, like he’s trying not to spook me. “And?” he prompts.
“And I was…” I swallow. “I was wondering what happens when we go back. To, you know. Real life. Gage. The apartment. Work.”
“Mm.” He nods slowly. “You’re worried things will go back to exactly how they were.”
The idea makes my chest hurt.
“Yeah,” I admit. “Except, no, not really, because they can’t. I don’t… I don’t think I can go back to pretending you’re just my brother’s best friend and ignores my crush like it’s his full-time job.”
He winces. “Ouch. Brutal but fair.”
“And I don’t want to,” I blur out before I lose my nerve. “I don’t want to go back to that. I want… this. You. All the way. Outside of murder cabins. Outside of trauma.”
My voice wobbles on the last word.
I hate that.
Knight stills.
The fire snaps in the silence.
“You’re talking about a real relationship,” he says softly. “Not just… safe house logic.”
I stare at my hands, at the mug, at the tiny chips in the ceramic.
“I’ve wanted a real relationship with you since I figured out what my feelings were,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “When I was a kid, it was a crush. A… ‘you’re cool and older and broody and you smell good’ situation.”
He snorts.
I keep going.
“But I didn’t… know you then the way I do now. I didn’t know about your dad, or the stuff you did to survive, or how hard you’ve been trying to aim yourself at better targets. I didn’t know the way you look at people when you’re worried they’re going to break and you’re pretending you’re not worried. I didn’t know that under all the sarcasm and code and hoodie, you’re just this huge, ridiculous heart with a firewall.”
My throat tightens.
“Now I know,” I say. “And I still… want you. More. Not less. And if we go home and you decide this was just a bunker fluke, I’m going to—”
“Stop,” he says, sharp enough that I do.