Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Love him.
The thought snakes across my brain, threatening to undo me.
No.
I don’t love him. I can’t love him.
I don’t even know what love is.
He is the target. That’s all he will ever be.
And yet, I’m still lying to myself.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say, the words coming out of me like they have a will of their own.
Nate looks at me, waiting, and I feel the weight of everything pressing down—Kapoor, Paragon, Prometheus, all of it balanced on the edge of my tongue. The lies, so many lies upon lies.
But these words refuse to leave my mouth. If I tell him the truth, I blow my cover, the mission ends, and whatever fragile thing is growing between us shatters along with it. It will shatter into so many fucking pieces, there will be no chance in hell of them being put back together.
So, I swallow the confession and give him something smaller instead, smaller but no less true.
“I’m scared,” I say, staring at our hands. “Of what’s happening between us. Of how much I…” I trail off, start again. “I know you probably know this by now, but…I don’t do this. Get close to people. Let them in. It’s not… I wasn’t built for it.”
His expression softens. “Neither was I, darlin’.”
“But here we are.”
“Here we are.”
He pulls me closer, tucking me against his side, while the candles flicker and the city hums below us. I let myself lean into him, into the warmth and the steadiness, even though I know it can’t last.
“Whatever happens,” he says quietly, “whatever they try to turn me into…I need you to know something.”
“What?”
“This.” His arm tightens around me. “You and me. This is the most real thing in my life, the only thing that feels like it’s actually mine.”
Oh, kill me now.
My throat closes on me. I want to tell him the truth so badly. I want to confess everything all at once and warn him about what’s coming.
But agents don’t get to want things, especially not NOCs. We follow orders. We complete objectives. We are the ghosts of this corrupt world, and we sacrifice whatever needs sacrificing in order to get the job done.
And sometimes, those sacrifices cost us everything.
So I say nothing. I just hold him tighter and watch the lights of the harbor blur through the tears I refuse to let fall.
CHAPTER 30
VANGUARD
The Muppet Show blares from my widescreen TV, and Mia laughs, this full-bodied sound that makes my chest feel buoyant in the best possible way, as Kermit frantically tries to introduce the guest star while chaos erupts backstage.
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen this,” I say, pulling her closer on the couch. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and her underwear and nothing else, her bare legs tucked underneath her, hair still damp from the shower we shared twenty minutes ago.
“We didn’t have access to a lot of US streamers growing up,” she says. “My mum thought it would rot our brains.”
“She wasn’t wrong.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “But The Muppets are world-class programming.”
As we continue watching, Animal destroys a drum set while Miss Piggy loses her mind. Mia snorts into her wine glass, and I find myself watching her more than the show. The way the light from the TV plays across her face, the way her eyes dance moments before she laughs, that cluster of freckles on her collarbone I traced with my tongue an hour ago.
Christ, has it only been an hour?
The evening replays in my head like a highlight reel I’ll never delete. The picnic on Lady Liberty’s torch, with champagne and candles and the city sparkling below us. The way Mia listened when I told her about the calibration, about the supposed peacekeeping, about feeling like I don’t know who I am anymore. She didn’t try to fix it or minimize it. She just heard me. I can’t remember the last time I was actually heard.
Feels fucking good.
And then, after the champagne was gone and the candles guttered out, she’d pushed me back against those cushions and worked her way down my body with a deliberateness that made my head spin. Her mouth was hot and wet, her eyes locked on mine the whole time, watching my face like she wanted to memorize every reaction. I came so hard, I saw stars, and when I finally caught my breath, she was smiling up at me like she’d won something.
You’re going to kill me, I’d told her.
I was joking, but she didn’t seem to find it funny.
The flight back to my penthouse was a blur of cold air and primal desire. The second we landed on my balcony, I had her pinned against the glass doors, my mouth on her throat, her legs wrapped around my waist. We didn’t make it past the couch. I took her right there on the leather, still in her coat, her nails raking down my back, her voice breaking on my name.