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)
Until Toby. Until I found out what I was.
Nate is quiet for a moment. “There’s a lot you haven’t told me. About your father. About this place.”
I sigh heavily. God, the air is so sweet here, it fills your lungs like nothing else.
“I know,” I say. “And I will.”
“Copy that,” he says, his hand brushing against mine in the dark, sending shivers up my arm and down my spine. Then it brushes again and then his hand stills as it makes contact, his fingers wrapping around mine and holding me.
My heart skips a beat and I have to remind myself to breathe again. Funny how something as small and chaste as holding someone’s hand can mean so much.
We carry on like that in the dark until the facility looms ahead, all concrete and security lights. It looks smaller than I remember, less intimidating. Or maybe I’ve just faced scarier things since then.
Then Nate’s hand falls away, creating distance, leaving my palm cold and bare.
My father swipes a keycard at a side entrance, and we slip inside. The hallways are empty—it’s past midnight, and his assistant probably won’t be back until morning.
“This way,” my father says, leading us deeper into the building. Past labs I remember, past equipment I recognize from years of poking around where I wasn’t supposed to be.
We stop at a heavy door marked DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING.
“The scan will take a bit of time,” my father says to Nate. “It’s non-invasive, mostly—magnetic resonance, neural mapping, the standard battery. I’ll need you to stay as still as possible.”
“And Mia?”
“She can wait in the observation room. Or—” My father glances at me. “There’s a cot in my office, if you need to rest. You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’ve been beaten, tortured, and flown across a continent in the space of a week.” His voice softens, just slightly. “Let me help him. You don’t need to keep watch every second.”
“But I do,” I tell him. I’m not leaving Nate’s side now, even if we are safe. “I’ll watch from the observation room.” My father nods. He opens the door to the imaging suite and gestures for Nate to enter.
He disappears into the imaging suite and I stand in the empty hallway for a long moment, surrounded by the hum of equipment and the ghosts of a childhood I’ve spent years trying to forget.
Then I push open the door to the observation room and settle in to wait.
CHAPTER 48
MIA
The observation room is small and cold, humming with the low drone of equipment.
Through the reinforced glass, I can see Nate lying in the scanner—a massive cylindrical machine that looks like an MRI machine on steroids. He’s completely still, eyes closed, and if I didn’t know better I’d think he was sleeping. But I can see the tension in his jaw, the way his hands are curled into loose fists at his sides.
I can tell he hates this. Being examined. Being studied. Being treated like a specimen instead of a person.
The door opens behind me and my father slips in, two mugs of tea in hand he’s brought in from his office. He offers one to me and I take it, more for the warmth than any desire to drink.
“The initial scans are running,” he says, settling into the chair beside mine. “Should have preliminary results in about an hour.”
“What do you think you’ll find?” I ask.
He gives me a quick smile. “A scientific breakthrough is all a scientist can really hope for.”
We sit in silence for a moment, watching Nate through the glass. The scanner hums. The monitors flicker with data I can’t interpret, but they seem to be measuring him in every which way.
“He cares about you,” my father says quietly. “It’s obvious, the way he looks at you. All you’ve gone through.”
I don’t answer. I’m not sure what to say, because I know he does care about me. Just anything beyond that is where it gets murky.
“And you?” He turns slightly, studying my profile the way he used to when I was a teenager and he was trying to figure out what I was hiding. “Do you care about him?”
“It’s complicated.” Just fucking stamp that shit on my forehead.
“Isn’t it always, though?”
I take a sip of tea. It’s too hot and it burns my tongue, but I welcome the distraction.
“He’s not what I expected,” I finally say. “When I took the mission, I thought—I thought he’d be like any other target.” I watch Nate’s chest rise and fall, steady and slow. “But he’s not. He’s broken. Like me. And somehow that just made everything worse.”
“Because you understand each other.”
“Yeah, I guess so. So few people do.”
My father is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is softer, more hesitant.
“Do you love him?”
The question hits me hard. I’ve been avoiding it for weeks, dancing around the edges, telling myself that whatever I feel for Nate is just proximity and trauma and the strange intimacy of two people who’ve seen each other at their worst. What are we if not two monsters, two killers, two dark souls looking for the light.