“Don’t you dare,” she was saying, her voice fierce despite the tears tracking down her cheeks. “Don’t you dare leave me now, Owen Booker. You promised you wouldn’t let me down when we first met. You remember that?”
Naomi bursting into Nessie’s Place with those posters, all fury and no sense.
Her dark eyes pinning him to the spot, daring him to go to that council meeting.
“Don’t let me down, Ghost.”
Of course he remembered. That moment had changed his entire life for the better.
He tried to smile, to reassure her, but his muscles wouldn’t cooperate. The darkness was closing in, as cold and inevitable as winter.
“If you die, that’s the ultimate let-down,” she whispered, pressing her forehead to his. “So you need to stay here with me. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.”
The words pierced through the fog, bright and sharp and real. He’d never expected to hear them, never expected to deserve them. But there they were, suspended in the air between them, more powerful than the darkness trying to claim him.
I love you too, he tried to say, but the words remained locked in his throat. His eyes met hers, willing her to understand what he couldn’t vocalize—that she’d saved him, in all the ways that mattered. That the broken, lonely man he’d been for so long had found something worth living for in her.
Her hand brushed his cheek, came away wet with what he belatedly realized were tears—his own. When was the last time he’d cried? He couldn’t remember. Years. Decades, maybe.
“Stay with me,” she pleaded, but her voice was fading, the words stretching and distorting like a cassette tape slowing down. “Don’t let me down.”
The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was her eyes—fierce and determined and filled with a love he’d never thought he’d find.
Then, like a candle being snuffed out, the world went black.
forty-four
Ghost scowledfrom the front porch of Walker’s house, his body a constellation of aches that radiated from the through-and-through bullet wound in his side. Three weeks since Julius had put a bullet in him. Two weeks since he’d been released from the hospital with strict instructions to rest—instructions he’d already dismissed as suggestions.
It hadn’t snowed in the valley yet, despite the white creeping farther down the mountains each day. In fact, it was downright balmy for early November, and the Montana sun warmed the wooden planks beneath him… but he couldn’t shake the persistent chill that had settled in his bones since that night in Ava’s cabin. He watched the activity around Valor Ridge through narrowed eyes, cataloging movements and assessing threats out of habit, even though his brain knew there were none. Not here. Not anymore.
He absently traced the edge of his wound through his shirt. The doctors had used words like “lucky” and “millimeters from major organs.”
He didn’t believe in luck.
He believed in angles, trajectories, and the fact that Julius Charlo had been a lousy shot—something that had worked in Ghost’s favor, but had cost several women their lives.
He adjusted his position, stubbornly ignoring the sharp pain that lanced through his side. The limp he’d developed was harder to hide, but he managed a passable imitation of his regular stride whenever anyone was looking.
Pride, maybe.
Or simply a refusal to be perceived as wounded, vulnerable.
Either way, he’d be damned if he’d let anyone see him struggle up the porch steps.
Movement near the firepit caught his eye. River and X lugged a folding table across the yard. They were bickering, as usual—something about optimal table positioning relative to smoke drift—but there was no heat in it. Just the easy rhythm of men who’d found their places in each other’s orbits.
River stretched a banner between two posts, and Ghost’s stomach clenched. The red letters, glittering in the afternoon sun, proclaimed “WELCOME BACK” in handwriting that looked suspiciously like Oliver’s—all uneven capitals and backward letters made charming by enthusiasm. Below the banner, the folding table quickly accumulated items: mismatched mugs, a steaming pot that could only be Jonah’s famous beef stew, a plate of bacon still sizzling and releasing tendrils of mouth-watering scent into the air, and a tray of Nessie’s cinnamon rolls.
They were throwing him a goddamn welcome-back party.
His jaw clenched as he surveyed the setup. The last time anyone had celebrated his existence had been... when? The CIA promotion dinner a decade ago? The sad birthday party at his tenth foster home placement? Ghost couldn’t remember, and that fact alone told him everything he needed to know about how he should feel about this unwanted gesture.
He didn’t deserve celebration. Didn’t know what to do with it. Every instinct screamed at him to retreat to the Hub, to lock himself away with his monitors and his solitude. But even that sanctuary had been compromised—Naomi’s scent still lingered there, her files still occupied a corner of his desk, her coffee mug (chipped at the rim where she’d dropped it during a late-night research binge) still sat beside his computer.
And even after weeks, her scent was all over his bed.
A truck pulled up the drive, kicking up dust that caught golden in the late-afternoon light. Greta was at the wheel, her distinctive strawberry braid visible through the windshield. Mariah emerged from the passenger side, elegant as always despite the gravel and dust, with Tate trailing behind her, his copper curls gleaming in the sun. The boy clutched a paper bag to his chest with the serious concentration of a child entrusted with something precious.
