Beau doesn’t ask often. Beau doesn’t beg. If he says he needs me, it means he has already run through every other option and hated the results.
“Mercer has backup,” Beau continues. “At least two. Possibly more. He isn’t moving alone.”
My eyes drift to the desk. My mind pulls up Brooke’s face without asking.
I swallow.
I owe Beau my life.
That debt is not something you pay back with words. Beau has pulled me out of situations that should have ended me. He has done it without ever saying it out loud, but I keep the score anyway. I keep it because I’m not stupid. When you owe someone like Beau, you don't forget it without becoming the kind of man I refuse to be.
Still, guilt burns in my chest because I know what this will look like from Brooke’s side.
I disappear again.
I choose violence again.
I choose someone else’s need over her peace again.
Brooke has been through too much to be treated like that. She has earned truth in blood. Every secret I keep from her feels like stealing something.
I drag a hand down my face. “She’ll know something is off.”
“She’ll know if you act weird,” Beau replies. “So don’t.”
I let out a slow breath. “That's not helpful advice.”
“You want helpful?” Beau folds his arms. “Mercer is already moving. Someone most likely sent him to kill me.”
My stomach twists.
I could say no. I could stay.
And then Mercer would show up anyway, and I would have to live with the fact that I left Beau alone against a man who has always loved stacked odds.
I rub a hand over my mouth and stare at the floor for a beat.
“How soon?”
“Tonight,” Beau pushes off the desk. “We go in quiet. We end it fast. We come back.”
I nod once, slow, because my body has already decided and my mind is still trying to fight it.
“If anything shifts, we leave.” I hold his stare. “If I say we’re done, we’re done.”
Beau nods. “Fine.”
I move toward the door, then stop with my hand on the knob.
Behind it, Brooke is still in the living room. She's still waiting in that soft, fragile space we keep trying to build inside chaos. If I walk back in there and lie to her face, part of me will hate myself for it.
If I don’t go with Beau, part of me will hate myself for that too.
I stand there, trapped between loyalty and love, and neither one feels clean.
I open the door and step back into the hall with Beau right behind me. The quiet in the house feels different from the tension in the office.
Brooke looks up from the couch the second we come back in. Her eyes move between us.
