She looked exhausted, stubborn—like she’d fought a mountain and won.
Wrecked and fierce and beautiful.
Beautiful.
The fever had burned through his last filter, and he was too tired to rebuild it. He’d spent days cataloguing injuries, capabilities, risk factors and survival probabilities. Somewhere along the way he’d missed the obvious.
She’s beautiful.
He didn’t let the thought go any further. No matter how much he wanted it, there was nowhere it could go that didn’t get her killed.
“Thank you,” he said. “You got us here.”
“You gave me the map.”
“You drove.”
“Your car was a total nightmare.”
“Not my car.”
She sighed. “The car you stole was a nightmare.”
The corners of his mouth moved. He was too weak to fight the smile and too tired to pretend he wanted to.
The awkwardness of the kiss was still there. But underneath it—more. They’d kept each other alive. That changed the equation.
She looked away first and fussed with the IV line. But her cheeks were pink, and it wasn’t from cold. “Let me check the wound.”
He nodded, and she changed the dressing with supplies from Katya’s kit. She pressed the fresh bandage into place. He lay still and let her work and tried to maintain the thinning fiction that her hands on his skin were purely medical.
She caught him watching her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m looking at the ceiling.”
“You’re looking at me looking at the ceiling.”
He turned his head and stared at the window with great determination.
Katya brought food with the water. Thick, hot soup heavy with potato and dill. Bread, dark and dense, still warm. He ate slowly while Harper ate like a woman who’d been running on adrenaline and nothing else for days.
She closed her eyes on the first spoonful.
Pav ate his soup and tried not to think about the soft sound of appreciation she made.
The afternoon faded and murky light thinned toward dusk. Harper left to help Katya in the kitchen. The indistinct murmur of conversation filtered through the wall. The women’s voices washed over him, his body warm and drifting.
For the first time in days, he closed his eyes without calculating exits.
Engines.
Multiple. The particular diesel growl of military-grade vehicles close by.
His eyes opened. The switch flipped, training taking over, exhaustion and weakness shoved into a compartment he’d deal with later.
