And now they were leaving, loading gear into the SUV idling at the end of the drive, while I kept my face arranged into something neutral and my hands in my pockets where they wouldn’t betray me by reaching for him.
The extra coffee cup was still on the counter. Cruz had washed it—the only one of the team who’d bothered—and set it in the dish rack to dry, the blue ceramic catching the morning light from the east window.
He’d done it without being asked, the same way he’d fixed the drainage problem in the fourth greenhouse without mentioning the half-cut pipe I’d left on the floor. The same way he’d sleptwith one arm across my chest, like he was making sure I’d still be there when he woke up.
Cruz did a final sweep of the kitchen table, collecting the satellite tablet and the folded property map. He tucked both into his bag without looking at me, then zipped it closed with a single decisive motion.
“It’s two weeks, max,” he said, his voice level, his eyes on the bag rather than my face. “Sterling’s running point. We’ll be in and out before the weather changes.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Two weeks. Fourteen days. A mission timeline that could double without warning, a contract that could extend, a situation that could go sideways in ways none of us had planned for.
I knew the drill. Had lived it myself for years.
Didn’t make it easier to watch him walk out the door.
“I’ll text when I can,” Cruz said, finally looking at me, his expression carefully neutral in a way that didn’t match the tension in his shoulders. “Probably not much the first few days. Standard comms blackout until we’re established.”
“Copy that,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I’d intended. “Just—“ I stopped, not sure what I’d been about to ask. Just be careful? Just come back in one piece? Just remember there’s someone counting the days?
Cruz waited, his eyes on mine, giving me time to find the words. When they didn’t come, he reached for me instead, one hand coming up to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone in a gesture so gentle it made my chest tight.
“I’ll be back,” he said, the words simple but weighted with something I wasn’t ready to examine. “Two weeks, max. I promise.”
I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak, and stepped into his space. His hand moved from my jaw to the back of myneck, fingers threading through my hair with careful attention, like he was memorizing the feel of it.
I kissed him once—hard enough to make a point, soft enough to mean it—then stepped back before I could change my mind.
“Text when you can,” I said, keeping my voice even with an effort that would have embarrassed me if I’d had room for anything beyond the hollow feeling in my chest. “Be safe.”
Cruz held my eyes for a long moment, something passing between us that I couldn’t name, then nodded once and reached for his bag. “Two weeks,” he said again, like he was making sure I’d heard him the first time.
I walked him to the door, then stood on the porch while he loaded the last of his gear into the SUV. The morning was clear—sky blue from horizon to horizon, mountains sharp against the eastern sky, the kind of perfect Montana day that made you forget pretty much everything.
Cruz said something to Sterling—too low for me to catch—then turned back to the porch. He took the steps in two strides, caught my face between his hands, and kissed me again, harder this time, with an edge of desperation that matched the hollow feeling in my chest.
Then he was gone, moving down the drive with that ground-eating stride that carried him from one point to the next without wasted motion. The SUV’s engine caught with a rumble that carried across the open ground, then the vehicle was moving, gravel crunching under its tires as it rolled toward the main road.
I stood on the porch until it disappeared behind the tree line, then for three minutes after that, counting seconds in my head and trying to ignore the ache in my chest that came with watching someone drive away when you wanted them to stay.
When I was sure I had my face under control, I went back inside. The house felt different already—quieter, emptier, the airbetween rooms suddenly too still. I moved to the kitchen on autopilot, sat down at the table, and wrapped both hands around my cold coffee mug.
The ceramic was rough under my palms, the dregs at the bottom long since gone bitter. I stared at it without really seeing it, my mind already mapping flight paths east—Billings to Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to wherever Sterling had sent them.
My stomach turned over hard—a sudden, violent lurch that had me pushing back from the table with enough force to rock the chair. I made it to the bathroom just in time, knees hitting the tile floor, one hand braced on the porcelain as my body emptied itself of the coffee and toast I’d managed that morning.
When it was over, I sat back on my heels, one arm braced against the wall, and tried to catch my breath. My heart was hammering in my chest, sweat beading along my hairline despite the cool air coming through the half-open window.
Stress crash, I told myself. Body recalibrating after the Peterson situation resolved. Nothing to worry about. Just the physical manifestation of running on adrenaline and not enough sleep.
I rinsed my mouth at the sink, splashed cold water on my face, then went back to the kitchen for a glass of water. The house was quiet around me—no radio playing in the spare room, no boots on the stairs, no low voices from the porch where Sterling and Harker had spent twenty minutes that morning discussing approach vectors for whatever mission had pulled them away.
Just the soft tick of the clock above the stove and the occasional creak of the foundation settling.
I told myself it was the stress. Told myself that for three days straight, while my body continued its apparent mission to betray me at every opportunity.
I couldn’t keep coffee down. Couldn’t keep much of anything down, really—toast came back up, eggs came back up, even the protein shake I forced myself to drink after twenty-four hours of nothing stayed down for approximately seven minutes before making a reappearance.
I was exhausted in a way that eight hours of sleep didn’t touch—the kind of bone-deep weariness that came from being awake for seventy-two hours straight, except I was going to bed at ten and waking up at five, exactly the same schedule I’d kept since moving to Montana.
