Page 71 of Property of Scar

“I left. I took what they had taught me, and I walked away, and I’ve hunted alone since because I learned what it costs to believe someone’s standing beside you only to look across and find the space empty.” I hold his gaze, level and steady. “I work alone because I can’t trust anyone not to betray me. That’s not cynicism. That’s just the data.”

Scar looks at me for a long moment. The kind of look that reads context rather than just content, that takes in not what was said but what it cost to say it. I watch something move through his expression that he lets me see, which is rare enough from him that it registers—recognition, the kind that only happens when someone hears their own history in different words.

“Trust is earned,” he says quietly.

Three words with no softness to them or comfort. Just truth, worn down to something clean and unavoidable, and that settles somewhere deeper than it should.

My chest tightens around it, something complicated and unhelpful threading through the aftermath of adrenaline that hasn’t quite left my system yet. The fight is still in me, still humming under my skin, every nerve a little too awake, a little too aware, and now it has nowhere to go.

I don’t look away.

His hand is still around my wrist, not holding me, not restraining, just… there. Close enough that I can feel the steady rhythm of my pulse under his fingers, the contrast of it against the absolute stillness of him. Just that quiet, controlled presence that never shifts.

Except now.

Now there’s something else in it.

But I feel it anyway.

The same way I feel the space between us.

The same way, I’m suddenly aware of every inch of distance separating us and every instinct telling me to close it. Heat settles low in my stomach, gathering strength the longer neither of us looks away.

Too close to be comfortable.

Far enough apart to be a problem.

“Then earn it,” I say.

The words land between us, quieter than I intended, but they don’t waver.

Neither of us moves.

And time does something strange.

The bar below us hums with life, muffled music, voices, the low pulse of something normal, something that belongs to a world we’re not part of right now. Up here, everything feels suspended, held in place by something thinner than it should be.

I become aware of everything at once.

The faint iron in the air.

The warmth of his hand at my wrist.

The way his gaze hasn’t shifted, softened, or given me an easy out.

And the fact that I haven’t taken one.

His thumb moves…

Barely.

A small shift against the inside of my wrist, enough to feel and send something sharp and electric up my arm that has nothing to do with the fight and everything to do with how aware I am of him right now.

My breath catches.

Just for a second.

And that’s all it takes.