Page 104 of The Endless Want

Her eyes open. And the look she gives me is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to hope dying and being reborn in the same breath. “Then stay,” she murmurs, voice shaking. “Not as a soldier. Not as someone waiting for orders. Stay because you want to.”

I let go of her wrist. Only because touching her right now feels like standing on the edge of a cliff with my chest open. “I want to,” I say.

It’s the truth. It’s terrifying. And it’s not enough.

She turns away, gathering herself, and that small distance between us feels larger than any war I’ve ever fought. “I have to get ready,” she says. “Mackenzie is coming in an hour for my prenatal check-in.”

“Okay.”

“But you can stay,” she adds, almost too quietly. “If you want.”

I nod. “I’ll be here.”

She pauses halfway up the stairs, looking back at me with something unreadable—fear, maybe. Longing. Exhaustion. Vulnerability. All the things she never lets anyone see. And then she says, “Declan?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for last night.”

I swallow hard. “You don’t have to thank me.”

But she does anyway. With a soft smile. Then she goes upstairs, leaving me standing in the kitchen with my pulse pounding and my lungs refusing to work like they were meant to.

I sit back on the couch, tilt my head against the cushions, and let the morning wash over me.

For the first time, I’m choosing not to run from the one thing in my life that might matter more than the war we’re fighting—Her.

CHAPTER 32

Ailish

I wake with the kind of start that feels as though someone pulled a string in the center of my chest. My eyes open on a rush of half-remembered dreams, all blurred edges and frantic shadows. For a second, I don’t know where I am. The safehouse is too quiet, too still, and the empty stretch of blanket beside me hits like a cold shock as I remember asking Declan to stay.

Remember catching him on the couch and covering him with a blanket. And then the day together. Slow and calm. And he stayed again. Was still here after my appointment.

But a familiar worry and emptiness hits me. Is he gone? Of course he’s gone.

It shouldn’t hurt. I shouldn’t feel that sinking weight beneath my ribs, the kind that tugs everything else down with it. Yesterday was… something undefined. A truce. A pause in the war between us. A moment. But Declan has always been an unpredictable tide—rushing in, retreating without warning, leaving everything warped in his wake.

I press my palms to my eyes, steadying my breath. I promised myself I wouldn’t rely on him for anything emotional. He has enough to carry without adding my panic or loneliness to the pile. And I have enough to carry—more than he knows.

Still… Still it would’ve been nice if he’d stayed.

I swing my feet over the side of the bed slowly, my posture shifting around the weight of my stomach.

Then I hear it. A low clink. A faint scrape. A soft exhale.

My pulse jerks. There’s someone in the apartment.

I rise carefully, quietly, staying close to the wall as I pad toward the living area. The hallway is dim, filled with soft morning light angling through the blinds. As I reach the end of it, I pause—brace—and lean just enough to see around the corner.

And I freeze.

Declan stands at the stove, shirtless, steam curling around his shoulders like smoke. His hair is a tousled mess. His back is broad, scarred, familiar in ways I try not to admit. He’s barefoot, moving with a slow patience I’ve never seen in him—never associated with him. One hand balances a mug, the other stirs something in a pot.

He’s here. He stayed.

A rush of warmth gathers behind my sternum, fragile, tentative, as if it might shatter if I breathe too hard. He looks… calm. Not the restless, vibrating tension that usually coils under his skin. Not the edge-of-a-fight posture he wears around everyone. This is a version of him I’ve only glimpsed in fragments—fleeting, accidental, usually when he thought no one was watching.