Page 109 of Falcon’s Forever

Zip calls from a few feet off, close enough to have been listening the whole time. "Definitely."

I turn my head. "Go away."

"I'm leaving." He doesn't leave, just moves ten feet farther and checks his phone with exaggerated focus.

Cara smiles. "You stayed."

"Yeah."

"Was it hard?"

I could pretend it wasn't. "I hated every second."

Her smile grows, and that surprises me. "What?"

"Nothing," she says.

"Cara."

"It just makes it more believable." I wait, and she explains. "If you told me you suddenly didn't want to chase them, I wouldn't believe you. That's not who you are. You wanted to, and you still chose not to."

"Yes."

“I saw you from the window,” she says. “Not everything. Just you stepping toward the fence.”

My chest tightens. “What?”

“I thought you were going to climb over it.”

“So did I,” I admit.

Cara holds my gaze. “But you didn’t.”

“No.”

She folds her arms against the cold. “I was scared.”

“I know.”

Her eyes drop briefly before finding mine again. “I was scared you’d disappear again.”

The words are quiet, but I understand the weight under them. She didn't mean physically. She meant the other version of disappearing, the one where I stop listening the second danger shows up.

"I almost did," I admit. "I felt the pull."

"But you didn't go."

"Because I knew what it would cost."

"Your patch?"

"No." That answer comes easy. "Trust."

The word sits between us. Hers, my brothers', mine. I spent years believing trust meant everyone else trusted me to make the call alone. I'm starting to understand it runs both directions.

"I trusted Zip to hold the line beside me. Rook to cover the north. Ice Pick to cover the east. Condor to watch the cameras. Vulture to make the call if something changed." I look at her. "And I trusted you to know what was happening without me running over here trying to control it."

"That last part was probably the hardest," she says.