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The initial horror from what she’d found out about Ryder at the lodge had faded. She was safe now. Not in a situation where they could die at any second and she had to humiliate herself in order to stay alive.

Now that her nervous system was more regulated and she wasn’t living in a constant state of fight-or-flight, the reality of the situation had become harder to sit with: the growing certainty that she’d been unfair.

Not wrong. What Ryder had done was real, and her reaction to it had been real. But she’d shut him out completely, and the completeness of it was the part that kept sticking in her gut.

She stared at the blinking cursor on her screen. There was nothing left to mine from this drive. She’d known that an hour ago. Multiple hours ago, if she was honest. But she’d stayed in here searching, just in case.

That was another thing hard to sit with: she was hiding.

Enough. Hiding had never been who Cassandra was. She damn well wasn’t going to let it start being now.

She powered down the terminal, pulled off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. She would start with coffee, the real stuff the café had. The lab had whatever freeze-dried atrocity someone had stocked the cabinet with six months ago.

She’d go get actual coffee, and if Ryder happened to be there, then maybe they could talk. Or she could figure out how to start talking. One of those.

She pushed through the door and headed down the corridor toward the main level. She could do this. She wasn’t sure she owed Ryder an actual apology, but she did owe him a lot more than avoidance and silence.

Caught up in her thoughts, she didn’t realize the café was half full until she was already inside. A few people scattered at tables, someone at the counter ordering, the low hum of conversation and the smell of actual coffee.

The spiral started before she’d taken three steps.

Four at the corner table, two at the counter, woman crossing toward the door—laptop bag, medical conference lanyard clipped to the strap. Wedding ring, tan line on left hand but ring on right—recently moved it. The man at the counter, coffee in his left hand, pen calluses on his right, folder tucked under his arm with a red tab⁠—

It was building, and she couldn’t stop looking at each person. Her pulse climbed, and the room started to fracture into a thousand details her brain wanted to catalog and connect, and she couldn’t⁠—

Eyes down, Cassie.

His voice. Steady, patient, Ryder.

She dropped her gaze to the floor. The spiral broke. Her breathing slowed. She stood in the doorway of the café with her eyes on the tile and waited for her pulse to come back down.

It worked.

She stood there in the aftermath of it, hands loose at her sides, breathing evening out, and the thing she should have understood days ago settled into her chest like something heavy finding its place.

His voice had come, and she hadn’t hesitated to follow it—not because she’d been trained to, not because it was wired into her reflexes. She’d followed it because it was him.

Because her mind trusted him.

Even knowing about his past, knowing what he’d been, being pissed and scared and confused…she’d trusted him.

He’d stood in that room at the lodge and argued that she would never be able to know for sure that what had happened between them was real. That he hadn’t just been playing her and using her own desires against her to get what he wanted.

He’d argued there was no way she’d ever be able to know she could trust him because he would never be able to prove it.

He didn’t have to. She trusted him. Her brain had just called on his voice as a safety blanket in a moment of crisis. He would be the first person she called if she was in danger and needed help. He was who she would want standing by her side if she had to go into battle.

He didn’t have to prove to her she could trust him. Every part of her already knew.

Head trying to wrap around that thought, she kept her eyes low and ordered her coffee. Took her cup to a table near the wall and sat with what she’d just figured out.

She wanted to find him. She wanted to walk up to him and say something. Exactly what, she hadn’t figured out yet. But the fact that she didn’t have the words wasn’t going to stop her this time.

She left the coffee half finished and went looking for him.

Fallon was in the operations corridor, phone in one hand, tablet in the other, moving fast. She looked like she’d been running on caffeine and logistics for about twelve hours straight.

“Fal.”