Page 46 of Shadow Secrets
Sutton was talented, fierce, and funny in a way that caught him off guard every time. She had a life to rebuild—Dom’s parlor, her art, a future she’d been putting on hold since Penn died. She didn’t need a thirty-three-year-old ex-agent with a famous face and a talent for emotional withdrawal anchoring her to Blackridge. She needed space to grow. Room to become the person she’d been before the world had trimmed her down to survival mode.
He was all in—that was the terrifying part. He wasn’t hedging, wasn’t keeping one foot outside the perimeter the way he’d done with every other relationship since the shooting. He was fully inside.
He picked up his phone and opened the browser. The tab was still where he’d left it the night before, the search bar populated with his own name because he’d forced himself to look.
The results hadn’t improved. Three days after the hospital shooting, the story had metastasized and #FindBastian was still trending. A tabloid had run a Source Inside Montana piece featuring grainy parking-lot photos of what the article claimed was Sebastian leaving a secure facility.
The photos were of CB. Nobody had corrected the record because correcting it would confirm Sebastian’s location. Charlotte had texted him at two a.m. with a screenshot of a sidewalk reporter outside her building in Manhattan.
And now, the part he’d been dreading—the fan sites had put him with Sutton. Someone at the hospital had leaked a shot from their security footage of the two of them just before they’d entered Dom’s room.
MYSTERY BRUNETTE WITH BASTIAN, the headline read. The comment sections were already exploding. The name Crenshaw hadn’t been matched yet. When it was—and some bored internet sleuth with a spreadsheet would do it—the feeding frenzy would swallow her whole.
The math was ugly. Assassin’s sister plus America’s hero. The tabloid headline wrote itself. BASTIAN WHITAKER WITH THE SISTER OF THE MAN WHO TRIED TO KILL GINGER GALBRAITH. That headline was coming. The only question was which outlet ran it first.
He closed the browser and stared at the mountains again until the rage burning in his gut cooled into something manageable.
Six years ago, when he’d been the headline, he’d survived it by going invisible. He’d given up his career, his family relationships, every friend who now saw him as a man with a medal. He’d reduced his life to a point so small the spotlight couldn’t find it. And it had worked, more or less. Montana had given him a version of peace he could live with.
Sutton didn’t have that option. She had a life she’d built in the margins because she didn’t want to be a headline, didn’t want to be the sister of the shooter, didn’t want her work measured against her brother’s crime. By standing next to Sebastian, she’d inherit a second layer of notoriety on top of the one she’d been outrunning for six years.
He sighed heavily. He could let her go.
The thought arrived without warning. This is only data, he tried to convince himself. He could end it now—tonight, tomorrow, before the FBI declared her safe and the choice became hers. He could give her a reason that would stick, say he’d reconsidered. He could tell her the crisis had clouded his judgment. Let her walk into her future unattached to his name, unassociated with his photograph, free to build whatever she wanted without the gravitational pull of his fame distorting every step.
It would cause her some pain. She’d survive it. She’d survived worse.
But he’d never see her again. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Gripped the edge of the sink, head down, breathing through the tightness in his chest.
Trust the data.
The data was not the tabloid forecast. The data was Sutton in his shirt, drawing in the notebook they’d stolen from Vivi, tracing a lynx on his arm. The data was her mouth on his scar. The data was her voice saying stay with me in a way that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with choice.
I can’t let her go. I can’t force her to walk away.
But…he could tell her the truth and let her decide. He could put every cost on the table—the headlines, the harassment, the tabloid photographers who’d stake out her apartment, the way her art might be discussed for reasons that had nothing to do with the art—and let her look at it clearly and choose.
He owed her that. He owed her the truth. He just had to find the right moment to give it to her, before the world decided it for them both.
Two mornings ago, he’d woken up with her head on his chest, her fingers resting on the scar, and his first thought hadn’t been about threat assessments or compound security. It had been: Don’t move. Don’t wake her. Keep still.
He was all in, but the question that continued to keep him standing at this counter at zero-six-hundred was whether Sutton would come to her senses once the crisis was over. Once the adrenaline burned off. Once she was back in her studio apartment above the laundromat with her succulents and her sketchbooks, and Sebastian Whitaker was no longer the man standing between her and a bullet but just…a man. A man whose name was tangled with her brother’s death. A man she’d hated a week ago.
She padded into the kitchen in wool socks and one of his T-shirts that hung past her thighs. Her hair was a mess—pushed to one side, a crease from the pillowcase still visible on her cheek. She looked half-asleep, entirely beautiful, and completely unaware of what she did to him.
She made a noise that wasn’t a word, pointed at the coffee pot, and slumped into a chair.
He poured her a cup and set it, along with a handful of sugar packets, in front of her.
She added two of the sugars, then wrapped both hands around the mug, inhaled the steam, and took a long drink with her eyes closed. The sigh that followed was deeply satisfied. He leaned against the counter, watching her, memorizing the moment. The crease on her cheek, her ink peeking out below the rolled sleeve of his shirt.
Stay, he thought. When this is over, stay.
He didn’t say it aloud.
“I was thinking last night,” she said, opening her eyes. The brown was warm in the morning light. He loved the amber flecks. “About what comes next, after this.”
His chest tightened. Here it is.
