Page 52 of Shadow Secrets
“Sutton.”
“I’m thinking about calling the series ‘Callsigns.’ Or maybe ‘Perimeter.’ Something catchy. I’ll workshop it.”
He closed his eyes. She watched his jaw work. Then, slowly, the faintest crease appeared at the corner of his mouth—the ghost of a smile she’d been coaxing out of him in pieces since the compound tour.
“You’re impossible,” he said.
“I’m stubborn. You know this.”
The crease grew. Not quite a smile, but closer.
He opened his eyes. Looked past her at the apartment, cleaner now, but still small and cluttered with all of her things. A work in progress. An unfinished project. A life she was rebuilding out of pieces.
“You know,” he said, “the farmhouse is a lot roomier and doesn’t have the constant sound of running dryers.”
“Are you suggesting we abandon this mess?”
“I’m suggesting we stay at my place tonight. You can show me this new fantasy line of yours. I want to know what I’m getting into before the first one goes live.”
She laughed, the first full laugh she’d had in—she couldn’t remember how long. The relief of it ran through her like warm water.
The tiff wasn’t resolved. He’d come back to the doubt, she knew. Men like Sebastian didn’t shed years of isolation in a single afternoon, no matter how much she wanted him to. But right now, in this moment, the light had come back into his face, and that was enough.
“Let me grab some things,” she said, “and we can go.”
She moved to the dresser, pulled out a drawer, and started stuffing clothes into her duffel bag. A clean pair of jeans. Two T-shirts. Pajamas, which she probably wouldn’t need. A toothbrush. She glanced up once. Sebastian was watching her pack with an expression she couldn’t quite read—something fond, something wary, something that looked like a man who’d just been talked off a ledge and was still deciding whether to thank the person who pulled him back or worry about the next ledge.
She zipped the bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Just so we’re clear.” She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth, right where the split lip was nearly healed. “This isn’t over. The conversation. I mean it when I say I’m not walking away. You’re stuck with me, Callsigns line and all.”
His arm came around her waist and tightened. For a moment, he held her against him, his face in her hair, and she felt the long, slow exhale that meant—for this moment—he was choosing her instead of the doubt.
“Copy that, Ink,” he said.
Together, they walked down the narrow stairs past the laundromat and out onto the street, where the October evening had gone cold, and the stars were beginning to come out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sebastian
Sebastian finally stopped checking the news.
The tabloids had linked Sutton to him within forty-eight hours of the hospital incident—her full name, her address, her Instagram, her parents’ divorce paperwork, Penn’s crime scene photographs making the rounds again.
A cable segment had aired the previous night speculating about the strange coincidence of America’s Hero ending up with the sister of the man who’d tried to kill the girl he’d saved.
A fan account with ninety thousand followers had posted a side-by-side of Sutton and Ginger with a caption Sebastian hadn’t let himself read past the first line.
It was worse than what he’d predicted, but between the farmhouse shower yesterday morning and the drive into town today, he’d stopped being afraid of it.
Not because the cost had gotten smaller. The cost was exactly the size he’d warned Sutton about. Every stranger on the internet was doing exactly what he’d said they’d do. Her website had been attacked. Her Instagram had swelled from forty-three followers to eighteen thousand, but was hemorrhaging comments faster than she could mute the offensive ones.
He’d stopped being afraid of it because she wasn’t. He was still recalibrating around that. Sutton had opened the tabloid coverage on her phone yesterday morning, read three paragraphs, said “Oh, they’re really going for it,” and then set the phone facedown on the kitchen counter and made pancakes. From scratch, using the flour she’d made him stop at the grocery store to buy on the way home from her apartment.
She’d handled the worst media day of her life by feeding him breakfast and making him promise that when this was all over, they were going to Yellowstone.
