Page 144 of Falcon’s Forever

"I told you I was done," she says. "In that living room, with Emily's blood still on my hands, I told you I couldn't do this, and I meant it, every word of it, I want you to know I meant it."

"I know you did."

"And then tonight I sat in a waiting room and the only thing I could think about, the only thing, was that I never got to tell you I took it back. Not all of it. Not the boundary, not the thing about needing you to choose the option that doesn't get you killed. But the done part. I took that back weeks ago and I never said it out loud because I was scared saying it meant I was agreeing to spend the rest of my life doing exactly this, sitting in a chair like this one, waiting to find out if you're going to walk back through a door."

My throat's doing something complicated. "And now?"

"And now I've done it anyway," she says. "Tonight. Whether I agreed to it or not. I sat in that chair and I did the thing I was afraid of, and I'd do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, for as long as you're stupid enough to keep throwing yourself between bullets and women who aren't you, because the alternative is not having you at all, and I tried that for five years, Falcon, and I am not doing it again by choice."

"Cara."

"I love you," she says, like it's the simplest fact in the world, which maybe it always was and we just made it complicated because we didn't know how to survive anything simple yet. "I know I said it before, but I love you, and I'm terrified of what that costs, and I'm done pretending the terror is a good enough reason to stand outside it."

I want to sit up. Every instinct in me wants to close the distance and do this properly, the way it deserves, and my body vetoes that plan hard enough that I actually laugh, which hurts enough to prove I'm alive in a way the beeping machine hasn't quite managed to.

"Don't," she says immediately, hand flat on my chest, gentle but absolute. "Don't you dare move."

"Wasn't going to." I know he’s lying, I saw his body trying to move.

"You were entirely going to."

"A little." I catch her hand before she can pull it back, and thread our fingers together instead. "I love you too. I never stopped, not for one day, and I know that's not new information, but I want it said out loud in a room that isn't full of grief for once."

Something in her face gives way completely. "Say it again."

"I love you."

"Again."

"I love you, Cara. However many times you need it, for as long as you need it, in every room we're ever in, grieving or not."

She laughs, wet and unsteady, and presses her mouth to our joined hands instead of mine, she’s being careful of the lines running into my arm

"You're not allowed to do that again," she says.

"I make a lot of promises I probably can't keep."

"I know. Promise me anyway."

"I'll try not to get shot again," I say, and she huffs something that's half a laugh, half a sob, and I mean it as much as a man can mean anything from a hospital bed with painkillers dragging at the edges of him. "I can't promise the danger stops. I can promise I'm not choosing it for its own sake anymore."

"I know you do." Her thumb moves once over my knuckles. "I watched you learn it. That's the only reason I'm still here instead of walking away for good."

Somewhere under the relief and the drugs and the ache radiating out from my side, Carrot's face surfaces, the way it does now during the quietest moments, uninvited. He was nineteen years old; he’s gone because I taught him showing up mattered more than staying alive. I don't say his name out loud. I don't have to. Cara sees something shift in my face and doesn't ask, she just tightens her hand around mine, steady, present, and willing to sit in whatever this is without needing me to explain it right now.

"You're allowed to grieve him and still be glad you're alive," she says quietly, like she's been waiting for the moment to say it. "You can have both things at the same time. I promise you it's allowed."

I close my eyes, not because I'm fading again, but because I need a second where nobody, not even her, can see exactly what that does to me.

"Sleep," she says, gentler now. "I'm not going anywhere."

"You should go home. Sleep in an actual bed."

"Falcon." It’s flat, and final, it’s how she talked to be the night she told me to lock the door. "I am not leaving this chair."

I don't have the strength to argue with her, and even if I did, I don't think I'd want to win. I let my eyes close, her hand still wrapped around mine, and for the first time since the yard since Carrot's bike got wheeled out of sight, since the patch went into Vulture's desk drawer, something in my chest loosens instead of tightening.

I don't know how long I'm out. It’s long enough that when I surface again the light through the blinds has changed, gone soft and gray with early morning instead of the flat hospital white from before. Cara hasn't moved, or hasn't moved far, her chair is pulled up close enough that her head's resting against the edge of the mattress, still holding my hand even asleep, her knuckles are pale from how long she's been gripping it.