And now I was sitting in my kitchen and, even though the adrenaline had worn off hours ago, I was still wired. I wiped the counter for the fourth time and stared at the empty cup in front of me. Jamie was asleep, if you could call it that—out cold in the bedroom, half-mummified in bandages, breathing shallow but steady.
When the knock came, I walked to the door and opened it.
Caleb stepped inside without a word. He was a big guy, taller than me by a hair, broader in the chest, and he walked in with a tightness I recognized. Watching him was like staring at a lit fuse—tense, humming, seconds from detonation—but somehow, he kept it all locked down, and that made me feel more guilty than if he’d yelled.
He was holding himself together by a thread.
He dropped onto the stool at the counter, elbows braced on the surface, and ran a hand through his hair but didn’t say a word. I turned to the coffee machine and started grinding beans. The hum filled the silence. The click of the scoop, the hiss of the kettle. My hands worked on autopilot, and I followed muscle memory, placing a mug in front of him without asking. Black, strong, bitter. Within five minutes Sonya and Levi had arrived, and I made sure the doors between the kitchen and Jamie were shut tight. He might still be comatose, but what if he woke up right now when I knew I was about to have my ass handed to me.
Levi leaned on the counter, Sonya sank to a stool, both were quiet. Caleb picked up his coffee, staring into it as if the answers might be swirling somewhere in the steam. For a second, I thought maybe no one would say anything. That maybe, miraculously, I’d get a free pass.
Then Caleb began: “What the hell was that last night?”
What could I say? I’d seen the fire, heard the crash, and the scream, and I’d gone in. That wasn’t a strategy. That wasn’t the job. That was me—raw, reckless, desperate.
Caleb didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His restraint was louder than a scream, and it made my chest ache. That calm, measured fury of his—it was worse than shouting.
“You don’t do that. You know the rules,” he added.
I nodded, knowing I deserved this. If things were changing, if Jamie being in our lives meant that I was reckless, then Caleb was right to call me on it.
“The deal is that you keep your front-facing persona,” Levi interjected. “You stay the clean one. The lawyer. The guy who plays by the rules while the rest of us work in the shadows. That’s the whole point ofyou.”
Still, I said nothing.
Caleb set the mug down. “You threw yourself into a fucking fire. What would’ve happened if you’d gotten hurt? If Jamie had died after lighting his own goddamn funeral pyre, and you ended up front and center on every news report? You think our secrets would’ve stayed buried then?”
I didn’t flinch, but his sharp words hit their mark.
“Do you get it, Killian? If you go down like that—reckless, visible—it all unravels. Me. Sonya. Levi. Everything.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. My voice felt like gravel. “He was going to die.”
Caleb stared at me for a long moment, tension tightening his jaw. “Then, next time you leave it to me, you send someone who isn’t the fucking linchpin. A security cam or a medic with a camera phone, and you’re headline news. They start digging into you, and we don’t just lose the team—we lose everything we’ve done so far.”
He gestured toward the closed bedroom door. “So tell me something, and don’t lie. Did you cross the line for a civilian in danger… or something more? Because we deserve to know, Killian.”
I looked down at my hands, which were curled around the edge of the counter. I didn’t answer. Not because I didn’t want to, but because, maybe, I didn’t know myself.
Caleb’s expression didn’t change, but his tone shifted—low, grave, final. “You don’t get to be reckless.” He waited a beat, then leaned forward, voice even quieter now, every word deliberate. “You’re attracted to an ex-con, Killian. Worse—someone who’s clearly out of control. What the fuck are you thinking?”
My throat was dry. I tried to speak, failed, and tried again. “I didn’t plan this.”
“No, but you didn’t stop it either.”
He wasn’t wrong. And that made it worse. Silence settled between us again. He picked up the coffee. Took a long sip.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and he rolled his eyes.
Levi huffed in exasperation. “‘Sorry’ implies you won’t do it again, and we get Redcars means something to you, but this Jamie thing…”
“Jamie is… he… fuck, I don’t know.” I slumped onto the stool on the other side of the counter.
Then, it was back to Caleb. “If this is more than fucking, if this is enough to have you walking into a fire that he set, then you’ll never be able to keep him a secret part of your life. He’s compromising your control and your disguise because he’s uncontrolled and a threat to all of us.”
“What are you saying?”
“Ditch Redcars, ditch Jamie, do your thing the right way.”
