“All you need to do is get on a plane and show up ready to work.”
I exhale, the kind that feels more like deflating. “Suzi, this is… incredible.”
It is.
And it’s alsoperfect. A clean escape route from the emotional minefield I just detonated back at the ranch. No awkward explanations. No heartache. Just laser-focused training and a continent’s worth of distance from the man who somehow cracked me wide open.
“I knew you’d say yes,” Suzi says. “I’ll email you the travel and training schedules. Mikhailov doesn’t do second chances, Mia. This is it.”
“Right. Got it. I’m in.” My voice wobbles, but I catch it before it cracks. “I’m always ready to work.”
“Damn right you are.”
It feels like the universe is throwing me a lifeline. A perfect escape from this emotional quagmire I've stumbled into.
When the call ends, I sit there staring into my coffee like it might give me permission to breathe again.London. Two months of precision, intensity, the best training team money can buy and the one thing I’ve always known how to do—keep moving forward.
Also, a convenient excuse to leave Texas—and Grant—behind.
No Grant. No cottage. No small town that’s worked its way into my bloodstream without my permission—charming me,disarming me, making me feel things I never meant to feel. No aching, complicated, maddening feelings that would have ended up in me leaving anyway.
Just me and the lane.
It should feel like relief.
Instead, it feels like running.
Again.
Chapter 33
Grant
I'm still standing in the middle of my kitchen, breathing like I've just dismounted from Diablo, when I grab my phone and call Mason. My hands shake so badly I nearly drop it twice.
“What's up?” Mason answers on the second ring.
“I fucked up.” The words taste like acid on my tongue. “I fucked up so bad.”
“Where are you?” His voice shifts immediately, that Fireman training kicking in.
“Home.”
“Stay put. I'll be there in fifteen.”
The line goes dead, and I sink onto the island chair, my legs too damn shaky to keep me standing. The house feels colder, quieter, though she's only been gone twenty minutes. But it doesn't matter. She's not here. Not in the way that matters.
I keep seeing her face—the way her eyes, normally so full of fire and challenge and heat, looked at me with something I’d never seen in them before.
Distrust.
It guts me.
I don't move until I hear Mason's truck in the driveway. He doesn't knock, just walks in and heads straight to the fridge, pulling out two beers. He pops the caps and slides one across the counter to me.
“Talk,” he says simply, leaning against the counter.
So I do.
