I sob once, and he catches it pulling me into him, my face buried against his neck. He kneels with me on the floor, uncaring of the mess, of the shaking.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” he says, lips against my temple. “You’re already the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
I clutch his shirt in both hands.
“I don’t feel brave,” I whisper.
“You’re still standing,” he murmurs. “That counts for everything.”
***
I fall asleep for a while.
Not deeply. Not peacefully. But enough.
The panic faded sometime after Kane carried me back upstairs, after he undressed me with patient hands and lowered me into the bath he ran without saying a word. Warm water, lavender oil. No instructions. No pressure. Just Kane, kneeling on the floor, pouring water over my shoulders like he was rinsing off something I hadn’t asked to carry.
He didn’t speak much.
But he didn’t leave me either.
And when I emerged, quiet and wrung out, he wrapped me in his robe and tucked me into bed.
I wake again after dark, the room dim, the air still, the scent of bergamot and wood smoke lingering on the sheets.
Kane’s not beside me.
But I hear movement down the hall.
I get up slowly, wrapping the robe tighter around myself, and pad barefoot through the quiet. The house is silent, too silent. Everyone’s gone. Every window’s locked. Every shadow still.
I find him in the library.
At the chessboard.
The overhead light is low, golden, casting sharp angles across his cheekbones. He’s sitting in the leather chair with a glassof something amber in one hand, the other absentmindedly shifting a pawn forward.
He looks up when I enter.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks softly.
“Not really.”
He gestures to the chair across from him. “Sit.”
I do.
He resets the board silently.
And for a long moment, we just sit there, moving pieces, matching each other step for step.
“I didn’t mean to push you,” he says eventually. “At the range.”
“I didn’t mean to fall apart,” I reply.
He makes his next move. The bishop. Sharp. Clean. Intentional.
“You didn’t fall apart,” he says. “You showed up. That’s more than most.”
