Vulnerability isn’t poetic. It’s leverage. And she’s leverage wrapped in temptation.
I drag a hand down my face, then admit defeat and sit and crack open a file—surveillance data, protocol updates, contingency plans. Anything that gets me back to solid ground.
I make it halfway through a sentence before the words dissolve. I can’t focus, not now. All I see is the curve of her back as she dug through her suitcase, the way she moved like she belonged, like she’s already settled into this space. Into me.
I slam the file shut and reopen the feed, avoiding her bedroom like a plague. Only externals this time—the cold stuff. Anything unfeeling and safe.
This… this is better.
No scent. No heat. Just mission parameters and possible threats. Nothing that softens me.
I lean back, trying to tell myself this is control. But even now, with everything still and silent and the world locked down tight—I feel her under my skin like a stain I can’t scrub clean.
And that?
That’s the most dangerous thing of all.
19
Nell
Another day in paradise. Or, as I like to call it; the Boomerang Chronicles, volume 57.
Today’s highlights?
Lost the cat. Twice. Once curled up inside the washing machine pretending he’s laundry, and once halfway out a second-storey window like he’s auditioning for Mission: Impossible—Feline Protocol.
Burned four slices of toast in a row.FOUR. I’m starting to think the toaster’s in on it.
Tried to cook some sausages in the oven and set off the fire alarm so aggressively I’m convinced the neighbours think I moonlight as an arsonist.
I’m now descending from my makeshift tower of chairs after swatting at the screeching smoke detector with a dish towel like it’s a wasp from hell. Sweat is dripping down my spine. The kitchen looks like a crime scene. The toaster is glaring at me. Boomerang’s judging me from atop the fridge.
Honestly? I don’t think I’m cut out for a house this big. Too many rooms. Too many hiding spots. Too many ways for one small animal and one poorly timed slice of bread to dismantle my entire morning.
“What on earth is going on in here?”
Cameron rounds the corner—still in sweatpants from his morning run, but stripped to the waist.
And just like that, my brain short-circuits.
His chest is carved in ridges that look sculpted, not grown. Sweat still glistens at the base of his neck, trailing down between muscles I didn’t know could look that defined outside of Photoshop. And that vein—thatvein—cuts down his hip into the kind of V that makes rational thought a luxury I no longer possess.
Stalker boy knows how to make an entrance.
Meanwhile, I look like I’ve been chewed up and spat out by a laundry basket—baggy T-shirt, faded leggings, hair scraped into a bun that’s more nest than style. No socks. No dignity.
He’s all muscle and menace.
I’m a gremlin with toast crumbs on her shirt.
“I was trying to make breakfast. It’s not my fault your oven’s temperature control is possessed.”
He raises a brow, eyeing the charred sausages with something between horror and amusement.
“We’re calling that breakfast?”
“I’d like to blame the hardware,” I say, waving vaguely at the offending appliance. But we both know it’s user error. I wasn’t exactly raised in the Church of Oven Settings.
