Page 59 of Hidden Attraction

“You were young,” she said softly.

He nodded, eyes downcast.

“You were protecting your mom. You didn’t know what to do.”

Julian grated out, “Why talk now? Why didn’t you say something years ago? Right after it happened?”

He inflated his lungs with air. “My mother’s in remission. I…don’t have anything to hold over me now.” He looked up, straight at Julian. “You see, I served in the military as a way to give back to the country that harbored me and my mother all those years I was growing up. And I messed that up…”

Alyssa and Julian traded a look. Neither of them felt good about this. Even though they’d learned so much, it still didn’t feel like a win. All the pieces of the puzzle felt like none of them fit together and yet all of them created one big picture that they had yet to make out. But their mission was done; they’d found out what happened at the Red Cross facility and with Echo’s chopper.

They took their leave of Hyde. Locking him inside the brig left Alyssa with a heavy weight in her stomach that only increased when they joined the commander waiting for them outside the compound.

Julian stepped up in front of the man, not saying a word about what they learned from the young man who was blackmailed and lured into allowing someone with deadly intentions to commit a terrible act.

“We need transport to the States,” Julian said.

Thorne gave him a hard nod. “I’ll arrange it for tomorrow. 2300. Be on base at 2200.”

This.

This was the moment they had been fighting toward—completing the mission, bringing down the threat. Victory was within reach. But standing there, watching the hard lines of Julian’s face, she felt nothing like a victor.

Tomorrow night, it would be over.

The mission. The adrenaline. The small, stolen moments with him that had felt more real than anything she’d known in a long time.

The clock was already ticking down, and every second that passed was one she wouldn’t get back.

Alyssa swallowed hard and forced herself to stand tall, to smile when Julian turned to catch her eye.

They were on the path to piecing everything together.

So why did it feel like she was losing everything?

THIRTEEN

Chase paced the tiny living room of the safehouse like a caged animal.

Fury raged under his skin. Every breath felt too tight in his chest. Every tick of the small, cheap clock mounted on the wall scraped against his nerves.

The kid had been blackmailed. Manipulated into letting a saboteur through their defenses. And now innocent men were dead because of it.Goodmen.

Chase squeezed his hands into fists, knuckles cracking. He wanted to punch something. Break it. He wanted action, but for now, all they could do was wait for tonight’s transport.

Wait. And simmer.

In the kitchenette, Alyssa rattled around like a restless spirit, opening and closing the same three cabinet doors, searching the empty shelves for coffee like it might materialize if she just looked hard enough.

He watched her silently, the way her hands moved faster than normal, her breathing just a little too shallow. She was rattled. They both were.

“There’s nothing left,” he said finally, his voice low and rough.

She turned to face him, hands falling to her sides as she finally surrendered. Her shoulders slumped, and for a second, she looked so lost it broke something open inside him.

Before he even thought about it, Chase crossed the room and put his hands on her. A simple touch—his palms sliding up her arms, thumbs tracing the curve of her shoulders.

A shudder ran through her, but then she melted into him, pressing her forehead to his chest like she’d been waiting for permission to fall apart.

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