Page 20 of Braxton

“I didn’t have a choice,” she whispered.

“You always have a choice.” He pulled his hand away and, with a heavy heart, she watched him open the door and leave.

A tidal wave of emotions threatened to drag her under, but she cast them aside and told herself the kiss didn’t matter, and Brax certainly didn’t matter. Their past was dead and buried. From this point forward, they’d work together to eliminate The Agency, she’d have her life restored, and then they’d go their separate ways.

???

On the way back to the warehouse, Brax replayed everything that happened with Quinn, bringing him more questions than answers. But it was mostly about where they currently stood with each other.

He wasn’t over her. At this point, he doubted he ever would be. That firecracker of a woman had wedged herself deep inside him, and letting her go meant cutting out a part of his heart. Or, more accurately, ripping the entire organ right out of his chest.

After parking the SUV in the underground garage, Brax mentally prepared himself to face his team. When he’d texted Zane back earlier, he’d said he was with Quinn. They’d have a lot of questions, and he needed to be ready.

Okay, so maybe a lot of questions was a gross understatement. The moment he stepped through the door, he was bombarded on all sides.

“Whoa!” He lifted his hands.

“Let him sit,” Inda declared, clearing a path through people and over to the couch. “Then we grill him.”

After explaining how he’d seen her at the storage unit and then followed her down to the pub, Brax filled the group in on what they’d talked about at her safehouse.

“And now she wants to help us,” he concluded. “She’s willing to play double agent and feed us intel.”

“Can you trust her?” Ryland asked.

“She’s on our side now.” He didn’t exactly answer the question, but it’s all he could give them at that moment.

His teammates exchanged uneasy looks.

“Two days ago she tried to kill you, Pharaoh,” Gray reminded him and Brax scowled. “What’s with the sudden change of heart?”

“I told her about Zaitsev and their plans to make more Novichok. She wants nothing to do with it.”

“Sorry, but I don’t trust her,” Saint stated, crossing his large, inked arms. “You know what they say about a woman scorned.”

“It is a little fishy.” Zane’s blue eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “I say we give her a chance to prove her loyalty, and if she does, we go from there.”

Even though Brax understood their reluctance to trust Quinn, it also annoyed him. “She said she can locate Mesa for us.”

Gray sat up straighter. “If she does that, I’m Team Q.”

“And you only talked? When you were all alone at her place?” Inda asked innocently.

The memory of the hot kiss they’d shared seared through his mind. “Quinn is my ex-wife,” he said, trying to keep his face blank. “We aren’t together anymore.”

“Right, but she kept your last name,” Inda reminded him. “Any idea why?”

“Yeah, has she been pining for you all these years like River pined for me?” Zane asked, and River slugged him in the shoulder.

“I think you have that backwards,” River replied sweetly, batting her lashes at him.

“Quinn doesn’t pine,” Brax stated. “She’s logical, crafty and level-headed. She doesn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve.”

“Sounds a lot like you,” Saint said.

“Yeah, we’re…very similar in certain ways,” Brax admitted. Yet complete opposites, too. It was a strange contradiction.

“Which makes her dangerous,” Inda stated. “So until she gives us a location on Mesa, we can’t trust her.”

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