Page 199 of Carrick
A tear slipped down her cheek. Her lips parted, and I saw her try to speak. Try to argue, maybe. Try to warn me. But no sound came. So I closed the distance. Pressed my forehead to hers and whispered, “You won’t lose me. Not for this. Not for anything.”
I felt her inhale, sharp and broken and deep, like it was the first real breath she’d taken since her world fell apart. Her hands finally reached for me—small, trembling touches, just her fingers finding my wrist, then my chest, like she needed to make sure I was real. And I let her. I let her map me in the quiet. Let her anchor herself there. Because I wasn’t going anywhere. Not when she’d just handed me the softest, most terrified piece of herself. Not when she let me see the place where hope lived—and how easily it could be crushed.
I held her tighter, chest to back, skin to skin, water lapping around us in lazy ripples, and I let the silence settle again. Not because there was nothing left to say. But because sometimes, love sounds a lot like staying.
A few minutes later, she shifted slightly, her fingers curling around my wrist where it rested beneath the water, and whispered, just barely above the hush of breath, “Why does this scare me more than the pain did?”
I closed my eyes. “Because pain is predictable,” I murmured into her hair. “It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You know what it’ll cost you going in. But this?” I paused, feeling the shape of her in my arms, the delicate strength of her weight. “This is more delicate and unpredictable. And it asks more from you. Because you have to stay in it. Trust it. Believe it won’t vanish the second you stop bracing for it to fall apart.”
I felt her fingers tighten slightly around mine, but she didn’t respond. I kept talking—not to fill the space, but to offer her something steady to hold on to. “I don’t want this to be temporary. I don’t want it to fade when the job is over or the danger passes. That’s not what this is for me anymore. That’s not what you are.”
The words felt heavier as they left me. Like they were being carved into something solid. Something permanent. Something that would still be here when the water drained, and the world came knocking again. “You’re not just someone I slept with. Or played with. You’re not just the woman who needed saving.” I took a slow breath, tightening my hold around her ribcage as I said it. “You’re brave. You’re brilliant. You’re more than I ever expected. And every fucking day I get to be near you is a day I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Her breath hitched again, but this time it wasn’t panic. It wasn’t pain. It was emotion. Full and bare. Her head turned, just slightly, her lips brushing the side of my neck, and I felt her exhale like she was trying to pour everything she couldn’t say into that single touch.
God, I felt it too—not just care or the instinct to protect her, but something far more consuming. I loved her. I hadn’t planned on it, hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t meant for it to happen. But it had rooted itself deep—tangled in muscle and marrow, impossible to cut loose. This love wasn’t loud or wild or screaming to be named. It lived in the quiet, in the water, in therawness of her broken pieces resting in my hands. And though I didn’t speak the words—not yet—I knew them with a clarity sharper than anything I’d ever known.
I loved her. And if she never said it back… if she never reached for it the way I was already holding it… I’d love her, anyway. Because she was the storm and the calm after it. Because she let me see her when she was ash and fire and grief—and she didn’t turn away when I stayed.
I brushed her damp hair back from her temple, kissed the bare skin beneath it, and whispered, “You’re not alone. Not now. Not ever.”
She didn’t speak. But she settled. And sometimes, that was answer enough.
The water stilled around us like it understood—like it knew that movement now would be too much. It held her the way I did, gentle and unyielding, warm enough to soothe, quiet enough to let the ache in her bones settle. She hadn’t spoken, and I hadn’t asked her to. Her body rested against mine like a question she no longer needed to answer. Our limbs had tangled beneath the surface, not intentionally, not possessively—just naturally. Like water and skin and breath had become one thing, and separating them now would have felt wrong.
I didn’t want to move. Not because I feared breaking the moment—but because this stillness wasn’t fragile. It was earned. Earned through every scream that tore from her throat, every sob that wracked her ribs, every moment she gave me her rage, her fear, and her guilt, and didn’t ask for anything back but that I stay.
I lowered my face into her hair, damp and clinging to her neck, and just breathed her in. Lavender and salt. Skin and survival. The faint echo of something that might one day be peace.
She didn’t cry again. Her tears had dried somewhere between the shattering and the silence. But grief wasn’t just tears—it was in the way her ribs rose unevenly. In the way her fingers clenched sometimes, like her body hadn’t realized it could let go yet. In the stillness that wasn’t calm, but recovery.
My hand drifted slowly up her chest, over her collarbone, across her throat, until my fingertips brushed the side of her jaw. Just a touch. Just enough to remind her I was still here. She said nothing. But she tilted her face slightly into the contact. Just enough.
I kissed her temple again, lips lingering longer than necessary, and whispered into the hush between us, “I’m right here.”
And in the quiet, in the warmth, in the silence that wrapped around us like water and breath and time—something began to mend.
39
Bellamy
My body still remembered.The ache. The bruises. The pull in my shoulders when I shifted too fast, the low thrum at the backs of my thighs when I walked down the hallway. It wasn’t pain—not anymore. It was something quieter now. Residual. Reverent.
I wore Carrick’s hoodie because it smelled like him—like dark woods and leather and soap—and because I didn’t want to feel like my skin was the only thing keeping me together.
I followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen and saw him before he saw me—Niko, standing near the open back door, sunlight catching in his dark hair, a chipped mug curled between his fingers.
I almost turned around. But he looked over his shoulder at just the right moment and said, “Didn’t expect you up.”
“I didn’t expect anyone else to be awake this early.”
“Sometimes I feel like I never sleep,” he said, voice low and tired. “Even when I do.”
He didn’t ask how I was—not with words. He just watched me for a long second, eyes sharp as ever, reading more than I was ready to say. Then he turned and motioned for me to follow him outside. “Come on. Before the briefing. I figure you could use a breath that doesn’t taste like grief.”
I stepped through the door and onto the porch beside him. The air was cool, laced with dew and something just shy of spring. The kind of morning that would’ve meant new beginnings, if my world hadn’t already burned down.
For a few moments, we just stood there. I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been holding myself until the breeze touched my face and I felt the sting behind my eyes. Still there. Still full.
