Page 95 of Carrick
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe funny. Just let me rest.
“You don’t need to fix me,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“I still need you to not leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I nodded, eyes stinging. That didn’t make it better. But it made itbearable.
For tonight, that was enough.
19
Carrick
I knewshe was going to ask before she opened her mouth.
There was a charge in the air around her—something electric and tightly leashed. Bellamy didn’t just sit still. Sheheldherself still, like movement might crack the too-thin veneer she wore. The coffee in front of her had gone cold. She hadn’t even touched it, just sat at the window with her arms folded, jaw clenched, gaze locked on the trees like she was willing them to part and bring her brother back.
Most people wouldn’t have seen the signs. But I wasn’t most people.
I’d seen that posture in barracks and briefing rooms. The quiet soldier right before an outburst. The moment before the storm, when someone couldn’t take another second of silence. It wasn’t dramatic. It wassharp. Focused. Bellamy didn’t waste energy on dramatics—when she was ready to burn something down, she did it with precision.
And this morning, two days after she and Jax had found that first audio file—that had led to yet another dead end—she was seconds away from striking a match.
Jax had been mid-sentence, explaining the latest audio lead—another garbled trace that he’d spent half the night cleaningup. He was pointing at waveforms on one of his monitors, launching into technical jargon that only half the room could follow.
Then Bellamy stood.
Not abrupt. Not a flourish.
She justrose.
Graceful. Deliberate. Spine straight, shoulders squared, like she’d already made the decision hours ago, and this was just the proclamation.
She stood with the light behind her, dawn creeping through the windows and throwing a pale halo around her silhouette. She looked like something untouchable in that moment. Sharp-edged. Rigid. Half-woman, half-ghost.
When she spoke, her voice was soft. Too soft. The kind of soft that made your stomach drop because you already knew what was going to come next.
“I need to go home.”
The room stilled, and the words seemed to echo in the room.
No one moved. No one even breathed.
It was Sullivan’s heavy ceramic mug landed with a hollowclinkon the oak table in front of him. Too loud. Too final.
Jax blinked once. Looked up from his screen. “What?”
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was watching Niko. And Niko? He hadn’t even turned his head yet. Niko didn’t even lift his head from the laptop in front of him. “No.”
That was it. One word. Crisp and final, like a slammed door.
Bellamy didn’t move, but her fingers flexed where they gripped her arms, like she was resisting the urge to hurl something across the room. “You didn’t even hear what I was going to say.”
“I don’t need to.” His voice was pure steel—cold and razor-sharp, every syllable calculated to shut her down before the conversation even started. “It’s not happening.”
