Page 76 of The Viper
“The ones that keep you human.”
I smiled faintly, even as tears stung the backs of my eyes. “Sounds exhausting.”
He looked at me, and the steel in his expression softened. “It is.”
The honesty undid me a little. I leaned my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes. “You make it look easy.”
“It’s not.”
“I know,” I whispered.
The car rolled through the sleeping city, the streets empty. My mind wandered—to the letter, the old man, the phrase that had burned itself into memory:Welcome to the real war.
I didn’t know what war they meant.
But I knew it wasn’t over territory or politics. It was personal.
And somehow, I was in it.
Maybe that was what loving a man like Lucas meant—accepting that safety was a myth, that love was both refuge and battlefield.
I turned to look at him again. His eyes were half-closed, but I could tell he wasn’t asleep. “Tell me something good,” I said softly.
“Good?”
“Yeah. From before.”
He thought for a second. “My mom used to sing when she worked. Old country songs. I’d pretend to hate it, but I knewall the words. When I got older and everything went to hell overseas, sometimes I’d hum one under my breath. The guys thought it was superstition. It wasn’t. It just reminded me I came from something that knew how to survive.”
“What song?”
He smiled, small and private. “You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me.”
He started humming—a low, steady tune that sounded like open skies and hard winters. Something about it broke me open in the quietest way.
“You miss her,” I said.
“Every day.”
“I get that,” I said. “I miss mine, too. Even though she’s still alive.”
He looked at me, curious but patient.
“She wanted to be famous,” I explained. “She pushed me into acting because she thought it would fix everything she’d broken. When it actually worked—when I became the name instead of her—she couldn’t handle it. She stopped coming to premieres. Said the cameras gave her headaches.”
Lucas’s brow furrowed. “That’s rough.”
“She wasn’t cruel. Just … fragile. The kind of fragile that makes everyone around her feel responsible. And I’ve spent most of my life trying to make sure no one ever saw me break.”
He reached up, brushing his thumb across my jaw. “You can break with me.”
The words landed deep, almost too deep. I didn’t trust my voice, so I nodded instead.
For a while, we rode in silence. The road curved along the coast, the first suggestion of dawn lightening the horizon. The water flashed silver between trees.
I thought about the difference between him and me—between our kinds of survival. His was physical, sharp-edged,built on discipline and danger. Mine was performative, delicate, built on stories and smiles.
