Page 67 of Broken Trust
And if she didn’t leave soon, she was going to fall a little bit in love withallof them—even that little baby bean on the ultrasound.
She murmured a soft excuse and slipped out of the dining room. With each step she took, the noise of the celebration faded behind her.
In the corridor, she pressed her palms to her hot cheeks, trying to shore up whatever was left of her composure, to tuck away her emotions before anyone saw them.
She closed her eyes. She was happy for them, but she didn’t belong here. Tomorrow she would meet a man who could destroy her…a mission she might not come back from.
Some instinct made her glance over her shoulder, and her breath caught in her throat.
Liam stood in the doorway, the celebration still raging behind him. The light painted his shoulders in gold and carved shadows over the planes of his rugged, handsome face.
“You okay?” He drifted a few steps closer.
“Fine.” It wasn’t entirely a lie.
“Big night.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
His eyes softened. “They’ll be good parents.”
“They already are. Having a child is a rare kind of courage.”
For a moment, they stood there, close but not touching, the mission looming ahead.
He reached out hesitantly and brushed his finger against her wrist, right over the spot where her pulse betrayed her. The warmth of his touch slid through her like the best kind of memory.
“We still haven’t had that talk.”
She shook her head. “I thought we agreed to talk tomorrow.” She didn’t want to be distracted from what she was about to do. And she really didn’t want Liam distracted.
“Then I’ll just say…” He trailed off, gruffer than she’d ever heard him.
She waited, breath trapped in her lungs, staring up into his eyes.
He shook his head. “I’ll keep you safe, angel.”
Her throat tightened and she nodded. “Okay. I…trust you.”
His eyes glimmered and his jaw flexed as if he held back too many words—words she wasn’t sure could fix what was left between them.
Either way, now wasn’t the time. They stood on the edge of a mission, and if they survived, she wasn’t sure she could risk her heart again.
FOURTEEN
The knot in Mason’s chest had loosened, and it wasn’t a result of going over endless checklists. Things were far from simple, but things were…good.
In the past few hours, he’d gone from being strung tight as a tripwire to steady as a sniper’s aim.
They had a shot at completing this op without any injuries. They had a shot at getting the names of those bomb handlers, and that meant they were eleven steps closer to capturing Cipher.
And he and Elin were…so close to figuring this out. He had to believe they had a shot too.
He snapped his backpack closed and slung it over his shoulder. In minutes, the helicopter would pick them up, and there was only one person he wanted to spend those minutes with.
Even though she waved him off, he wanted to talk to Elin about what came after. For the first time in two years,afterdidn’t feel like a word that belonged to other people.
The thump of his boots was steady as he navigated the corridors to her room. Every space he passed was silent, yet the whole base hummed with contained energy, as it always did right before any op.
