Page 138 of Halo
“Then let me be worth living for too.” Her voice catches. Steadies. “When you go into that facility—and you will—don’t look for a way to die. Don’t sacrifice yourself because you think that’s all you’re good for. Fight like you have something to lose. Fight like you have someone to come home to.”
I pull her against me. Hold her so tight I can feel her heartbeat against my chest, rapid and strong.
“I’ve spent years as a ghost.” My words are muffled against her hair. “I told myself it was necessary. I told myself caring was a weakness. I told myself that the man who loved Sofia died with her, and whatever was left was just—machinery. Following programs. Executing missions.”
“And now?”
“Now I think the universe had other plans.” I pull back enough to see her face. “I should have died in Colombia. I shouldhave died a dozen times since—the close calls, the impossible extractions, the moments where the math said I was finished and somehow I walked away. Fuse calls it unnatural luck. Ghost calls it stubbornness.”
“What do you call it?”
I cup her face in my hands. The calluses on my palms are rough against her cheeks, but she doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away.
“I call it waiting. Waiting for something I didn’t know I was waiting for. A reason to stop simply existing. A reason to become real again.” I kiss her forehead. Her cheeks. The corner of her mouth. “You’re that reason, Cassie. You’re the reason I want to survive this. Not just exist—survive. Come home. Build something that isn’t made of bullets and blood.”
“Diego …” Her voice breaks on my name.
“I’m not looking for a way to die. Not anymore.” I kiss her properly then—soft at first, then deeper, pouring everything I can’t say into the contact. “I’m looking for a way to live. With you. For as long as you want me.”
“Forever.” She rises onto her toes, arms wrapping around my neck.
The kiss deepens. Her hands fist in my shirt. My fingers thread through her hair. For a moment, everything else fades—the facility, the odds, the mission—and there’s nothing but her warmth and her taste and the impossible, irrational certainty that this is what I was made for.
Not killing. Not disappearing. Not ghosting through the shadows alone.
This. Her. Us.
When we finally break apart, her cheeks are flushed, her breathing unsteady.
“Partners,” I say.
“Equals,” she answers.
I take her hand. Lead her through the corridor toward my quarters. She doesn’t ask where we’re going. Doesn’t hesitate.
The door closes behind us.
In the darkness, there’s no mission. No Phoenix. No odds, approach vectors, or probability matrices. There’s just her hands finding my face, my fingers threading through her hair, and the soft sound she makes when I lower her onto the bed.
We’ve been building toward this since the moment I walked through her door. Every touch. Every look. Every time we almost died and didn’t.
I take my time. Learn the geography of her—what makes her gasp, what makes her arch, what makes her whisper my name like a prayer. She’s not invisible here.
She’s real. She’s mine. And I’m hers.
After, she curls against my chest, her breath warm on my skin. My fingers trace lazy patterns down her spine.
“Diego?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t die tomorrow.”
I press a kiss to her hair. “Not tomorrow. Not any day I can help it.”
She’s asleep within minutes, her weight a warm anchor against my side.
I hold her in the darkness, listening to her breathe, and for the first time in years, I feel something I’d forgotten existed.
Peace.
Tomorrow, we find a way in.
Tonight, I have a reason to come back.
