Page 95 of Novak
“We’re two hundred feet away from the mark. How would he hear it?”
“They won’t, butIcan.”
I dragged my phone out and glanced at the screen, a message and a photo waiting, and when I opened it Eden was on a couch with a baby in her arms—small, wrapped up tight—her expression softer than I’d ever seen it, Noah beside her with one hand braced on the back, and Ezra and Seth kneeling in front, pressed in close, both smiling, all of them alive and safe in Maine. The caption was simple:Meet baby Connor.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are we needed elsewhere?”
I turned the phone so he could see. “Eden had her baby.”
He took it, stared at the photo a second longer than necessary.
“It’s a boy,” I added when he stayed silent.
“She called him Connor, so I assumed it was a boy.”
I blinked at him. “That sounded like you made a joke. I mean, the delivery was flat, and you need to drop in more sarcasm, but I’m proud of you.”
He stared at me, considering. “I make jokes.”
I smiled despite myself, and he smiled back, and it was beautiful. I had to kiss him. So, I did, heat building as I pulled him closer. So much for surveillance, because he made sure to bethorough with the kiss, and a small bomb could have gone off, and we wouldn’t have noticed.
“Eyes back on the target,” he said at last.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and leaned my shoulder into his, enough contact to remind me he wasn’t going anywhere, and he adjusted so we fit better side by side.
“You still think this is a date?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What part?”
“We’re together.”
Then I nodded once, because for him, that was enough.
And maybe for me, it was too, because he was learning about me in the only way he knew how, by watching, by adapting, by choosing the same things I chose until they became ours. I loved this man so much that it hurt. I never used to say it out loud. It never seemed to land right unless I couched it as an obsession. But I found myself blurting it out. “I love you,” I said.
He nodded.
“I love you too.”
He’d taken to saying it back to me, but it wasn’t said in the way most people used it. For him, it wasn’t soft or easy. It was a statement, a claim, a promise wrapped in something unyielding. It meant I was his, that he wouldn’t let me go, that as long as we were breathing, I was the one he’d stand beside no matter what it cost. It should have scared me—maybe part of it did—but it was also the purest thing he knew how to give.
His love wasn’t gentle or uncomplicated. It was obsessive, rooted deep, sharpened by everything he’d survived and everything he refused to lose. It wasn’t about letting go or setting free; it was about holding on, protecting, staying. And somewhere in all that intensity, he’d learned something quieter—that when he said those words, it made me smile, that I leaned into him instead of pulling away, that I always kissed him after.
I lifted the camera again, refocused, and settled back into the work as part of our tight two-man team. He wasn’t cleaning any more for Doc, he’d passed the business over to some guy called Jeremy, and now he was my associate—his words, not mine—and where I went,hewent.
Sonya once asked me if Novak’s intensity scared me.
I wasn’t afraid of him. I’d never been. I was afraid of losing him. I loved him.
“Hey, Leon?”
He glanced at me, “Yes?”
I touched his lips and he caught my hand and held it there.
I kissed him and using words that meant something to him, I told him one thing.
“You’re mine.”
THE END
