Page 48 of Collateral Damage
"Relax," he murmurs, his lips dangerously close to my ear. "You're fighting it. Just breathe."
Easy for him to say. He isn't the one pressed against a man who feels like a weapon held in reserve.
But I try. I focus on the rhythm of his breathing, on the way the heat begins to bleed into my bones. Gradually, my muscles uncoil, my heart rate finally syncing with the steady, unhurried thrum of his.
"I’ll fix it first thing," he says. His voice rumbles through me.
The silence stretches, filled only by the wind howling against the timber. He’s going to stay awake. He’s going to stand guard over the night while I sleep. The thought makes my throat tight.
"Try to sleep," he tells me. "I'll stay awake."
"You can't," I shift, feeling him tense behind me. "Not after everything today. We take turns. Two hours each. I need you rested, Silas."
He’s quiet for a long beat. “Roger that.”
"I mean it," I insist, turning slightly to catch his gaze in the dim light.
"I know you do."
"You’re incredibly stubborn."
Silas lets out a low, rough chuckle that tickles my ear. “As a mule.”
With a smile curling my lips, I close my eyes. “Get some sleep.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not my doctor, Ava,” he says softly.
My fingers tighten around the comforter as I tuck it under my chin, thinking a thought that I have no business thinking: No, none of this would have happened if I were.
Twelve
Silas
I shift slightly, careful not to wake her, and check the luminous dial on my watch. 4:47 AM.
The temperature's still dropping—I can feel it biting at the air beyond the blankets. I should check the chimney, ensure the wind hasn't shifted, and re-verify the perimeter. But that means leaving the bed, leaving her, and stepping back into the snow.
The thought makes every muscle in my body protest. I’m getting soft. Too comfortable. Too old.
I’ve built a career on staying a step ahead—of threats, of complacency, of the thousand ways things can go sideways. I’ve drilled my team until they were nothing but hardwired response and raw reflex, preaching that comfort is a terminal condition. Comfortable gets you killed. Yet, here I am, anchored to this mattress by the dead weight of her exhaustion. My arm is tucked beneath her head, her breath hitching rhythmically against my collarbone. It’s a strategic disaster. I have no eyes on the horizon, no distance between us and the door, and my Glock is a reach away instead of in my hands.
The hours before dawn are when judgment bleeds out, and I know exactly what I’d say to one of my men if I caught them this compromised. I’d be brutal. I’d be unkind. I’d tell them that their sentimentality is a liability that will get everyone in the room slaughtered.
I should move. The rational part of my brain is screaming for me to slide out, put the steel between us, and set a proper watch.
But she’s finally sleeping. If I move, the spell breaks. The shivers return. She wakes up, and we go back to the version of her that’s barely controlled trauma.
I stay still, feeling the steady thrum of her heart against my chest, and for the first time in my life, I don't care if the world ends before sunrise. As long as she’s here, breathing in sync with me, the only perimeter that matters is the reach of my own arms.
Ava
I wake, my nose frozen solid, a sharp, biting draft dancing across my face. I reach out, and the bed is cold—the space where Silas was is empty, the sheets devoid of the heat he’d left behind, leaving me to pull the quilt tight against the encroaching chill.
Yawning, I check my watch, and I wince at the hour. He must have crept out at the earliest hint of dawn.
