Page 117 of Thorne
"You don't have to …" My fingers curl weakly against his shirt. "What about Lily?"
"Lily has her grandparents. Forest. Five overprotective uncles. And Theodore." His mouth brushes mine again, barely there. "You just have me."
"The man who hates me?" A fragile, jagged laugh catches in my throat.
His hand slides up, cradling the side of my face—gentler than anything he's ever given me. His thumb traces just under my eye, slow, deliberate.
"You know that's not true."
He pulls back just enough to move, kicking off his boots without looking away from me, then stretches out beside me on top of the covers. Fully dressed. Like he's ready to fight the world if it comes through that door.
But when his arm wraps around me, there's nothing hard in it.
Just—solid. Steady. Unyielding in a different way.
He draws me into him carefully, adjusting until I settle against his chest without pain.
"I'm staying right here." His lips graze my temple, warm and reassuring. "Until you're better."
I don't answer.
I don't need to.
I let my weight sink into him instead, let myself be held, really held, without bracing for what comes next.
His heartbeat presses steadily beneath my ear. Strong. Certain. Each thud grounding me, pulling me out of the sharp edges of pain and into something quieter.
Safer.
The ache in my side is still there, but it fades, dulled by the warmth of him, the way his hand keeps moving in slow, absent strokes along my back.
Like he can't stop touching me.
"Julianna …" My name breathes into my hair, softer than I've ever heard it. Not command. Not control.
Something else entirely.
"Yeah?"
His arm tightens just slightly around me. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to anchor.
"Thank you."
33
The Mathematician
JULIANNA
I waketo the sound of voices.
Low, professional, stripped of everything but utility. The farmhouse walls are thin, and Ghost's steady tone carries from the kitchen.
The bed beside me is empty. I've been in it for eighteen hours, drifting in and out of a drug-induced haze. The drive from the compromised safe house is a blurred memory of six hours of jarring roads, surgery, and then laying in this bed.
I sit slowly. My left side flares—a sharp, hot warning—but it doesn't scream. I breathe through it, counting to ten. Skye said the wound was clean. A through-and-through. No organs nicked, no major vessels shredded. Just a hole through muscle and skin, currently held together with nylon thread.
On the chair sits a pair of new jeans and a plain T-shirt. I reach for them, cataloging my movements. Reaching: manageable. Pulling the shirt over my head: a slow, stinging crawl. Standing: possible, as long as I use the bedframe as a structural anchor.
