Page 56 of Reaper
ADDY
The medical wing of the Guardian HRS safehouse is quiet, the heavy silence broken only by the low, steady hum of the climate control system.
It's been six hours since the SUVs rolled into the bay. Six hours of absolute, chaotic triage. The Guardian HRS medical team scrubbed the desert dust from Wyatt's skin, set the hairline fractures in his ribs, and closed the deep grazing wound on his bicep with sixteen neat, black stitches.
They gave him painkillers. He refused to take them.
He wanted to be awake. He wanted to feel the pain, grounding himself in the reality that he had survived. That he came back to me.
Now, the medical staff is gone. We're completely alone in the private recovery suite. The lights are dimmed, casting long, soft shadows across the sterile white walls.
I step out of the adjoining bathroom, drying my damp hands on a towel.
Wyatt isn't lying in the hospital bed.
He's sitting on the very edge of the mattress, his bare back bowed. His chest is wrapped tightly in white medical gauze, the stark bandages contrasting sharply against the brutal, fading bruises mapping his ribs. He's wearing nothing but a pair of loose gray sweatpants.
A heavy black Pelican case rests open on the floor between his bare feet.
He's methodically breaking down his sniper rifle.
His movements are slow, hampered by the stiff, angry stitches in his left arm, but his hands are entirely steady. He unthreads the heavy suppressor, wiping the carbon residue from the steel with an oiled rag. He sets the suppressor carefully into its custom-cut foam slot.
He reaches for the heavy optic scope.
I walk across the room, the tile cold beneath my bare feet and stop directly in front of him.
Wyatt pauses. He doesn't look up at my face. He stares at the heavy rifle barrel resting across his knees.
"What are you doing?" My voice is barely above a whisper.
"I'm putting it away." His voice is rough, exhausted, and scraped hollow.
"Why?"
"Because it's done." Wyatt slowly runs the oiled rag down the length of the cold steel barrel. The sharp, metallic scent of gun oil and cordite fills the small space between us. "The broker is dead. The network is dust. You're safe."
"I know I'm safe," I say softly. "That doesn't explain why you're putting the rifle in a box."
Wyatt lifts his head.
His eyes are entirely stripped of their defenses. The lethal, impenetrable armor of the ghost who haunted the world for four years is completely gone.
He looks at me with a vulnerability so absolute, it makes my chest ache.
"Because you deserve a normal life." The words tear out of his throat like barbed wire. "You deserve a man who doesn't smell like blood. You deserve a man who doesn't wake up reaching for a knife in the dark. I've spent years pulling triggers. I'm done being a man with a rifle. It's time to give it up. I'll give it all up, if it means I get to stay with you."
The desperation in his voice shatters my heart.
He thinks he has to choose. He thinks the Reaper and the man who loves me are two entirely different people, and that one has to die for the other to survive.
He thinks he has to bury the darkest, most protective part of his soul to be worthy of standing beside me.
He's wrong.
I drop the towel onto the floor. I step into the small V between his knees, entirely invading his space.
My fingers wrap around the cold, heavy steel of the rifle barrel resting in his lap. I lift it.
