Page 32 of Mine to Fear
“You know why this can’t happen, right?”
“No,” I said, even though part of me did know—part of me had always known. “Why?”
“We’re both ruined, Willa.” His thumb still brushed my cheekbone, his touch gentle despite his words. “You can’t find what you’re looking for in two broken things.”
The words hit me not because they were cruel, but because they were true. We were both carrying too much damage, too much history. I was still healing from two years of abuse, still jumping at shadows, still waking up screaming from nightmares. And he—whatever made him build those walls around himself, whatever drove him to create a perfect, untouchable life—wasn’t something love could simply fix.
“Right,” I whispered, pulling back further. “Of course.”
Even as he said it, even as I agreed, he didn’t move away. His hand still cupped my face, his eyes dark with want, regret, and something that looked like pain.
“I should go,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“Yeah,” I agreed, even though I didn’t want him to leave.
Finally, he forced himself to stand, running a hand through his dark hair. “Try to get some sleep. The nightmares will get easier with time.”
“Will they?”
“Trust me,” he said, and something in his voice suggested he was speaking from experience.
After he left, I lay awake for hours, touching my lips where he had kissed me, trying to make sense of what had happened.We’re both ruined.The words echoed in my head, heavy with truth and resignation.
But the next morning, something was different.
When I came into the kitchen for breakfast, Kieran was already there, and instead of the careful distance I expected, he was warmer. He smiled when he saw me, asked how I slept with genuine concern, and lingered over his coffee instead of rushing off to the office.
The kiss wasn’t mentioned, but it hung in the air between us like a secret we were both carrying. Throughout the day, I caught him watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read—something soft, careful, almost tender.
As if, despite everything he said about being too broken to fix each other, he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret what had happened between us. As if maybe, just maybe, we could help each other put the pieces back together.
14KIERAN
The first signthat something was wrong came at seven in the morning, three days after I kissed Willa in her bedroom and told her we were both too broken to fix each other. I was drinking coffee in my kitchen, watching her make breakfast with an efficiency that reminded me of the girl who once cooked dinner for Jude and me, when Anna from Legal called.
“We have a problem,” she said without preamble. “Someone accessed the Morrison account files last night. From outside the network.”
I felt my blood turn cold. The coffee cup hovered halfway to my mouth, forgotten.
The Morrison account was one of our highest-profile clients—a federal judge who had been receiving death threats from a domestic terrorism group. His security profile contained information that could get him killed if it fell into the wrong hands.
“How much did they get?”
“Everything. Residential security codes, travel schedules, safe house locations. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were looking for.”
I glanced at Willa, who was pretending not to listen while she scrambled eggs, and lowered my voice. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Lock down everything, and don’t let anyone access anything until I get there.”
By the time I reached the office, the scope of the breach became clear. It wasn’t random. Someone with intimate knowledge of our systems had targeted specific files, specific clients, and specific vulnerabilities—details only someone with inside access could have known. The realization settled over me slowly, heavy and unmistakable.
“It gets worse,” David said when I arrived, his face grim as he pulled up security logs on his computer. “Whoever did this used Sarah’s access credentials.”
Sarah Kim, my head of research, had been with Cross Security since the beginning. She was the one who tracked Willa for me the night I found her in that alley, the one who ran background checks on every major client and threat assessment we ever did. If someone had compromised her access?—
“Where is she?”
“That’s the thing. She called in sick yesterday and today. Says she has food poisoning.”
I felt something cold settle in my stomach. “Get her on the phone. Now.”
