Page 7 of Make Them Pay

“What’s the alternative?” I ask.

“Stay. Work with me. Use what you know combined with what I have. Find them together. With backup. With someone watching your six while you work.”

“You want me to tell you everything.”

“I want you to stop carrying it alone.” He holds my gaze and something warm and steady moves through his eyes. It feels like more than surveillance now. It feels like safety wrapped in something deeper. “You don’t have to fix this by yourself. That’s not weakness. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

I stand there in the dim light with the go-bag on the table and the weight of my mistakes pressing on my shoulders. I think about all the times I built walls because no one would let me in. Every time I worked alone, the work was good but the consequences were worse.

Render just named the pattern I’ve been refusing to see.

I sit down on the cold concrete, cross-legged, about five feet from him. Equal ground. Close enough to feel the warmth coming from him.

“I’ve decided to stay,” I say.

He nods, simple and steady, like my answer was always mine to give.

“But I have conditions.”

A small spark of interest lights his face. “Go ahead.”

“First, you don’t make decisions about my safety without talking to me. I’m not cargo. If there’s a plan, I’m part of it.”

He nods.

“Second, I tell you everything I know about Goldenbell. No hiding anything. And you do the same. Full honesty between us.”

“That’s fair.”

“Third.” I pause because this one feels hardest. “The guilt I carry about Poe and the crew is mine. Don’t try to take it from me or tiptoe around it. Let me carry it while we work. Just… stay with me through it.”

He looks at me for a long beat. The dim light makes his eyes difficult to read, but I catch something there that isn’t pity. It’s recognition. Warmth. Maybe even a little admiration.

“I can work with that,” he says.

“Good.”

The silence that follows feels different. Settled. Like two people who’ve just agreed to terms they can both live with.

“You should eat something,” he says after a minute, his voice gentler now. “There are protein bars in the bag. Water too.”

“In a minute.” I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. The concrete is hard against my tailbone, but I’m not ready to move back to the bed. “Tell me what you know about the crew first. Where they might be holding them.”

He shifts and begins explaining in that calm, reassuring way of his. I listen, hyper-aware of how close we are on the floor, of the way his voice wraps around me, of the strength in his presence.

I pull the laptop from the bag and set it on the floor between us. The screen lights up both our faces in the dark cabin. When our fingers brush as I turn it toward him, a spark jumps between us that’s got nothing to do with static electricity.

“Show me,” he says softly, leaning closer.

I start sharing everything I’ve got.

The first night ends with the two of us on the concrete floor, heads close, voices low, building something new out of the mess I made. The girl who always worked alone is sitting five feet from a partner she didn’t ask for, and the work already feels better for it.

Tomorrow we’ll start hunting for my brother.

Tonight I’ll stop carrying it all by myself.

It isn’t easy.