Page 48 of Echo: Line
"You should be."
"Why? Because you have nightmares? Because you've killed people? Because you're scared?" She touches my face—fingers against my jaw, thumb at the corner of my mouth. "I profile predators for a living. Real monsters. Men who torture and kill for pleasure. You're not that. You're a weapon aimed at the right targets by the wrong people until you figured out the truth."
"That doesn't make me safe."
"Safe is boring. Safe is dying slowly in witness protection, looking over my shoulder forever." Her hand slides to the back of my neck. "Safe is everything I just walked away from."
The touch shorts out my brain. Every tactical consideration vanishes under the reality of her fingers in my hair, her body near enough that I can count her heartbeats, her eyes dark and certain and fixed on mine.
"Delaney..." Her name is plea and warning both.
"I'm not asking you to be easy. I'm not asking you to be safe." Our foreheads almost touch. "I'm asking you to stop treating me like I'm fragile. Like I can't handle what you are. I've seen you at your worst—covered in blood, making impossible choices, carrying damage you won't let anyone else see. And I'm still here."
I reach for her waist. The skin there is smooth, warm, unmarked by violence. Everything I'm not.
"If we do this," I say quietly, "there's no going back. No pretending it didn't happen when things get complicated."
"Good. I'm done pretending."
She closes the distance.
This kiss is different from the one in the forest. No desperation. No adrenaline-fueled need to confirm we're alive.This is deliberate. Intentional. A choice made with clear eyes and full understanding of consequences.
Her mouth opens under mine. Salt and copper and something sweeter underneath—adrenaline and blood and her. My vision narrows. The cabin walls fade. Nothing exists except the press of her lips, the catch of her breath, the way she tastes like survival and want.
I pull her closer. My hand slides to the small of her back, feeling the arch of her spine, the heat of her skin. Careful of her shoulder but unable to stop. Can't stop.
She makes a sound—low, raw, desperate. Her good hand fists in my shirt hard enough that I hear buttons pop. Pulls me down until there's no space left, until I'm drowning in her, until my pulse pounds so loud I can't hear anything else.
I give in. Give her everything I've been holding back since she walked into that Committee facility and chose truth over orders. Since she shot those operators to save me. Since she looked at me in the forest and said she wanted to fight instead of run.
My hand slides up her side. Ribs under my palm. The quick flutter of her pulse. Skin that feels impossibly soft compared to the violence of the last twenty-four hours. She shivers when my thumb traces the edge of her bra, and the sound she makes breaks the last of my restraint.
I'm hyperaware of every point of contact. Her thighs against mine where she's leaned into me. The way her breathing has gone ragged. The heat radiating off her skin. How her fingers have moved from my shirt to my hair, gripping tight enough that it almost hurts.
The stitches. Remember the stitches. Don't hurt her.
The thought penetrates the fog. I gentle the kiss, start to pull back, but she follows me. Chases my mouth with hers, refusing to let me retreat.
"Don't," she breathes against my lips. "Don't pull away."
"Your shoulder?—"
"Is fine." She kisses me again. Harder. "Stop thinking like a medic and start thinking like?—"
The distant thump of helicopter rotors cuts through the silence. Faint. But getting louder.
We freeze. Foreheads pressed together, both unwilling to acknowledge reality but unable to ignore it.
"That's not ours," I say quietly.
She listens. Her training kicking in, evaluating threat distance and approach vector. "How long?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe less." I move to the window, scan the tree line. Nothing visible yet, but the sound is unmistakable. Multiple aircraft. Search pattern. "They found the cabin. Or they're about to."
"How?"
"Doesn't matter. We need to move. Now."
