Page 22 of Anchor
Her breath shuddered, the knot inside her loosening another inch. “I don’t know if I know how to let someone carry it with me.”
“You don’t have to know tonight.” Reid’s hand slid up, cupping her cheek, his thumb brushing the faint dampness still at the corner of her eye. “You just have to let me be here.”
For the first time in years, she felt the words settle, not as a warning, but as a promise.
She pressed closer, her forehead against his shoulder, whispering into the quiet, “Stay until I fall asleep.”
“I will.” This time his lips brushed the top of her hair as he said it.
And Claire believed him. Even as her eyelids grew heavy, and she fell asleep.
Reid lay still,one arm wrapped around her, feeling her soft breaths against his chest. The sheet was warm where her skin pressed his, cooler where it lay across his own shoulder. She’d finally gone under. Her muscles were slack, and her breaths evened into the rhythm of sleep. But for him, sleep was far off.
The gala replayed in his mind in flashes: the chandeliers, the swarm of power-hungry eyes, her mother’s sharp-edged smile. The three intruders, the rooftop takedown, and the look on Claire’s face when he had her contained. The conference with Ian and his admissions had him unsettled. Was Lucien Vos involved? Was Claire an innocent bystander?
His memories flowed back to Claire standing straighter than she felt, eyes hard, words sharper still, until she was alone on that balcony, her bare feet curled in the lounge chair, holding herself quiet against the night. He remembered the look of his jacket on her shoulders, the way she hadn’t shrugged it off. A small detail, but to him, it mattered.
Now here she was, in his arms, softer than he thought she’d ever let herself be.
Her words came back, each one cutting:I’m not okay.That was the crack. She opened up to him. She’d given him her trust, and it had taken everything in him not to close the distance then and there, not to promise her things he wasn’t sure he could give.
Her story was still echoing through him—MIT at seventeen, NSA before most kids finished college, Emberline. He knew what it meant to flag an op and be ignored. He knew the kind of burden that carried, the corrosive guilt. But to be told to sanitize the wreckage, to write away the blood like it had never been. Christ. No wonder the debrief haunted her.
She shifted against him, murmuring something in her sleep, the word gone before he could catch it. His hand smoothed down her back without thought, grounding her, the way Tuck had done for him when the night terrors clawed at his own chest.
He thought of Tuck now. His uncle’s voice, hard-edged but steady:All you’ve got to do is walk through the door, Reid. The rest, you learn on your feet.Chase was his door. And tonight was her first step through hers. He’d seen rookies stumble. He’d steadied more than a few. But Claire wasn’t like them. Shewasn’t just green. She was burned, scarred, and still standing. That kind of resilience couldn’t be trained.
And Ian. Reid’s jaw tightened, the thought of him sliding into Claire’s life when she was still just a kid, weaving himself into the empty space her father left. The detail about the sketch, the nickname—Firefly. That landed harder than he’d let her see. Ian didn’t bluff. Which meant she knew he’d known her father. Ian was there when her father died. And he helped keep her mother’s secrets. His shadow over her went deeper than she realized.
Reid’s hand stilled against her side, holding her just a fraction tighter. He’d spent years carrying the heaviness of people lost. He wasn’t about to add her name to that list. Not if he had anything to say about it.
She murmured again, something softer this time, and her fingers curled unconsciously against his chest, like she was holding him in place. He stared at the ceiling, feeling the edges of exhaustion but unwilling to let them close in. His job had always been to keep watch, to stay awake when others couldn’t.
But tonight was different. Tonight, it wasn’t duty that kept him awake. It was her.
Reid bent his head and brushed the barest kiss across her hairline. “You’re safe,” he whispered, words he wasn’t sure she’d hear.
Still, he said them anyway. Because, for the first time in a long time, he meant them.
EIGHT
DAWN
The light came first, threading through the blinds, laying across her skin. Reid had been watching it creep closer for the better part of an hour, the way it painted her hair in softer shades and caught the line of her shoulder where the sheet had slipped.
She stirred, a faint sound escaping her throat as she shifted against him. Her lashes fluttered, and then her eyes opened, unfocused at first and hazy with sleep. She blinked once, twice, before her gaze found his.
“You’re still here,” she murmured, voice low and rough from sleep.
Reid’s chest rose with a quiet breath. “Told you I would be.”
Her lips faintly curved, uncertain. Her hand slid over his chest, fingers idling against his skin as if she wasn’t sure. Then her eyes sharpened, watching him more closely. “You don’t regret it?”
He studied her, the way her brow pinched just slightly with the hesitation she tried to bury. “No,” he said, the word simple and unhurried. “Do you?”
She shook her head, but her throat worked. “I just… needed to know you weren’t going to tell me I imagined it.”
Reid brushed a strand of hair from her face, letting his fingers linger against her cheek. “You didn’t imagine I was here. I’m here now.”
