“And you didn’t stay?” Luke asks incredulously.
“No.”
Luke makes a face. “Because your dick hasn’t been lonely long enough?”
“Because she's been through hell. Because she needs to choose this without me pushing. Because if I'd stayed—” I stop again, jaw tight. “I would've taken everything she was offering and more, and she deserves more than that.”
Jake's expression softens. “You're protecting her from yourself.”
“Someone has to.” And I’m fucking glad I left, because I would have been all over her, and she’s essentially a virgin. A vibrator does not count—not in my mind.
“That's not how this works, Mason.” Luke's voice is steady, certain. “You can't protect someone by staying away. You just end up alone while they walk into danger without backup.”
Point made. I think about the moment when I thought Kelly was going to find Lily and the coffee in my belly churns. “I'm not staying away. I'm giving her space. I’m going slow.”
“To what? Decide if she wants the guy who's been watching her for weeks? The guy who triggered an alarm to save her life? The guy who kissed her back and then ran?” Luke shakes his head. “She's already decided. You're the one still fighting it.”
The truth of that hits harder than it should.
“She's dangerous,” I say quietly. “To herself. To the mission. To me.”
“Good,” Jake says. “You need dangerous. You need someone who won't let you disappear into your own head.”
I look at him—at the man who found Emma and chose her despite every tactical reason not to. Who built a life with her even though it meant vulnerability and risk and all the things we were trained to avoid. “How do you do it? How do you let someone in when you know what it costs?”
Jake's smile is small and sad and knowing. “You stop counting the cost. You just hold on and hope you're strong enough to keep them safe.”
“And if you're not?” I ask.
“Then you get stronger.”
43
LILY
The next morning, I wake up thinking about Mason’s mouth before I remember my own name.
Which is a problem, because I’m supposed to be focused on Kelly, Turner, and the trail I finally picked up—not the way Mason saidpretty girllike he already owned every fractured piece of me.
So, naturally, I spend the next ten minutes staring at my phone like it personally betrayed me.
And then I open my secret email account to tell Wes what I saw last night.
44
MASON
“Hendricks calls in three hours,” Luke says, shifting gears. “We need to decide if we're taking his contract work.”
Shadow stands, pads over to me, presses his nose against my hand. I scratch behind his ears absently. “What's he offering?”
Grabbing another piece of bacon, Luke shrugs. “Security consulting for a logistics company. Probably legitimate, but with Hendricks you never know. Good money. Flexible timeline. But it means splitting focus between his job, the Turner surveillance, and now Lily's vendetta mission.”
Jake crosses his arms. “We can handle multiple operations. We've done it before.”
“Not with someone like Lily in the mix,” I point out. “She's not going to sit on the sidelines while we run contracts. She's going to keep hunting.”
“Then we hunt with her,” Jake says simply. “We integrate her mission into ours. Turner's the common target. We pool resources, share intel, move as a unit instead of separate operations.”