Maya didn’t remove the blindfold. She used the control clipped to her belt to reset the targets, setting aside a tiny slice of her attention to track Gray’s progress down the stairs. Nervousness at facing him after all the awkward silence tried to sizzle under her skin, but it couldn’t compete with adrenaline as the first target beeped its challenge.
Counting constellations was nice, but she was learning to embrace the soothing potential of perfect bull’s-eyes, too.
The targets beeped. One. Two.
Gray hesitated on the bottom step.
Three. Four. Five. Six.
His boots touched the cement floor, still well outside her ring of targets.
Seven.
Softer steps. He’d hit the threadbare throw rug. Ava had threatened to replace it two days ago, claiming it neither offered protection from the hard floor nor retained color sufficiently vibrant to qualify as decorative. Maya hadn’t fought her. Maybe if Ava was buying area rugs she wouldn’t buy a juicer.
Eight. Nine.
Ten.
She hit the final target and stopped, her back to Gray. He stood just outside the ring of targets. She could hear his breathing. Steady and even. Not even winded. Whatever Savitri had done to his implant to prioritize rapid healing had been astoundingly effective. Anyone else would have been flat on their back still, struggling for the energy to sit upright.
Not Gray.
She blew out a breath without turning. “I’m getting pretty good at this.”
“Wasn’t much room for improvement to begin with,” he rasped.
His voice stroked over her skin, all the more intense because she’d narrowed her focus to sound. Swallowing hard around a sudden lump in her throat, she dragged off her blindfold and tossed it onto one of the cots next to her laser pistol.
Then she turned, and the sight of him punched her in the gut.
He was fully dressed, including his boots and ever-present jacket. His hair, which had just started to grow back, stood out in tiny blond prickles that caught the light. His face still bore bruises, though they’d faded to a sickly green yellow.
He was alive, and whole. He was a goddamned miracle.
He was beautiful.
Maya wrapped her arms around herself to keep from reaching out to touch him just to make sure he was real. “You seem good.”
“Better,” he confirmed. “I got the all-clear from Mace and Savitri. No more monitoring.”
A tiny bit of tension she hadn’t realized lingered unraveled so abruptly, the world wobbled. She took a half step toward him, then stopped again, remembering Ava’s words. He’d come looking for her, but that didn’t mean he was ready.
She couldn’t push. So she settled for a shaky smile. “I’m so glad.”
He shoved his hands nervously into his jacket pockets, but his gaze remained fixed on her. “I’m sorry, Maya.”
“No, Gray—”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “You need to let me be sorry, as long as it’s for the right reasons.”
The hurt she’d fought to extinguish trembled inside her. If she didn’t acknowledge it, anything they tried to build would rest on a bed of dangerous embers. “Okay,” she whispered. “Tell me the reasons.”
It took him a moment to speak. “I was ready to die. I’d faced it, made my peace with it. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I had. My reality.” He exhaled sharply. “Then I woke up alive, and I didn’t know what to do with that.”
“Because I made the choice for you.” She bit her lower lip, then forced herself to ask the question that haunted her at night. “Are you mad at me for that?”
“No. No. It’s not—” He drove his hands through his hair, just like he’d done a hundred times before—except this time his palms slid over his nearly bare scalp. “I’m not upset that I’m alive, and I’m damn sure not angry with you. But it’s so hard to explain, Maya. You finally come to grips with the finality of it, and then it’s all over, and everything’s fine. It feels … like trying to turn a freight train.”
“It’s okay to not be okay.” She took another step, closing the space between them to a scant meter. “You don’t have to apologize for that. You got tortured, for fuck’s sake. And then almost died. And then … everything else. You don’t have to be okay. Not for me, not for anyone.”
“That’s not what I’m sorry about.” His chest heaved. “I should have talked to you. I should have told you what I was going through instead of pushing you away. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You should have,” she told him shakily. “I was so sad that Ava tried to give me a pep talk.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.” Maya rubbed her hand against her chest, but the ache there was easing. “You’re so good at hiding what you’re feeling from the world. But you don’t need to hide from me, okay? I don’t need you to be happy and fine all the time. I just … need you.”
He held out his hand.
Trust me. Trust yourself.
She trusted him. She had since before she should have. She’d trusted him because her instincts had told her that Gray would destroy himself before he hurt her.
Her instincts had been so right. Too right.
She trusted him because she trusted herself. So she reached out and rested her hand on his.
“I need you, too,” he said simply, as if it was a foregone conclusion. A known fact of the universe. “I’m not good at talking, but I’m good at doing things. So I made you something. If you want it.”
“Of course.” She smiled at him. “I want anything you made for me.”
He shoved his hand into his jacket pocket again and pulled out a ring.
Her heart skipped a beat. It skipped a bunch of them, she was pretty sure, and that was definitely why her fingers trembled as he gently slipped the burnished silver onto her finger.
Not just any ring. A ring that could only be hers.
Because he’d made it out of a damn fork.
The craftsmanship stole her breath. The neck had been pounded flat and shaped to curve around her finger. The tines were twisted in delicate interlocking loops, framing a sparkling blue crystal that perfectly matched her favorite necklace.
“You made this?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “Like, with your hands?”
“And some tools.” He smiled down at her. “Rafe helped me find the materials. Pretty sure he thought I’d finally lost it when I told him what I needed was the perfect fork.”
The ring blurred as her tears overflowed. She made a protective fist around it—then thumped it lightly against Gray’s shoulder. “Why are we wasting you as a damn sniper? We should be running a jewelry empire.”
“No.” He rubbed his thumb over her cheek, brushing away the tears. “This is only for you. No one else.”
And he claimed he wasn’t good at words.
Maya went up on her toes and twined her arms around his neck. His lips were right there, warm and gentle, welcoming her with a kiss that proved some things were beyond her burgeoning powers of mental control.
When he kissed her, she felt it everywhere. The tingles along her scalp, the sweet warmth sliding down her spine, the heat kindling lower—straight down to her toes, which were trying to curl in her boots again.