“When I said I was the shit, I really only meant I was a badass,” he confided in a whisper.
A little smile curled her mouth while her eyes stayed closed. “I’m sure you are,” she said soothingly. “I mean I’m the one who has to beat terrorists up with pots while you have a gun, but you’re not too bad.”
That was a little bit of a sore point with him right that second, actually. It had taken years off his life when he came out of that office to realize what was happening. Still, she had been magnificent. “God, Vi.”
“Lina’s squirmy cousin. Do you know I once had to push him down the stairs in their building when I was a teenager?”
“He’s the same kind of guy who would throw acid in a little girl’s face for going to school in some other part of the world and pretend it was for God, when it was really because he had a putrid soul.”
“Is Lina going to have a hard time? Be questioned?”
“She’ll certainly be questioned, but since she was clearly fighting him and her own parents had several times reached out to the police about their worries about him, I don’t think she’ll have to deal with any suspicion. Just an attempt to find out as much as they can. You should ask Elias and Brandon. I help gather intel on missions, but I’m not an analyst.”
“Who was the other guy? Are there any other attacks planned?”
“I don’t do interrogation, honey. But I’m pretty sure they’ll find that out. You did good, capturing him alive.”
“His gun jammed, didn’t it?”
Chase nodded, all the hairs on the back of his neck rising yet again. He couldn’t talk about it. His throat and lungs shrank into tiny balls when his brain even ghosted close to what would have happened if Abed’s gun hadn’t jammed.
He’d stayed behind in the office ten seconds to take a deep breath and calm down, and that might have been two seconds too long.
But even if he had followed her immediately, without that stroke of luck with the gun of the first man in, he might not have been able to make a difference. If Abed’s gun hadn’t jammed…he couldn’t draw a gun faster than bullets sprayed from an AK-47.
Vi’s face was very somber. “Damn it. You should have told me.”
“Vi. If any of us believed you were still in danger, we would have kept that restaurant shut down.”
She glared at him.
“Well, we would have, Vi. I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you, because I was already messing up the covert part of my mission enough as it was. We wanted to shake Al-Mofti loose, not scare him into deep hiding. Vi…for as long as I stay in, there will be plenty of times when I can’t tell you what I’m doing until long after it’s done.”
“I understand that. But this was my restaurant. My people.”
He couldn’t say anything. He understood exactly why it bothered her so much.
She rested her splinted hand over his, curling the finger and thumb around the edge of his palm insofar as she could. Acceptance. He liked it so much. It just uncurled in him like a flower opening, which was the silliest image for a man in his profession, but he liked it way the hell better than all his death and dying metaphors. I can disagree with you and be mad at you and still accept and love you and be glad that you’re alive, that touch said.
See? He always felt that Vi went straight to his heart. Or maybe it was that their hearts beat in the same way.
“I know it’s stupid that you light up my life so much,” Vi said, and those words light up my life just kind of shot through him, sparkling, “because I only met you a few days ago and we fight half the time. But…I like fighting with you. It’s got zing.” She made a wiggling motion of her fingers into the air, apparently indicative of his zing.
He settled his own hand over her wrist, holding that since they couldn’t hold hands. “Everything about you has zing, Vi. You make me feel as if I’m going snap-crackle-pop all the time.”
“Except sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes you’re like old pajamas.”
Wait, what? “Uh—”
“Like I can be comfortable with you. No matter how tired, or how battered, or how wounded I feel.”
He ran his fingers from her shoulder to her wrist. Being so wounded you couldn’t even do a proper cuddle was shitty. Maybe he was getting ready for a career that didn’t involve so many bullets.
Hard to let go, though. To leave the safety of the world in other hands while he sat on his own.
“It’s a powerful combination,” she said. “That much zing, and that much peace.”
Yeah.
“Hey, Vi?” he said, low.
She angled her head.
He’d noticed that before. When his voice dropped, when he had to say something vulnerable and intimate, she listened to him better.
“Will you marry me?”