Page 52 of Deep Cover

Then came the thought he really couldn’t stomach.

Caryssa was going to leave. Go back to her life and a job that could put her in danger while he was hundreds of miles away, unable to do a damn thing about it. Not allowed to know.

Worry didn’t begin to cover what that did to him.

A hand came down on the opposite end of the table, a thump loud enough to bring everyone’s attention to Younger. He eyed the spread of food. “What’s for dessert tonight?”

“Nothing.” Stina didn’t look a bit bothered. “I’m not in my baking era anymore.”

Groans rose around the table, and Rome’s brow creased with real disappointment. “I miss your banana chocolate chip muffins.”

She leaned toward him and touched his jaw. “Maybe I’ll bring that recipe out of the archives just for you.”

The pair exchanged a sickeningly sweet smile that made Younger ball up his napkin and launch it their way. It bounced off the table to the floor.

After the laughter died down again, Stina jerked a thumb at Caryssa. “It’s Caryssa’s turn to be in her baking era. She made us dessert the other night.”

Every head turned. Rivers eyed her across the table.

“Why are you looking at me?” she demanded with a playful note in her voice he hadn’t heard in a long time.

“We all enjoy dessert here, Caryssa. Don’t we, guys?” Younger’s face was the picture of innocence.

A chorus of agreement rounded the table.

Caryssa looked straight at Rivers. “Do I look like Betty fucking Crocker to you?”

The table cracked up, and Rivers laughed with them, fascinated by this piece of Caryssa he’d never known. The woman he remembered didn’t bake. She considered putting takeout on a real plate gourmet.

Her mother used to despair over it, claiming Caryssa had spent too much time riding bikes with her brothers and not enough in the kitchen.

“You made us those little desserts, though,” Jolie pointed out, eyes dancing with delight. “In the mugs.”

“It was mug cakes.” Caryssa waved a dismissive hand. “No big deal.”

Rivers’s lips tilted at one corner, his body reacting to seeing her a little more agitated than usual. “Tell us what a mug cake is.”

Seeing she was outnumbered, she gave in. “You just dump everything into a mug—flour, sugar, cocoa, water, whatever—and microwave it. Ninety seconds and you’re done. It’s not exactly culinary artistry.”

“Microwave? Ninety seconds? I can get behind that.” Younger looked as if he was already planning to raid the pantry the second dinner ended.

More laughter rolled around the table, easy and warm. And Rivers watched Caryssa in the middle of it—genuinely laughing, shoulders loose as she teased Stina and Jolie. And he felt a sensation thicken in his chest.

This was her. The real her. The woman he’d fallen for in the first place, still there under years of grief and a steely armor he forced her to forge with his choice to walk away in order to save her.

Even after all she’d endured, she was still in there.

He saw it emerging in the way she laughed at a table full of strangers who included her as their family in the space of a few days. For a second, he let himself live in the moment without wrestling with the heavy guilt he’d borne every day of his life since.

She wasn’t wearing her FBI armor tonight either. Once she knew his arm was fine and the bleeding handled, she’d disappeared into her room to change. He’d expected her to come back in a clean blazer, perfect posture firmly in place.

Instead, she wore jeans and a soft green sweater that brought out her eyes. Her hair hung loose, the wavy ends brushing her collarbones.

The sight gave him a jolt.

She was the Caryssa he remembered. The woman who used to fall asleep with her head in his lap, a bowl of popcorn balanced beside her.

For one disorienting second, six years fell away.