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She unwrapped her legs and he set her down. She avoided his eyes as she found her shorts, pulled them on, and grabbed the tank top from the dirt. She dressed with her back to him because she could not look at his face while she sealed herself shut again.

“Sloane.”

“I’m going to shower.” She pulled the tank top over her head. Tugged it down over her stomach. “This didn’t happen.”

She walked out of the yard. She didn’t run. She kept her pace even, controlled, because running would mean she felt something worth running from.

The bond pulsed behind her ribs. She could feel him standing in the yard, watching her leave, and the pull toward him was so strong her steps nearly faltered.

They didn’t.

She made it inside. Locked the bathroom door. Turned the shower on. Stood under the water with her forehead against the tile, the heat pounding against her shoulders, her back, the places where his hands had been.

Her body was still shaking. She pressed her teeth together until it stopped.

Then she washed her hair and went to breakfast.

Chapter 11 - Chris

Sloane was in the kitchen when he came downstairs. He knew it even before he reached the stairs.

He stopped in the doorway. She stood at the counter with her back to him, pouring coffee, her hair still damp from the shower. She’d changed into a loose grey shirt he’d never seen before, the collar sitting wide across one shoulder. The skin there was flushed pink from the hot water.

He could smell her from the doorway. Clean soap, something faintly floral, the cedar that clung to everything in the compound. Underneath that, her. The scent that had been on his own skin an hour ago, pressed into the creases of his palms, the crook of his neck.

He’d showered too. Scrubbed his hands twice. She was still there. He couldn’t get rid of her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

“Coffee’s on,” she said without turning around.

Her voice was flat. Neutral. She could have been talking to a wall.

Chris walked to the counter, pulled a mug from the cabinet, and poured. His arm came close to hers as he reached for the pot. She didn’t flinch, didn’t shift, didn’t acknowledge the proximity at all, but the near-touch sent electricity down his spine.

He took his coffee to the table. Sat down. The chair scraped against the stone floor. Sloane stayed at the counter, drinking standing up, facing the window.

The quarters were too small. They’d been adequate a week ago, when they operated on separate schedules. When he left before she woke and she went to bed after he’d closed his door. They’d developed a choreography of avoidance—two bodies moving through the same space on parallel tracks that never intersected. It had worked because it had to work.

Now the room felt tight. The kitchen, the sitting area with its single bookshelf, the corridor to the two bedrooms, the shared bathroom where her shampoo sat on the shelf beside his razor. He knew these details because he’d cataloged them the first week, the way he cataloged any operational environment: mapping exits, identifying variables. Her shampoo. Her boots by the door. The glass she left on the drying rack every morning, rinsed but never put away.

He’d never noticed that she moved quietly. That her feet found the spaces between the creaking floorboards without searching for them, that she turned corners with her weight low, balanced, the training ingrained so deep it lived in her walk. He’d noticed her in the yard. He’d noticed her at the heavy bag, the way her body uncoiled into a strike. But he hadn’t noticed this: the ordinary grace, the way she lifted the coffee pot with her wrist angled just so, the way she set it down without a sound.

It irritated him.

“You can sit,” he barked.

“I’m fine.”

“There are two chairs.”

“Thank you, Count Obvious. I can count to two.”

He rolled his eyes as he brought the cup to his lips. The coffee burned his tongue. “Standing at the counter won’t make this less awkward.”

She turned then. Her eyes found his across the room, hazel, the green bright in the morning light that came through the window behind her. Her expression gave him nothing. The mask was flawless.

“Who said it was awkward?”

“You’re drinking coffee standing up in your own kitchen because you don’t want to sit at the same table as me.”