Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
“You’ve been there for weeks. Jet lag doesn’t last that long.”
“Maybe I’m just not sleeping well. Can’t find any Coronation Street at night to put me to sleep.”
“Mia.” He says my name like it hurts him. “Talk to me. Please.”
I press my back against the cold metal of the security gate, the ridges digging into my spine through my jacket. I could tell him the truth. Not all of it, but the part that matters. I found someone I can touch, Cal. Someone I can kiss without killing.
My throat tightens. I wait for the relief to come, the joy, the celebration of finally being free from the curse I’ve carried since I was thirteen years old. All this time watching other people hold hands, kiss hello, fall asleep tangled together, while I was busy being the monster in the fairy tale, the one whose touch means death.
And now, I’m not.
But the relief doesn’t come. What comes instead is something harder to name. It’s a strange, sideways grief—not for what I lost, but for what I survived. For the version of myself who learned to live without touch, who built walls so thick, they became load-bearing. Who am I if I’m not the girl who kills with a kiss? What’s left when you take away the thing that made you untouchable? What if I’m still not lovable when all is said and done?
And underneath that, darker still, is guilt. Because Cal is on the other end of this line, three thousand miles away, and two years ago, he stood in front of me with his heart in his hands. He’d said he didn’t care about the poison, that he’d learn to love me without kissing, without any of the things normal couples do. That I was worth it.
I’d told him no, told him I couldn’t do that to him, couldn’t make him live half a life just to be with me.
And now, there’s Vanguard. Who I can kiss. Who I can touch. Who makes me feel things I told myself I’d never feel.
And I can’t tell Cal any of it. It would destroy him.
Unless he already knows.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I tell him. “The mission is progressing. I’m gathering intel. That’s all.”
“That’s all.” He repeats it flatly. “Right.”
I can hear him breathing. I can picture him too, the way he’d be standing, one hand in his pocket, the other pressing the phone too hard against his ear, the furrow between his brows that appears when he’s worried, the lock of hair across his forehead. Is he at work? Suddenly, I’m acutely homesick for the haphazard SOE office, a place I had dreaded going to for those three months I was out of the field, and now, I’m realizing it was the only real sense of home and family I had felt in a long time. Thank God Bayo and Kat are here in New York, or it would really gut me.
“Listen,” I say, forcing lightness into my voice, “I appreciate you checking in. Really. But I’m handling it. You don’t need to worry.”
“I always worry about you.” He clears his throat. “I mean—we all do. The team. Roger. Everyone. We’re all worried. That’s why I’m calling.”
Right. The team. Of course.
I think about how I walked through Times Square my first day here, surrounded by millions of people, and wanted to call someone—anyone—to tell them how the lights looked, how the city smelled, how strange and wonderful and terrifying it all was. I’d scrolled through my contacts and realized there was no one, not a single person I could call just to share something, just to connect, just to say I’m here and I wish you could see this too.
Everyone in my phone is work. Every relationship I have is built on lies or violence or both. Even Cal—sweet, steady Cal, who loves me despite everything—is calling because he got a report, not because he was thinking of me over his morning coffee.
That’s the job. That’s the life I chose. I know that. And I know they feel like family too.
But sometimes…it just hits differently, that in this business, you are ghost who will never have a normal life.
It reminds me that what I have with Vanguard is all just make-believe.
“Tell the team I said thanks,” I say. “And tell Roger the next report will be on his desk by Friday.”
“Mia—”
“I should go. This article won’t write itself.”
A long beat of silence. Then, a sigh. “Just be careful, alright? Whatever’s happening over there, whatever you’re not telling me…be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“No, you’re not. You’re reckless and stubborn and you think you can handle everything on your own.” A pause. “I don’t want to come there, Mia. I don’t want to have to fly across the ocean because this mission went sideways. I want to trust you. Tell me I can trust you right now.”