Page 56 of Secret Baby Daddy

I repeat it like I’m trying to convince some deeper, less rational part of myself that the alternative version of the last four seconds didn’t actually happen.

I make myself let go of her wrist, and my hand still won’t fully steady.

Hayes and the team have the attacker restrained by the time I trust myself to look away from her.

Level three access, I already know without checking.

Another badge, another contractor identity that won’t survive scrutiny once we run it.

Roman’s fingerprints are all over this, even if his actual hands never touch anything directly.

I do not say his name out loud, not until Hayes confirms it with something more solid than instinct, but I already know, with the same bone-deep certainty I’ve carried since the authorization key first surfaced, that every thread of tonight traces back to a man who taught me everything I know about patience and then weaponized that same patience against me.

“You’re shaking,” Piper says, quiet, like she’s the one comforting me instead of the reverse.

“I’m aware.”

“That’s not standard threat-response physiology, Calder. Adrenaline doesn’t usually look like this once the threat’s already contained.”

“No,” I agree, because there’s no honest version of tonight that lets me pretend otherwise. “It doesn’t.”

She doesn’t push further, which I’m grateful for, because I don’t yet have language for what just happened to me watching a stranger’s hand close around her wrist; something past professional obligation and past adrenaline, into territory I have spent twelve years carefully avoiding.

I have built an entire career on the theory that attachment is a liability, that caring too specifically about one person makes you slower, worse, more likely to make exactly the kind of catastrophic decision that got Jonah killed.

Tonight, watching my own hands refuse to steady, I understand that the theory was never designed to survive contact with someone like her.

“Thank you,” Piper says finally, softer than I’ve ever heard her. “For getting there.”

“Don’t thank me.”

My voice is still rougher than I’d like.

“Just don’t stand near a tree line unguarded again. I don’t think I can survive those four seconds twice.”

She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t step away from me either, and we stand there in the cooling evening air, considerably closer than the professional distance between us has any right to allow, while my hands, slowly, remember how to be still.

Neither of us moves to end it.

Later, once Sloane is confirmed safe and the attacker is in custody and Cordelia has been briefed on a version of events I’ve deliberately simplified for her, I find Piper alone on the terrace, arms wrapped around herself against the cold.

“You should be resting,” I tell her.

“I keep replaying it. The four seconds before you got there.”

She doesn’t look at me, watching the dark tree line instead.

“I’ve spent my whole career controlling exactly how dangerous a moment gets to look to everyone else. I’ve never actually had to survive one.”

“You did survive it.”

“Because you got there.”

She finally turns, and something in her expression is more open than I’ve seen it, unguarded in a way that has nothing to do with strategy.

“I keep thinking about how that felt. Not the fear. The part after. Your hands on my face, shaking, like I mattered more than the case did.”

“You do,” I say, before I can stop myself, and neither of us moves to take it back.