Page 18 of Falcon’s Forever

Cara’s eyebrows rise. “Does nothing stay private in this place?”

“No,” I tell her.

“That’s horrifying.” She casts a wary glance toward the clubhouse.

“You get used to it,” I assure her.

Cara looks back at me and shakes her head. “I don’t want to.”

For a second, it almost feels like before; easy and familiar. Then we both remember how much time has passed, and the silence changes shape around us.

I nod toward the notebook pressed against her chest. “Sterling went through the list. There are some good ideas in there.”

“You think so?” Cara asks, watching my face closely.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I do.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “You’re not just saying that?”

“No.” I lean one shoulder against the porch post. “The security channel’s going ahead. Condor’s building it now.”

“That fast?” Her eyebrows lift again.

“He likes computers more than people,” I explain. “It explains a lot, honestly. It also explains why the channel will have twelve unnecessary features nobody asked for.”

Cara smiles, it’s small but real, and the sight does something to my chest that I have no defence against.

“What?” she asks, catching me staring.

“Nothing.” I drag my gaze away from her.

“You’re staring,” she points out.

“Sorry,” I mutter, although I’m not sure I mean it.

Her smile fades, and I regret the word the second it's out. "I didn't say stop," she says, and that gets my attention fast, something shifting in the space between us that I don't trust myself to name.

"How are the girls?" I ask instead, because it's safer.

"Better now." She tells me about Emily, embarrassed about panicking even though there's nothing to be embarrassed about, her body not caught up yet to what her head already knows. I understand that better than she probably realizes.

Her grip tightens on the notebook. "We keep telling them they're safe, Falcon, but sometimes I think we say it because we need them to believe us."

"And they don't?"

"They want to. Wanting to feel safe and feeling safe are two different things." She looks out over the compound, at the brothers moving near the garage, there’s a prospect carrying boxes, and Vulture is talking to Sterling by the main building. To me it's always read as secure. Walls, weapons, and men I trust. That's always meant safety.

Cara sees something else in the same yard, and I'm starting to understand that both of us have been right the whole time, just about different things.

"I'm learning," I tell her.

"What?"

"How to see it the way you do." Because she's right, it isn't enough to keep the danger outside if the way we do it makes the women inside feel like prisoners.

Cara falls quiet for a moment, her fingers tracing the edge of the notebook. “That’s almost exactly what I told Knox.”

“I’m smarter than I look,” I tell her.