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The screen lit up. Six missed calls from Mom. Three from numbers I didn’t know.

And one message from Russ.

My stomach turned over before I even opened it. It was photos of my apartment. The couch was slashed open, my books were all over the floor, and every drawer in my kitchen was pulled out and dumped.

Lying open in the middle of the mess was my logbook. Every pilot keeps one. Mine had every single flight I’d ever made written in it, starting from the first one with my grandfather when I was sixteen.

There were no words with it. Just the pictures, sent from a dead man’s phone.

Shade took the phone out of my hand and looked at it. His mouth went flat.

I texted my mom with shaking thumbs. I told her I was taking a long haul job but that I was fine and I’d call next week. Then I turned it off and gave it back to Shade, and I lifted my chin and walked across that whole main room like nothing in the world was wrong.

I made it all the way down the hall and I made it through his door. I realized he’d followed me all the way there.

Then he shut the door behind us and I sat down on the edge of his bed and fell apart.

He didn’t try to stop me crying. He just crouched in front of me and waited, with his big hands hanging between his knees.

“A dozen trips,” I said, when I could talk. “Since spring. Thirty crates a time. Do you know how many guns that is?”

He didn’t answer. He knew better than I did.

“Every one of them went somewhere. Somebody pointed every one of them at somebody.” I wiped my face with the heel of my hand. “And I never asked. Russ paid me cash and loaded those crates himself, and I sang along to the radio the whole way there completely oblivious to the load I was carrying. I didn’t ask once because I trusted that my boss wasn’t a criminal asshole.”

He still didn’t say anything.

“My grandfather taught me to fly. I was sixteen, and the first time we went up, I knew. That’s it. That’s what I’m doing for the rest of my life.” My voice cracked. “It’s the only thing that’s ever been just mine. Up there I’m free, and nobody can touch me. And now every time I close my eyes, I’m back in that seat with those crates behind me. What if I never get in a plane again without seeing them?”

He was quiet for so long that I couldn’t stand it.

“Go on, then,” I said. “Say it. I should’ve asked.”

“Mya…”

“I should have asked. I know I should have.”

“I’ve done things.” His voice was low and rough. “For my country, and for this club. Things I’ll never say out loud to anybody, as long as I live.” He looked right at me. “I’m the last man on this earth who’s going to judge you for not asking.”

I stared at him.

He was crouched there in front of me, close enough to touch, with that hard face and those dark eyes, and he’d just told me more about himself in ten seconds than in three whole days.

I put my hand on his jaw, leaned down and kissed him.

For one second he didn’t move. Then he made a sound low in his chest and kissed me back so hard it pushed me back on the bed.

He caught himself. He pulled back an inch and his eyes went straight to my arm.

“Your stitches.”

“I’m sick of careful, Shade.”

I grabbed a fistful of his tank top and slid off the bed and onto him, and we went down together onto that stupid pile of blankets on the floor.

He landed on his back with me on top of him. I didn’t give him time to think about it. I kissed him again, and this time there was nothing careful about either of us.

Three days I’d watched him pretend he didn’t want me. Now his hands were everywhere, up under my shirt, over my back and down over my ass, dragging me against him like he’d been starving for it. He was shaking. That big, hard, grumpy man was shaking under my hands, and nobody in the world had ever made me feel the way that did.