Chapter 505 | The Taste of Nine Years

Chapter 505: 505 | The Taste of Nine Years

She grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands. No warning, no hesitation, no careful dance around the moment. This was nine years of holding weight alone and three days of thinking I was dead and the specific relief of discovering otherwise. She pulled me down and I met her halfway.

Her mouth hit mine hot and fierce and desperate. She tasted like salt and morning and every word she hadn’t been able to say for three days.

I kissed her back. Both hands in her hair, pulling the ponytail loose the rest of the way. She made a sound against my mouth that I’d been imagining since the first time she squatted next to me on the field and corrected my plank with a stick and I got distracted looking down her tank top. She pressed the whole line of her body into mine, all that lean muscle and generous curve, hands fisted in my shirt like she was afraid I’d disappear if she let go.

I could feel her heartbeat through both our uniforms, feel the way her breathing had gone ragged, feel the nine years of distance she’d put between herself and this collapsing in real time. Her lips were soft and firm at once, demanding and giving, and when she bit my lower lip like she was testing whether I was really here, I groaned into her mouth and she answered with a hum that vibrated through my chest.

She angled her head and deepened the kiss, and I let her take what she needed. Her fingers curled tighter in my shirt, nails dragging fabric and probably skin underneath, and I didn’t care. I slid one hand down her spine to the small of her back, pulled her closer, and she made that sound again, low and almost pained, and pressed harder into me until there wasn’t space for air between us.

When we broke apart we were both breathing hard. Her forehead dropped against my chest, right over the graft, right over the scar the leopard left, and her shoulders shook once.

"You died," she said into my sternum. "You actually died and came back and asked for a burger."

"I’m very committed to the bit."

"I know you have others." Her voice was muffled, thick. "Naomi. Belle. The orange one and the goth one. Belle’s got a whole roster. I’ve seen it. I know what I’m walking into."

"You’re not walking into anything you don’t want to."

She pulled back enough to look at me. The wreck was still there, but underneath it was the Misato I knew, the one who assessed everything, who’d probably already run the math on this and decided the outcome was worth it. "I’m not sharing you like it’s a schedule. I’m not doing a bracket like Fox wants everyone to do."

"Belle’s bracket is aspirational at best."

"I’m serious."

"I know." And I did. I brushed a thumb across her cheekbone, wiped away a tear she probably hadn’t noticed was there. "You’re not on a schedule, Misato. You’re the person who kept my squad alive when I was gone. You’re the reason there was a squad to come back to. That’s not a slot on a spreadsheet."

She studied my face for a long moment, green eyes red at the edges but steady now, searching for something. Whatever she found seemed to satisfy her because she nodded once, sharp and decisive, and then she leaned up and kissed me again. Softer this time, slower, like she was memorizing the taste of me, the shape of my mouth, the way my hands felt when I held her like she mattered.

When she pulled back this time her breathing had evened out and the armor was starting to reassemble itself. Not all the way. But enough.

Something eased in her face. Not all the way. Misato Ayame didn’t do all the way. But enough.

"The others are going to have opinions," she said.

"They have opinions about everything. Naomi maintains a group chat. Belle files complaints. Addison threatens homicide as a love language."

"Blair’s going to lose her mind."

"Blair’s already lost her mind. It’s why she’s fun."

Misato huffed a laugh, and this one came out whole, and she reached up and shoved a strand of loose green hair behind her ear with a hand that had stopped shaking. She looked back up the path toward the field, where six other people were waiting and probably wondering what the captain and the field lead were doing in the tree line for so long.

"We’ve got an assault variation to run," she said.

"We do."

"And you still owe me the shower situation from earlier. I heard about the hospital nurse. Sakura." She narrowed her eyes. "Fox mentioned it. In the roster."

"That roster is a menace to society."

"It really is." She stepped back, and the captain slid back into place over the woman, armor reassembling one plate at a time, the ponytail getting fixed, the tablet coming back out from under her arm. But she didn’t let go of my sleeve right away. Held it for one more second, thumb pressed against the fabric like she was checking I was solid. "I’m glad you’re not dead, Monroe."

"You’re not the first person to tell me that this week."

"I’m probably not the last, either." She let go. Turned toward the field. Then, without looking back, quieter: "But I meant it more than the rest of them combined, so don’t test me."

The System pinged at the edge of my vision as she walked ahead of me back up the path, lime green ponytail catching the light, spine locked back into captain-mode like the last five minutes hadn’t peeled her open in front of the ocean.

Misato Ayame. Devotion: sixty-one percent. Status: Yours.

Sixty-one.

She’d been sitting at forty-something under Complicated for weeks, and the number had just jumped in a single conversation, and the status had gone from a hedge to a fact.

The graft hummed, warm and full and disgustingly pleased with itself, and in the back of my skull the crystal plate I’d never see added a new ring, lime green and tight and coupling clean, right up near the center where the people who mattered burned brightest.

I didn’t smile. She’d have felt it somehow. She had that kind of radar.

But I thought about the fact that six weeks ago I was a two-hundred-forty-pound dead man with a death timer and a spreadsheet, and now I had a captain who’d just kissed me in a tree line because three days of thinking I was gone had taught her exactly how much she’d let herself care.

"You coming, field lead?" she called back. "Or do I add laps."