In the Likely Event

by Rebecca Yarros

Ten years had passed since we’d met on a very different tarmac, and the sight of her still left me speechless.

The only woman I’d ever loved was here—in a damned war zone—and she was wearing another man’s ring.

THIS YOURE TELLING ME 4 PAGES IN YOU DROP A BANGER LIKE THIS. IM SAT.

“Ms. Astor, meet—” Webb started. “Nathaniel Phelan,” she finished, scanning my face like she might never see it again, like she was cataloging every change, every scar I’d acquired in the last three years. “Izzy.” It was all I could manage with that billion-carat rock flashing at me from her hand like a warning beacon. Who the hell had she said yes to?

“Look, I can reassign—” Webb started. “No,” I snapped. There was zero chance in hell I was risking her safety with anyone else. She was stuck with me, whether or not she liked it.

times. Where no one is actively trying to blow you up. “Yeah?” She arched a brow and hefted the slipping pack up to her shoulder. “Funny, because I thought you were dead. Guess we were both wrong.”

“Okay, so what would be on your one hundred books list?” he asked.

I grasped his hand, and he laced our fingers together, warmth infusing my clammy, ice-cold skin. “Go ahead and squeeze. You can’t break me.”

SWOON

“Three minutes. Right? The first three minutes after takeoff?” “Yep.” He crossed his left wrist to our joined hands and pushed a few buttons, starting his stopwatch. “There. When it reaches three minutes, you can relax until we land.” “You’re really too sweet.”

“She’s not my ex.” We never got to that point. “And wipe the smirk off your face.” “She’s worse than your ex,” Torres mumbled. “She’s your what-if.”

“Not. Supposed. To. Be. Here.” She seethed with every yank, mocking my words. “You’re not. This is the last place on earth you belong, Iz.” Did she have a death wish? “Glad to see you’re still an ass.”

“You’ve always been Izzy.” I followed her past the third row of trees that marked the front of the embassy and toward the door. She stiffened, then spun to face me right in front of Webb. “Izzy is an eighteen-year-old girl who has to have her hand held. I’m not that girl anymore, and if you have a problem with me being here, then go ahead and assign me to someone else,

That was because nothing distracted me like Isabeau Astor. She wasn’t some bright, shiny little diversion. The woman was a meteor, a shooting star capable of granting impossible wishes or destroying life as I knew it.

UGHHHHHHH

“She’ll be safer with me.” “Because you’re in love with her?” Torres questioned. I shook my head. “Because Jenkins isn’t willing to die for her.”

“So this is what it takes to get your phone number? A girl has to haul herself into a war zone?” “Izzy,” he whispered,

and I did what always worked for me when shit went down—narrowed my focus to one goal.

Her eyes narrowed. “Please don’t pretend that you’re concerned about my welfare.” “Your welfare has been my concern for the last ten fucking years!” I snapped, immediately regretting the slip. Damn it, this woman pushed me to the edge faster than anyone on the planet.

We were staring into each other’s eyes, our hands clinging as flight 826 plummeted into the Missouri. She slammed her eyes shut, and I unhooked my belt, adjusted my rifle, and pulled my AirPods out of a cargo pocket on my Kevlar. Then I moved, kneeling in front of her.

After all, she was . . . Isabeau.

“Astors do what needs to be done.” They really expected me to come through this like everything else—with flying colors. What the hell was I supposed to do? Ask them to leave the only vacation Dad had taken in the last ten years where he hadn’t been in constant contact with his office?

“That doesn’t look like your purse,” Margo said, a laugh in her voice. “It’s not mine.” I set the backpack down on the empty portion of my desk. “It’s his.”

Nate looked at the phone for a second longer, and I knew he was memorizing every detail about Jeremy in that way he had, filing the information away for later. Then he tapped the decline button, and instead of putting my phone back on the stack in my arms, he slid it into the side pocket of my black slacks. He didn’t touch me with his hands, but damn, did it feel like he had.

“You’re still trying to save everyone but yourself.”

“Don’t, Izzy.” He shook his head. “I have one weakness on this entire planet, and you’re feet away when you’re supposed to be halfway round the globe.”

“So please, have some goddamn mercy on me for once in your life and just . . .” His eyes squeezed shut. “Just ignore it.”

“And if I had, you wouldn’t have been able to get in, either, would you?” I challenged, tucking my legs underneath me as he handed me the folder. He snorted. “Like a piece of metal is keeping me out when I hear you scream.”

Like it was an act of fate or some other equally fortuitous force, the crowd parted for a length of a heartbeat, but that was all I needed. Standing at the bar was Isabeau fucking Astor. She tucked her hair behind an ear, giving me a full view of her profile, and my heart jumped into my throat. “Better things to do,” I said to Rowell,

“I must have dreamed of you a million times,” I said loudly enough to be heard over the music. Smooth, Nate. Real smooth.

“Oh, and her blood type is O positive.” My smile somehow widened. “Am I forgetting anything?”

“How did you think he got . . .” Izzy leaned over the table, reaching for my hat, and I dipped my head so she could take it. She removed my hat with one hand and pushed the short strands of my hair up with the other, no doubt showing Fitz the scar he’d seen multiple times over the last two years. “That? I knew you’d have a scar!” “Eleven stitches,” I told her.

“You don’t get to tell me where I go!” I stalked forward until the toes of my boots touched the tips of her high heels. “That’s exactly what I get to do as the head of your security. Remember, you agreed to listen to every order out there,” I said, pointing to the door. “You only get to throw your fits in here.”

“you can’t control the decisions other people make, nor do you bear the blame for the consequences of their choices.”

“Did you ever think about me?” she questioned, her voice dropping to a whisper. I clenched my jaw, fighting off the urge to tell her the truth. Every fucking day.

Two hours later, we sat on the wooden double swing on North Beach, Nate gently rocking us as my feet stretched over his lap to rest on the opposite railing. The one at my back dug in a little as I scoured the pages of Outlander, marking my favorite lines with neon-yellow highlighter as he did the same to Their Eyes Were Watching God, but I didn’t care.

His idea had been . . . swoonworthy. He’d taken me into the bookstore and told me to pick one of my favorite books that I’d guess he hadn’t read yet, and he’d done the same, buying both and a two-pack of yellow highlighters.

“Is there anything you’re scared of? There has to be something, right?” “Sure. Becoming anything like my father.” He

“Do you like it?” I asked when he faced me again. “What you do?” “I’m good at it.” He shrugged. “That’s not the same thing.”

“If no one’s trying to kill you here, then that means I’m doing my job over there. That’s how I choose to look at it, how I have to look at it.”

He was open, brutally honest, brave to a fault, and remarkably careful with me.

“Find a way to make it your own,” he suggested, lifting me off my feet when the next wave came. “Find a way to make a difference.”

“If I could make a difference, I’d find a way to keep you here.”

What if the time we wanted never came? What if this was all we’d have? What if— “Stop.” He turned me in his arms and cradled my face. “Whatever you’re thinking, just stop.”

“You know the best part of not defining this?” “My begrudging freedom?” I muttered. He laughed. “No. The possibilities, Izzy. That’s what we are. Possibility.” Possibility. The same reason he loved the sunrise.

“That’s what you said—” “I know.” He backed away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “I remember everything about you. Now get on that plane so I can remember this too.”

“You would get my dedication to my profession, wouldn’t you?” Serena said with a sigh. “Hell, your dedication to yours is the entire reason Izzy ended up in Senator Lauren’s office. Are you going to end your deployment early?” She. Did. Not. My head snapped toward Serena, but she didn’t catch the panicked rise of my brows because she was looking at Nate. “What?” Nate asked.

“You seriously thought it was a coincidence that she’s spent the last three years working for the woman who’s been pushing legislation to end this war? That she took off for Washington right after you . . .”

I’d spent the last few years fighting fruitlessly to end the conflict that had dragged him from my arms time and again, and now he knew it.

“That ignoring a situation doesn’t make it better for the people living it.”

“Only you would come searching in the first place, and I love you for it.” Leaning forward, she rested her forehead against mine. “But I can’t leave. Not yet.”

“Stay with Nate,” Serena whispered. “That man has his faults, but there’s nothing he won’t do to keep you safe.”

“Because I see the way he looks at you. Guess nothing much has changed there.”