In the Likely Event

by Rebecca Yarros

To my sister, Kate. I’d go to war for you. Love you, mean it.

Peace sounded so much better than constant war.

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. She was going to be another man’s wife. I didn’t even

“I thought you were in New York,” I finally managed to say, my voice coming out like it had been

scraped over the pavement a dozen 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.”

He was a reader? This guy just kept getting hotter. I took the hint and retrieved my own book out of my purse, flipping to the bookmark in the middle of chapter eleven of Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Half-Blood.

“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.”

“Izzy is an eighteen-year-old girl who has to have her hand held. I’m not that girl anymore,

“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.”

“That’s not what I meant. One day you’re going to have to let that guilt go.” “But today is not that day.”

“What are you more pissed at, Nate? The fact that I’m not where you left me? Or the fact that I’m meeting the version of you that you never wanted me to see?”

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

My stomach twisted, and I got that sinking feeling that sometimes came over me, the one that told me to pay attention, that there was more to whatever was happening on the surface of any given situation. I’d always had good instincts.

“Relatives only,”

“Husband.” I moved, climbing up into the rig in one step. “I’m her husband.”

“You’re using yourself as bait?”

“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,

“And he cared enough to tell everyone he was your husband. Signed for your surgery and everything.”

“Guys who wait for a woman to hit her lowest so they can make their move are pieces of shit.”

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

All these years later, he’d dug deeper into the same life, while I’d completely changed mine.

“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.”

“You need to lock your dead bolt,” he muttered, reaching for the folder. “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.”

“Nathaniel Phelan?” “Hey, Isabeau Astor.”

She cried out and jumped at me, throwing her arms around my neck. I caught her easily, splaying my hands over her back and hugging her tight. Forget awkward. This felt like coming home.

She still babbled, and there was nothing better in the entire world.

“Not surprised. My man’s a good guy. Always been a true feminist.”

Any other place, any other time, I would have asked her out. But she lived over five hundred miles away, and I was deploying.

Swore to God, Izzy was the only woman I knew who could pull off Chanel in a fucking war zone.

She was putting herself directly in danger, and it ate through my veins like acid. Serena would have done the same for her, but I wasn’t irrevocably in love with Serena. Just Izzy. Always Izzy.

that was how well I knew the song. It was another one of her favorites. But I was the one who needed to let go.

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

“Because I’ve had a few years to think about it, and I’m pretty sure if I’d just looked at someone and said, ‘Please come home,’ maybe they would have.” Her eyes searched mine, and I struggled to pick my heart up off the goddamned floor.

“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.

“Do you have any idea how many times I cried myself to sleep, terrified of the possibility that you were buried somewhere? That I wouldn’t even know where to visit your grave?”

We crossed the street, and his fingers skimmed my lower back as he switched places with me on the sidewalk, walking closer to the street. On a scale of one to ten, that was a freaking twelve on the sexiest things a guy could do that weren’t sexual, which wasn’t helping my pulse settle.

“I don’t have a girlfriend. If I did, I would have told you last night, and I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

“Or at least I wouldn’t have a girlfriend anymore.”

“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.”

So now, I’m at Georgetown because I chased someone else’s dream, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do with that.”

“Izzy?” “Nate?” God, I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. “I’m going to kiss you.” The certainty of his words made my skin flush. “Oh yeah?” I ran my tongue over my lower lip, tasting salt. “Yeah.” He lowered his head slowly, giving me more than enough time to object. “So, if that’s not what you want—” “I want.”

“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.”

“What did I tell you the first time you asked me not to cover a war zone?” “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.”

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

“Didn’t anyone teach you not to touch a lady without her consent?” Every line of Nate’s body radiated threat. Oh shit.

“Touch me again, and I’ll scream. You’ll be dead in seconds. Nate doesn’t care who your daddy is.”