45. Lines We Don't Cross
Zander
It had been a whole month since the war with the Jackals and I was healing; not just the wound on my side, but something deeper, something I hadn't let myself name until Mara became my life.
Marcus hadn't yet returned and I hoped he would take even longer because that would give me more time with Mara.
After her last class let out, her car turned up in the lot of our new temporary offices like muscle memory. By six, she had curled in the chair across from my desk with a textbook she wasn't reading just watching me work.
Tonight was no different. Paperwork buried my desk; supply manifests, repair invoices for the half the clubhouse the fire had eaten and such. I hadn't heard her come around the desk. I felt it instead: her weight settling onto my lap, he
