You sat on the stainless steel countertop in the team’s mobile med bay, disinfectant bottle open beside you, the sting of antiseptic radiating up your side as you worked a butterfly bandage across the gash just under your ribs.

The door slid open, and you didn’t have to look up to know it was Ethan. He didn’t say anything at first. Just looked you over with that sharp, clinical sweep of his eyes.

"You good?" he asked, low, measured.

You nodded once. "I’ve had worse."

He moved to the gear shelf, unzipping a case and pulling out a fresh SIM card and a voice modulator. Busy work. You both had plenty of it. You both pretended it was more important than this moment.

You didn’t look like him outright, the way your face softened into something almost doll-like. But if someone looked long enough, they'd see it. His jawline. The curve of your eyes. The barely-there tilt of suspicion in your brow. Ethan noticed. He always noticed. And it made him paranoid as hell.

The system thought your DNA was clean, your files neat. A ghost written into IMF protocol by someone very good at making truths disappear.

Your teammates definitely noticed something. Mira, Briggs, Lena, and Zeke—four of the best operatives in the IMF, and somehow also the nosiest. They’d started watching you two, making jokes. Everyone thought you were sleeping together.

Disgusting. But in some ways... convenient.

“Gross,” you muttered under your breath, peeling the last of the gauze away.

Ethan glanced over. “What?”

You raised your eyes, dry as dust. “The team. Still thinks we’re hooking up.”

Ethan didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. “Let them.”

You narrowed your eyes. “I swear to God, if you make one more flirty comment in front of them just to mess with me—”

He cut in, tone maddeningly dry. “I thought you said it was better this way.”

“Better than them finding out you’re my father, yes,” you hissed. “But not better than having to explain why my forty something boss keeps calling me ‘sweetheart ’ and glaring at any guy who talks to me for more than twelve seconds.”

“I don’t glare,” Ethan said mildly, inserting the SIM into a burner phone like it was a damn science project. “I assess.”

You stared at him. “You once body-checked a State Department liaison because he looked at me too long.”

“He was sweating through his suit and called you ‘pretty.’ That wasn’t a glare. That was an instinct.”

You rolled your eyes so hard it hurt.

The fight—this fight, or some version of it—was always running in the background. You were the youngest on the team, the one everyone half-guided, half-shadowed. But with Ethan, it was different.

Like Shanghai.

You’d gone in undercover, and the arms dealer—some arrogant bastard with a British accent and a superiority complex—had made a threat. Nothing more. Just words.

“If you were mine,” he’d said, too close to your face, “I’d have you screaming before sunrise.”

You’d handled it. Smiled coolly, poisoned his drink two hours later, got the intel, burned the safehouse.

But when Ethan had heard the comms playback? He'd gone back in.

No mission order. No extraction plan. Just Ethan—rage wearing the mask of surgical calm—breaking the guy’s kneecaps and crushing his windpipe in a utility closet.

You stood up now, pulling your shirt down carefully over the bandage, wincing slightly.

He noticed. Of course he did. “Let me redo that wrap,” he said, stepping closer.

You stepped back. “No. I’ve got it.”

“You’ll pull it open in the next op.”

“I’m not twelve.”

“No,” he said, softer now, almost too soft. “You’re not.”

There was a beat. Heavy. Unsaid.

You swallowed.

“Do you ever—” You stopped. Recalibrated. “Do you ever regret it?”

He looked up.

“Not raising me. Letting someone else do it.”

His jaw worked slightly, but his voice stayed level. “I regret everything I didn’t get to do. But I don’t regret keeping you safe.”

That was the closest he’d ever come to saying he cared. You nodded. Didn’t say thank you.