She sucks in a breath, but I keep going…
“I’ve had a thing for you for quite some time. I’ve just never in my life felt I deserved anything this special.”
She cups my face. “It’s me who doesn’t deserve you.”
I kiss her lips quickly, and gaze into her eyes. “No, I definitely don’t deserve you, but I’m going to try to tonight.”
When we finally come together, it’s not frantic; it’s inevitable. I move with her, pumping inside her, slow and deep, watching her face, letting the rhythm find us, letting the night peel away everything that doesn’t matter. She wraps her legs around me and I see stars. I brace my forearm by her head and lace our fingers with my free hand, pinning her only where she wants it, and the way she looks up at me—open, fierce, unafraid—undoes me in a way fists never will.
“Eyes on me,” she whispers.
“Always,” I promise, and mean it.
Heat climbs, coiling tight. She arches under me, nails biting just enough, mouth parted on a sound that hits me like a match to dry brush. I murmur things I don’t say to anyone—soft, filthy, honest—and watch them land in her eyes. When she breaks, it’s with a shiver that travels through both of us. I follow, cursing into her neck, holding on like the world might tilt if I let go.
We breathe. The room comes back—the fire tick, the slow hush of wind on the eaves. I shift and roll, taking her with me so she ends up sprawled across my chest. I pull the blanket up and tuck it around her shoulders because I said I’d keep her warm and I don’t break promises.
For a while, we say nothing. Her fingers trace idle patterns over my sternum, and my palm fits at the small of her back like it was made for that spot. Her breathing evens out, the last of the adrenaline melting into something softer.
“Hey,” I say finally, when I can trust my voice. “You okay?”
She lifts her head. The fire paints gold along the curve of her cheek. “Yeah,” she says, and then she smiles in that small, real way that wrecks me. “Better than okay.”
“Good.” I angle up to kiss her once more—gentle, grateful. “I’m still sorry you had to see me work like that.”
She shakes her head. “Stop apologizing. You protected me. You didn’t scare me. He scares me.” Her mouth curves, wicked and sweet. “You… distract me.”
I huff a laugh, pull her tighter. “I can live with that.”
She nestles down again, ear over my heart, and I feel the moment her body finally lets go, the last of the tremor draining away. Before she drifts, she says, small and serious, “Thank you—for tonight. For all of it.”
“You don’t thank me for breathing,” I say, and slide my hand through her hair until she falls asleep in the safest place I can make—right here, on me, with the door locked and the gun close and the kind of contentment I didn’t think I’d get in this life.
I lie awake a while longer, watching the room, listening to the winter, cataloging the join between her hand and my chest like proof I didn’t dream it. I think about the man who sent those three idiots and the way his name curdled the air in her diner. I think about Micah and Hale running patterns through night streets. I think about what I’ll do when Travis steps out of the dark and finally learns what it feels like to be hunted.
I don’t smile.
But I don’t feel cold anymore, either.
9
Greta
I hang the CLOSED sign on the diner door and, for once, it doesn’t feel like failure. It feels like choosing us—choosing safety, choosing the quiet I’ve been craving since the note. Tom promised to put a cruiser out front after dark. Nate changed the back door lock on his way out last night with a tool kit that lives in his truck like an extra organ. And today? Today we’re staying put.
“Your boss cool with you playing hooky?” Nate asks as we pull up the mountain road, the tires chewing through a dusting of fresh snow.
“I’m the boss,” I say, smug. “The boss said I needed a mental health day. She’s very persuasive and extremely pretty.”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Can’t argue with management.”
The cabin is warmer than yesterday, like it remembered us. The fire Nate banked before we left sighs back to life with a little encouragement.
“What’s on the agenda?” I ask, shucking my coat and hanging it on the hook by the door. “We gonna do more combat lessons? Because my thighs still hurt.”
“Training later,” he says, tipping his chin toward the kitchen. “First: breakfast.”
“You cooked me dinner and now you’re cooking me breakfast?” I fold my arms, pretending to consider it. “What’s next, Bishop, knitting me a scarf?”
