When it came time for bed, I shut the door harder than I meant to. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that hums. I heard the faint creak of the floorboards as Lincoln climbed the stairs after locking up. Always careful. Always in control.
I lay stiff on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. The sheets smelled faintly of detergent and cedar. I told myself I didn’t care. That it didn’t matter that he was just on the other side of that wall. That I didn’t miss the sound of his breathing beside me.
But long after the heater cycled off, long after the moonlight shifted across the ceiling, I still lay awake. My ribs throbbed, my hip ached, and my heart refused to slow down.
How was I supposed to survive living with the one man I could never seem to quit?
CHAPTER EIGHT
KRISTIN
The first thing I registered was warmth. Not sunlight. That hadn’t made it past the curtains yet. Not the heater rattling in the vent either. Actual warmth, solid and steady, pressed against my back, curling around me like something alive, something protective, something that had no business being where it was.
Oh God.
Memory slammed into me before my eyes even opened. The nightmare. The panic. My own voice screaming in the dark. That clawing, drowning feeling that I was back in that trailer and he was on the other side of the door, and I was trapped and nobody could hear me. And then Lincoln’s voice, rough and steady, dragging me back to the surface. The familiar weight of his arm around my middle, bracing me. His chest had been under my cheek. His shirt had been fisted in my hands. His heartbeat had been steady as a drum beneath my ear.
He had held me there until my breathing evened out, anchored me there without asking, without talking, just using the heat of his body and the size of him to tell every part of me that I was not alone and I was not in danger. My body had believed him before my mind did.
My throat tightened. I kept my eyes shut because maybe if I didn’t move, I wouldn’t have to face the truth. That I’d fallen asleep like that. That I’d let him hold me all night, that some part of me hadn’t just allowed it, it had clung to it.
That was the worst part. Not that he had slipped into my bed in the middle of the night. Not that he had wrapped himself around me like a second spine. The worst part was that when I woke up shaking and clawing for air and not sure where I was, the second I felt him, I settled. I had gone from panic to sleep in under a minute because he was there.
I jerked upright like the mattress was on fire. The motion ripped straight through me, and I groaned as my ribs screamed out and my hip sent searing pain through my leg. The bruise there felt like someone had poured molten iron under my skin. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and pressed my hand to my side.
“Whoa.” His voice was rough, sleep thick. “Easy.” He sounded like morning gravel and heat and male satisfaction, and it pissed me off that I noticed.
I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. My face was burning, my heart hammering like I’d just been caught doing something I shouldn’t. I scrubbed my hands over my face and pushed my hair back, pretending I didn’t notice how his scent clung to me. Soap and cedar and something sharp underneath, like cut wood in cold air. The kind of smell that sticks in your bones.
God help me, I remembered that smell better than I remembered my own address half the time. I could have picked him out blindfolded in a crowded rodeo tunnel just by breathing in. That scent was burned into late nights in motel rooms, into his hoodies I used to steal, into the cab of his truck on long hauls when the only light came from the dash.
“You don’t have to act like I’m contagious,” Lincoln muttered. There was a creak as he shifted off the bed. I couldhear the fabric of his T-shirt stretching across his shoulders when he moved. “I was just making sure we both got some sleep.”
My head snapped toward him before I could stop it. He was standing now, running a hand through his dark, messy hair, his T-shirt wrinkled from the night, twisted at the hem like I had been holding on to it. He looked like hell. Like he hadn’t slept at all. His eyes were heavy-lidded but sharp, watching me too closely. The early light bled across the bruise on his cheekbone, the split along his mouth, and turned him into something both familiar and dangerous. He looked like every memory I swore I had buried.
“Thanks,” I muttered. My voice came out raw. Too raw. “But you shouldn’t have.”
“Shouldn’t have what?” he cut in. His mouth pulled into a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes. “Stayed? Held you? Kept you from punching a hole in my wall?”
I glared at him, because glaring was easier than admitting my pulse had jumped, remembering his arm around me. “Yes, to all of the above.”
He huffed, low and humorless. “You’re welcome anyway.”
Silence stretched, thick and buzzing, like a live wire. I could still feel where his body had been. My sheets were twisted around me like ropes, tangled around my thighs, holding his heat. My hair was a sweaty mess, stuck to the back of my neck. My body felt stiff, not from sleeping on a bad mattress, but from being curled against him all night like muscle memory had taken over. I hated that. I hated, hated, that part of me missed the weight of him beside me already. Missed the quiet way his breathing slowed my breathing. Missed how steady his heartbeat had sounded against my ear like a metronome.
I flung the blanket back. “I need coffee.”
The air hit my bare legs, and I felt goose bumps race over my skin. The floor under my feet was cold, Montana cold, that deep house chill in the morning that always finds the bones first. I slid off the bed slowly. Every muscle in my body protested. Every bruise made itself known. My sleep shorts rode up when I moved, tight across one hip, and I knew before I even saw it that I was painted in black and blue and angry purple from where I hit. My black and blue bare ass, well, at least it wasn’t pretty.
Lincoln lifted an eyebrow, like he knew exactly what I was running from, but he didn’t stop me. He watched the way I eased my weight from one leg to the other, the way I caught the sharp inhale when the bruise along my ribs pulled. He watched without pretending he wasn’t. His gaze prickled between my shoulder blades the whole way across the room.
The hallway out of the bedroom was quiet and smelled faintly like him. Wood polish, cedar, a hint of leather from his jacket hanging on the back of a chair. The house itself had that settled hum most lived-in ranch houses did. A low winter wind pressed along the outside wall. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the hooves of a horse in slow rhythm and the muffled snort of another horse out in the pen. The water heater kicked on below the floor, and the pipes let out a slight sigh. This was what safety sounded like out here. It should not have already felt like mine.
The kitchen was too bright, even with the weak morning light. It made everything feel exposed. The old coffeemaker gurgled and spat like it was judging me for showing up in a shirt and sleep shorts in a man’s kitchen, when technically we had gotten married last night, and I still didn't know how I felt about that.
I gripped the counter and stared at the slow drip of dark liquid like it might rearrange my whole life.
My hands trembled. Not dramatically or obviously, just a fine tremor in my fingers I couldn’t quite stop. Adrenaline hangover.Exhaustion. Fear that had nowhere to go now that daylight existed. The counter was cool under my palm. I pressed down until I felt the edges of the laminate bite into my skin, using that to steady myself.
