I open my eyes and stare at him. His irises are darker in this light, edged in shadow.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
One eyebrow goes up. “That why you were begging me not to let him take you?”
My stomach lurches. “I said that?”
“Yeah.” His jaw ticks. “You also told him you were sorry.”
Heat floods my face, part mortification, part anger at myself. Of course I did. Of course my subconscious would apologize to my own personal serial killer for inconveniencing him.
“Cool,” I say, voice wobbling. “What the hell.”
“Tally.” His tone gentles again. “Look at me.”
I do. I wish I hadn’t.
Because what’s there is worse than pity and better than indifference—something careful and intent, something that feels too much like the way he watches my hands when I’m working, like whatever’s happening inside my head is worth mapping.
“Nightmares make sense,” he says. “You’ve had a long couple of years.”
“Understatement of the century,” I mumble.
“What did you see?” he asks. “If you can stand to tell me.”
Talking is better than letting the images loop in my skull, so I bite down hard on my embarrassment and give him the highlights.
“Shiloh,” I say. “The mountain. Henry at my window. Mia on the rocks. Miguel in the barn. It was all…mashed together. Like someone opened every file in a folder and just dragged and dropped them into the same document.”
His hand on my shoulder loosens, thumb rubbing a slow, absent line along the curve of bone. “Sounds about right,” he says quietly. “Your brain trying to sort data it doesn’t have categories for yet.”
“Yeah, well, my brain needs to get better hobbies,” I say. “Like macramé. Or tax law.”
“Hey.” His hand leaves my shoulder. For one awful second I think he’s going to pull away completely, but instead he shifts further onto the bed, settling his weight beside me, back against the headboard. “Come here.”
I blink. “What?”
“You’re soaked,” he says. “You’re shaking. And I’m not going back out to that couch to listen to you do this again in twenty minutes. Come here, Tallulah.”
There are a dozen reasons I should say no. Kael. Brodie. Basic common sense. The fact that every time we’ve been in physical range of each other lately, something’s caught fire.
Instead, my body moves before my brain votes.
I roll onto my side and let him haul me up against him, my cheek landing on the solid wall of his chest. His arm comes around my back, hand spreading between my shoulder blades, fingers moving in slow, grounding strokes.
His heartbeat thuds against my ear, heavy and steady.
I exhale for what feels like the first time all night.
We stay like that for a while. Long enough for the edges of the nightmare to blur, for the worst of the adrenaline to drain out of my limbs. My muscles unclench one by one, like someone’s flipping off switches.
“Better?” he murmurs into my hair.
“Define ‘better,’” I say. My voice is muffled. “I still know all the details. I just can’t see them as clearly.”
“That’s improvement,” he says. “I’ll take it.”
His scent wraps around me—soap and skin and something faintly smoky, like he spent too many years in bars and backrooms with bad ventilation. My fingers find the hem of his T-shirt, curl there without permission.
