Sweats. No shirt. I sit on the front of the bed, pick up a book I’ve been pretending to read for days. I don’t read a single damn word. Not with her shadow still inked into my skin from last night.
Not withit felt safestill echoing in my skull, a prayer I don’t deserve. So when the door creaks open, I don’t look. I already know. I feel her before I hear her. Bare feet. Sleeves too long for her hands. My hoodie drowning her. That familiar, heavy ache clinging to her as if it’s part of her.
She pauses in the doorway, uncertain she’s allowed to stay. I don’t smile. Don’t speak. I just set the book down slowly, carefully.
“You okay?”
Her head shakes. Fast. Honest. “No.”
It knocks the wind out of me. I rise slowly, level. Not too close. “You want to talk?”
“No.”
I nod once. Take it in stride. I’ve learned not to reach unless she reaches first.
Her throat works. “I just… I don’t want to be alone.”
That lands hard in my gut. “Okay,” I say. Even. Steady. Even though nothing inside me is.
She walks past me—close, so fucking close—but doesn’t touch. Then she’s in my bed. Under my sheets. As though she’s always had a place there.
I turn off the light. Sit on the edge first, just to breathe. Just to believe this is real. Then I join her. Not too close. Not yet. The silence feels heavier than the dark.
She shifts. Her knee brushes mine. I stay still. Don’t crowd her. She doesn’t armor up. Doesn’t run.
“It’s not just that I don’t know what I want,” she whispers. I turn toward her, heart thudding. “It’s that I do. And it scares me.”
Every instinct in me begs to hold her. But I don’t.
I just say, low and true, “Me too.”
In the quiet that follows, the air shifts. It doesn’t feel distant anymore. It feels weighted, drawn toward something we can’t name. Maybe, finally, we’re falling in the same direction. Even if it terrifies us both.
Chapter 29
Candace
Idon’tknowwhyI said yes. Maybe it was the cinnamon rolls. Maybe it was the way Maggie smiled at me, the same way she always used to. As though I hadn’t slipped through the cracks, and I was still that girl she used to sneak extra dessert to when she thought I looked too thin. The one she and James covered training costs for, quietly, treating it as nothing more than a small kindness.
Or maybe it was the flicker in her eyes when she saw me. Recognition, hope, and something steadier than pity. A lifeline I didn’t have to ask for. Or maybe it was the man on the bike in front of me. The one whose body I’d memorized in a moment I can’t take back. The one whose soul feels pressed into a bruise I can’t stop touching.
Every mile we ride together, the ache in my chest pulses louder. I don’t know what I’m doing. Clinging to a past I’ve buried or reaching for a future I don’t believe I deserve.
Malachi didn’t say much when we left the clubhouse. Just handed me a helmet, a question he already knew the answer to. The weight of it in my hands felt heavier than it should, carrying a choice wrapped in trust I haven’t earned.
Now the wind claws at my cheeks, and I’m clinging to his jacket, the only thing tethering me to the present. We cut through the backroads, two ghosts who know the way home. I bury my face against the leather, breathing in the mix of smoke, cedar, and something uniquely him. I don’t let myself hum, but my fingers tap a silent rhythm against my thigh. The words come, but I leave unspoken. A lyric I’ll never sing aloud.
The house is just as I remember. Porch swing creaking in the wind. Warm yellow light spilling from the windows, a soft invitation from the past. A lump forms in my throat. I want to run. I want to stay. Both urges hit powerfully.
He kills the engine, and I peel my hands off his back. They feel too empty now. My palms tingle, already aching for the shape of him. Because they knew better than I did what I was holding onto.
The front door swings open before we reach the steps. “There you are,” Maggie calls, arms already spreading wide, her whole body waiting for me to come back. “Come in, food’s ready.”
The second I step inside, it hits me. The scent of cinnamon, rosemary, and the kind of comfort that makes your knees weak. Plates clinking. James humming an old blues song off-key, the same way he always used to. The sound scrapes something raw and nostalgic inside me. It’s a needle skipping across a record I’d forgotten how to play.
There on the mantle, tucked in a corner as if it still matters, is a photo of me. First fight. Wrapped hands. Split lip. Grinning like I owned the world. My breath catches. That girl feels distant now. A version of me that still believed in winning.
I don’t deserve any of this. The thought loops; it’s a refrain I can’t mute.
