I swallow air like I’m drowning. “The…the cabin,” I manage. “They—”
He doesn’t tell me to calm down. Doesn’t tell me it’s nothing. He just pulls me in. His hands are warm. Steady. Too careful for a man who dragged me into the woods like property.
One second I’m shaking on the couch, the next I’m folded into his lap, my knees on either side of his thighs, my bound hands pressed awkwardly between us. His arms come around me like a band of iron and heat, locking me against his chest.
I can feel his heartbeat against my cheek.
Fast.
Hard.
Matching mine.
He rocks me gently, back and forth. I’m too stunned, too wrung out to fight it.
“Shh,” he whispers into my hair. “I’m here. No one is ever going to take you from me again.”
The words slide under my skin, heavy and dangerous. Not because they’re romantic. Because they’re absolute.
Because they don’t leave room forme.
A sob breaks loose anyway, ugly and involuntary. My fingers curl into his shirt with all the strength my zip-tied wrists will allow.
“You don’t…” My throat tightens. “You don’t know what this place is.”
His body goes very still beneath me.
I feel it—the way his hold tightens a fraction, like a reflex.
“You think you do,” I whisper. “But you don’t.”
Nick’s voice drops, careful now. “Tell me.”
I pull back enough to see him. His gaze searches my face like he’s bracing for an answer that will hurt him and he’ll take it anyway.
I wet my lips. My mouth tastes like fear.
“I used to watch it,” I say.
His brows knit. “The cabin.”
I nod once.
“From the steps,” I rasp. “You’d come sit with me. You thought… you thought I was daydreaming. Staring at it because I wanted to run away there.”
His jaw flexes. “Didn’t you?”
“No.” The word comes out rough. Sharp. “I watched it because I wanted to make sure I never did.”
Nick’s eyes narrow like he’s trying to understand the shape of the sentence.
I make myself say it. If I don’t, it stays alive in my throat forever.
“After he took them there,” I whisper, voice breaking, “they never made it back.”
The air changes.
It’s subtle at first—his breath stopping, his hands freezing at my waist. Then it hits his face like a fist.
