“This thing is a crime,” I mutter.
She laughs. “You stayed.”
I slide an arm around her waist. “Don’t push your luck.”
She tilts her head to look at me. “You okay?”
I meet her gaze. “I think I could be.”
Her fingers trace the edge of my collarbone, light and exploratory. “You don’t have to figure it all out tonight.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t have to do it alone either.”
I close my eyes briefly, absorbing that. “You’re dangerous.”
“Occupational hazard,” she says lightly.
The music fades into silence. Outside, wind brushes the windows. Inside, everything feels suspended, like we’re standing on the edge of something vast and unnamed.
She yawns, small and unguarded.
“You tired?” I ask.
“Mm,” she hums. “But I don’t want you to go.”
I press a kiss to the top of her head, gentle, reverent. “Then I won’t.”
She relaxes fully at that, her body heavy and trusting against mine. My chest tightens with something that feels dangerously like hope.
I stare out the window at the dark, at the faint reflection of us tangled together on that ridiculous couch, and realize with startling clarity that I don’t feel like a loner tonight.
I feel like a man standing at the beginning of something.
Almost everything.
Chapter Twelve
Ember
The siren cuts through my morning like a blade.
I’m halfway through setting up for the kids’ class—cups of rinse water lined up, brushes soaking, a stack of heavy paper weighted against the draft—when the sound slams into my chest. Not the distant wail you learn to tune out. This one is close. Urgent. Wrong.
I step outside just as smoke curls up from behind the old garage at the edge of the property.
“No,” I breathe.
The garage isn’t part of my studio, not exactly, but it’s close enough that my heart starts hammering. Too close. The smell hits me next—sharp, chemical, not wood or dust. Not accidental.
I don’t think. I move.
Boone is already there.
He comes out of his workshop like something unleashed, jacket half on, radio clipped to his belt, eyes locked on the plume of smoke with a focus that steals the air from my lungs. This isn’t the quiet man who drinks his coffee slow and pretends notto watch me through the window. This is the man carved by fire and purpose.
“Ember,” he snaps, voice rough. “Back up. Now.”
