Just gone. Ripped away. For months.
A hot twist of guilt knots my stomach.
“I know I’ve let you down,” I say quietly. “Not just with the O.D. stuff. Even before all of this. There was that last night at Ryder’s…we never talked about that.” I don’t know how to say it.When I slept with Ryder.“When Damian and Ryder fought…” I finish small. Pathetically. I pull my sleeves over my hands. “I’m sorry. For all of it.”
Jake shakes his head with a kind of startled softness. “Max…I’m not carrying that around. What happened that night was between you and Ryder. You don’t owe me anything.” He shakes his head. “You didn’t betray me. You didn’t cheat on me. That was never the deal.”
I blink at him, thrown off balance, and his mouth twitches into a mischievous smile.
“And for the record, last night? That doesn’t bother me either.”
It takes me a second to realize what he means, and then heat snaps up my neck. Ryder and I moving in the dark, his hand over my mouth, his breath against my skin while Jake slept only inches away.
“I’m not the jealous type, Max. I never was,” he says, voice even. “Sharing isn’t a problem. But secrets are.” He tips his head, finally meeting my eyes. “I need the truth. That’s a hard line for me.”
I nod, cheeks burning. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoes, like that’s the end of it.
For a while we sit in silence, me processing everything he had to say, listening to the lake shift and sigh against the shore. Then he pushes his palms into the sand and rises, brushing them on his jeans, and holds out a hand.
“Come on.”
I take his hand, and he pulls me to my feet and then doesn’t let go. We walk back toward the house hand in hand, fingers gritty with sand.
For the first time in a while, Billy isn’t somewhere out there waiting to punish me.
My fingers lift again to my throat. Still nothing there but skin and breath. And I’m still standing.
CHAPTER SIX
WITH FIVE PEOPLE and one bedroom, bedtime isn’t so much an individual decision as a consensus. The autumn sun sets early, and it’s not long after dinner that Wyatt pushes to his feet with a quiet wince. Ryder gets up too, steadying him by the arm and guiding him toward the bedroom. The rest of us take the cue.
Damian gathers the plates while I pull out the couch, the metal frame sighing as I unfold it. Jake spreads out the top sheet over it. We move around each other in easy silence, each knowing where to step without colliding. These men were trained to share barracks, to live shoulder to shoulder, and I grew up learning how to live in borrowed rooms and take up as little space as possible. None of us seem to mind the closeness, but it’s more than that. The five of us just fit together so easily.
Through the bedroom doorway, the bedside lamp paints Wyatt and Ryder’s profiles in gold. Wyatt sits stiffly on the edge of the bed, Ryder crouched in front of him, unwrapping the bandage from his ribs. The tape pulls softly from his skin.
“Looks clean,” Ryder says. “We’ll change it again in the morning.”
Damian disappears into the washroom and returns smelling of soap and toothpaste, while Jake grabs a flashlight and heads outside to turn off the generator. When he does, a sudden quiet settles over everything.
He comes back in as Ryder is pulling Wyatt’s bedroom door partially closed behind him. Damian crouches by the hearth, raking the coals into a glowing mound and laying one last log across them.
“Let’s all try to get a decent night’s sleep,” Ryder says, stretching the tension out of his neck.
Damian smirks in the firelight. “In that case,” he says, “maybe you and Max shouldn’t sleep next to each other. Save us the midnight entertainment.”
Jake snorts and heat floods my face.
Ryder arches an eyebrow. For a second I can see the wheels turning, as he puts it together: Damian knows. Jake knows. But he recovers quickly. “You got a problem with the sleeping arrangements, Voss?” he asks, as if the real issue is his authority being questioned. It’s the kind of voice used for battlefield obedience.
But Damian just lifts both hands, grinning. “Not a problem, just an observation. Easier to sleep without all the heavy breathing.”
Behind him, Jake snickers.
The tips of my ears burn. Last night, I’d assumed everyone was fast asleep, and apparently Ryder did too, given the fury tightening his jaw. The moment of silence he lets drag out after Damian’s quip grows painfully long.
Finally, he exhales through his nose, lips pressed thin. “You had the chair last night,” he says. “You should stretch out on the mattress. I’ll take the chair.”
