“You did good leaving the voicemail.”
I go quiet for a bit. “I’ve had to explain myself to everyone,” I whisper finally. “For not telling them about the O.D. I feel like shit about it.”
He reaches over, patting for my head and finding my cheek instead.
“Jake’s pissed,” I go on. “Damian took it the best. And you.”
“Jake’s an easygoing guy—until the ground shifts under him,” Wyatt says. “He’ll come around once he’s steady again.”
“Yeah.” I murmur. I’ve missed having time alone with him, this quiet space where everything feels simple and close.
“Sounds like he’s already coming around, judging by the racket earlier,” he says, smile audible.
I laugh under my breath. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.”
“Just got a case of the giggles. Then it got out of control.”
He snorts a quiet laugh, and I grin in the dark.
“Ryder didn’t like it.”
Wyatt finds my hand under the blanket, fingers closing gently around mine. “No one ever calledhimeasygoing.”
“Fact,” I whisper, smiling against his shoulder.
Silence settles between us again, softer now. Then Wyatt says quietly, “It’s not easy, what you’re all trying to figure out. The lines aren’t clear. Feelings never are.”
The words make me draw in a breath. I know what he’s saying. That he’s making it about me and them—not him. Not us. That he’s letting me go without making me choose.
And it stings. But, “Yeah,” is all I say. I don’t know how to sort through the mess of what I’ve made here.
He squeezes my hand once, thumb tracing the edge of my knuckle, and we fall quiet again.
I mean to go back to the couch. I do. But lying beside Wyatt, a warm, heavy sleepiness takes over me. The comfort of being close to him. I want to stay right here, next to the body I’ve missed so much.
“Love you,” I whisper, half asleep.
“Love you too,” he whispers back, his voice thin, with just the faintest splinter of pain through it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE RAIN HANGS in the air, too fine to fall, but misting heavily enough to cling to everything. The sky is dark and close, pressing in, but the cabin is cozy with the fire burning in the grate and the lamps on to drive away the gloom.
I’m sprawled on the couch reading a paperback I discovered that Wyatt brought with him, about the war in Vietnam. Not the reading material I would choose for myself, but better than staring at the ceiling. From this angle, I can see three of the men where they’re keeping busy in the kitchen.
Damian’s at the table cleaning a gun, pistol parts laid out in tidy rows, working with the kind of concentration I’m familiar with, just like when he was working on cars. The rag in his hand squeaks against the metal as he rubs it clean. Wyatt sits beside him, trying to act like he isn’t hurting, spine straight and jaw tight.
Jake’s against the wall, cross-legged on the floor with the diagnostics tablet balanced on his knees, close to the antenna taped to the rain-beaded window. His concentration is as intense as Damian’s.
Finally, he breaks the silence. “Hey, Wy,” he says. “You ever seen diagnostic software that logs in two places at once? One local, one…ghost copy somewhere else?”
“You mean a backup?”
“Not exactly.” Jake frowns down at the screen. “This one’s mirroring to a directory that doesn’t exist. Or maybe it does, but it’s off-network. I don’t know. It’s weird.”
Wyatt shrugs. “Everything about that clubhouse was weird.”
