“I’m going to turn my phone off now, okay?” Tristan said. “While I’ve still got some battery left, because this one won’t hold a charge for long, and I really need a new one.”
Colby was still and silent, and after waiting a moment, Tristan thumbed off the light, plunging the stall into darkness. He could hear Colby’s breathing, a little uneven and fast.
He tried to relax, pulling the comforter higher over his shoulders as he damned himself for not remembering pillows.
Colby’s voice, when it came, was a whisper. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known.”
The words wrapped around him, quiet and uncertain. He swallowed hard, breath catching. “Is that a good thing? I hope that’s a good thing.”
In the dark, Colby’s breath hitched. “Yeah. It is.”
They lay there as the barn creaked softly around them, hearing the occasional rustle and thud of a horse moving in its stall. And with every moment that passed, something inside Tristan steadied. He didn’t reach out. But he wanted to. God, he wanted to.
He stared up at the rafters, enough moonlight coming through the gaps in the wood to make the stall a mass of shadows now that his eyes had adjusted. He was aware of every beat of his heart, every breath.
Beside him, Colby was so still he might have been asleep, but Tristan could sense he wasn’t. And then Colby shifted, just enough for his arm to brush against Tristan’s beneath the comforter. The contact was so light, it could have been accidental.
Except it wasn’t. Tristan knew it in his bones, and his breath caught.
Slowly, Tristan turned his hand over in the darkness, palm up. A silent invitation. It made no sense how Colby would have known in the darkness, but it seemed Colby was attuned to his movements, because his fingers slid into Tristan’s. Careful and unsure, but real.
Tristan didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He just held on, as tightly as he dared.
Chapter Fifteen
COLBY
Colby couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t felt threatened. He knew that if he let himself relax, even for a second, the trap would snap shut around him.
But nothing snapped. No hand grabbed for him, and no one laughed at his gullibility. There was just warmth, and Tristan’s fingers, threaded through his.
It felt impossible. A mistake, maybe. Like if he looked too closely at the moment, it would vanish. He shifted his hand slightly, half expecting Tristan to pull away, but he didn’t.
Colby turned his head. He couldn’t see Tristan’s face in the dark, but he could feel him. His soft breaths, and his heartbeat, a little faster than usual but steady. He didn’t pull away. So Colby didn’t, either.
He didn’t know how long they lay like that, whether it was a few minutes or a lifetime. But the longer Tristan stayed close, the easier it became to believe this was real.
“So,” Tristan said, his voice soft but full of something that made Colby feel lighter just hearing it, “I know we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, what Matt’s going to decide. But I just wanted to say, if it turns out you have to leave—”
Colby tensed.
“I could come with you.” Tristan shifted slightly. “I mean, I don’t know where we’d go or how it would work. But if Matt decides you can’t stay, you don’t have to be alone. That’s all I meant.”
Colby stared up into the darkness. His heart had started pounding like it was trying to outrun Tristan’s wild words. “You’d leave your pack?”
There was a long pause.
“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “I always thought there wasn’t anything more important than pack. That nothing could be. But now—” His voice faltered. “You matter. I don’t know how to explain it. You just… do.”
Colby’s fingers curled tighter in his.
“I’m not asking anything of you, I swear,” Tristan said. “I just wanted you to know.”
Colby didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He was too busy trying to breathe through the lump in his throat.
After a moment, Tristan said, quieter, “What would you do, if you could do anything? Like, if there weren’t any limits. If you could just choose.”
The question hit something painful inside him. “I don’t know,” he said, voice low. “I always thought I’d stay in the Army. That was the plan, and then I got discharged. Nothing else ever looked right. Nothing I’d want to do.”
