It hits harder than it should, because I ain’t sure it ain’t true. I’ve had women. Plenty. Easy. Clean. No consequences. And none of them crawled under my skin like this.
“Maybe it’s because you kept her at arm’s length,” he adds, voice cooler now. “You built it up in your head. You think it’s something it ain’t.”
Maybe. Or maybe I’ve never wanted something I couldn’t just take, and the wanting is what’s making me stupid.
Legend steps back toward Sophie like this conversation is over. “We’ll talk in the morning,” he says. “Right now you keep your head. Keep the lake locked down. Keep your hands off her.”
“I hear you,” I say, and I leave.
Back at Holler’s cabin, the lights are low and the night smells like water and smoke. She’s already in bed on her side with her back to the door. I stand there a second too long, staring at the space I’m about to step into, then I strip my boots off and slide in on the far edge like I’m trying not to exist. I don’t touchher. I keep distance. I stare at the ceiling until exhaustion drags me under.
I wake to warmth.
Soft weight across my thigh. A head tucked under my chin.
My eyes open slow.
Brittany is wrapped around me like she belongs there. Her leg thrown over my hip. Her hand fisted in my shirt. Her cheek pressed to my chest. I go still because if I move too fast I’ll either shove her away or roll her under me. I’m hard, of course I am, because my body doesn’t care about rules and strategies and the way I’m still married.
She shifts, barely, and her mouth brushes my collarbone.
Fuck.
For one reckless second I consider it. Just leaning down. Just kissing her. Just seeing what happens.
Her lashes flutter.
And then the door opens and a voice slices through the cabin like a siren.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me!”
Brittany jerks upright. I sit up slower because speed looks like guilt even when nothing happened.
Bethany stands at the foot of the bed. Her hair looks like she fought it into shape and lost, but her lipstick is perfect, anyway. Her eyes are blazing with a kind of fury that makes the air in the room feel thinner. She takes in the scene, Brittany in my bed tangled up in my arms like the world made a decision without asking her permission.
My jaw tightens.
“Morning, Beth,” I say flat.
And I know this just turned from messy to war.
Chapter 22
Brittany
Morning at the lake smells fresh before wet wood and burned coffee hits my senses. For a second before I open my eyes, I forget where I am. I forget the floatel and the hidden closet and the peeper and the way the boat lurched when something hit it. Then I feel the weight of Oaks and everything rushes back at once.
He’s warm and solid under me, breathing slow under my chin. My leg is hooked over his thigh. My cheek is pressed to his chest, and I can hear his heartbeat under my ear, steady and strong, too intimate for something that ain’t supposed to be happening. I freeze and don’t move because if I move I have to admit it’s real. His arm is heavy around my waist, not tight, possessive, just there like his body decided to guard mine even in its sleep. Safe. The word should make me feel better. Instead it makes my chest ache.
The cabin is quiet except for a generator humming in the distance and the soft slap of water against docks outside. Sunlight pushes through thin curtains in pale stripes across the bed. Across us. I tell myself to sit up. I don’t. I let myself breathe him in like an idiot, soap and smoke and something darker that always feels like hunger. I let myself pretend, for one more second, that the world can’t reach me here.
The door bangs open so hard the wall rattles.
Oaks jerks upright in the same instant my heart drops through the mattress. His arm tightens on instinct like he’s shielding me before he even thinks, and then he sits up fully and I see her.
Bethany stands at the end of the bed.
Her hair is half-tamed like she dragged a brush through it on the way down here, but her lipstick is perfect and her eyes are wild with rage. For one long second nobody says anything. Then she laughs, sharp and high and wrong, like the sound itself is meant to cut.
