I snorted, voice watery. “Never better.”
He grunted, which was about as close as he got to a laugh. “Liar.”
We stayed like that, not speaking, the lamp buzzing and the world outside going quieter by degrees. Then, right as I felt myself tipping into something soft, my phone buzzed on the floor next to me—once, twice, three times, the vibration digging a trench straight through my stomach.
I froze, muscles going rigid under Jo’s touch. I didn’t have to look. There was only one person who ever called me at two in the morning, and it wasn’t a friend.
Jo’s gaze narrowed. “Is that him?” he asked, voice gone hard.
I didn’t answer, but my hand went instinctively to my phone, and that was, apparently, all the answer he needed. He took my face in both hands, tipped it so I had to look at him.
“You don’t have to answer,” he said. “Not ever again.”
The phone buzzed again, and I could feel the sweat break out along my back. I wanted to chuck the thing out the window, butthe thought of turning it off—of not knowing what was coming—scared me even more.
Jo released my jaw and reached for the phone himself, not rough but with a finality that made my pulse stutter. He checked the screen—then showed me. Harley’s name, big as a billboard.
“Last chance,” Jo said. “You want me to handle it?”
I nodded before I could talk myself out of it.
He swiped the call, but didn’t speak. Just let it hang for a second, letting the silence do the talking. When he did speak, it was a voice I barely recognized: cold, smooth, and dangerous in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Bodean belongs to me now. Come near him again, and they’ll never find your body.”
He hung up, turned off the phone, and set it on the nightstand with a click that might as well have been the closing of a coffin lid.
I stared at the phone, heart rattling in my chest.
Jo put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed once, then pulled me upright in a single, gentle motion. Before I could react, he wrapped his arms around me and just… held on.
His embrace wasn’t some Hallmark bullshit. He was twice my size, and he used every inch of it, crowding out the memory of every other man who’d put hands on me. He tucked my head under his chin, and I could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady, right where my ear landed on his chest.
“You’re safe,” he said, one hand sliding up my spine in a slow, steady arc. “I’ve got you.”
The words broke something loose inside me. I trembled, tried to laugh it off, but he just squeezed tighter, anchoring me to him like I was the last living thing in the world.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I fisted them in the front of his shirt and held on, hoping he wouldn’t let go first.
He didn’t.
The room went silent except for the sound of our breathing, the lamp flickering, the soft pulse of Jo’s heartbeat in my ear. I let myself go limp, let myself be held, and for once, didn’t try to fight it.
He was solid and warm and real, every muscle in his body saying: mine, mine, mine.
And for the first time, I didn’t want to run.
* * * *
The bedroom was thick with lamplight and the low-grade hum of the space heater. I crawled onto the bed after Jo, burrowing down into the quilt with my ribs pressed flat against the mattress and my head pillowed on the inside of his arm.
He let me settle there, didn’t make a joke or offer a dumb nickname, just scooted back until my body curved to the line of his chest. He was bigger, so much bigger, the way a wolfhound is bigger than the pup it lets sleep on its paws. When he wrapped his arm around me, palm hot on my side, the bruises didn’t hurt so much.
I tucked my head under his chin, breathing in the salt-and-smoke of his skin, and waited for the old panic to rise up, the reflex to roll away and leave him nothing but an empty pillow. But it didn’t come. I listened to his breathing instead—slow, measured, a rumble against my cheek.
His fingers traced patterns over the fabric of my shirt, circles and lines that mapped every scar and every line of muscle I had. He didn’t grip, didn’t dig in, just followed the topography of my body like he was learning a new road.
Every so often, his touch would stall at the edge of a bandage, as if asking for permission to go further, and when I said nothing he’d just start again somewhere else, never in a hurry.
