“Did you look?” he whispered, his voice a low scrape, rough with need.
He dipped his head closer, his breath brushing the shell of her ear.
“Did you use those fucking green, green eyes to look at my body? My goddamned Adonis belt?”
Her breath hitched, just enough for him to feel it against his chest.
“Yes,” she said, steady but breathless. “I looked.”
She pulled back enough to meet his gaze, her voice quiet but fierce.
“I saw a man who was punishing himself. I saw a man who deserves rest. Who deserves a real conversation. Some...connection.” Her throat moved on the word, emotion climbing into her voice before she could stop it. “I saw pain. I saw loneliness. I saw someone who doesn’t know how to ask for help or is too afraid to try.” She blinked hard, fury and heartbreak tangling together. “That hurts my heart,” she said, voice breaking. “It makes me so angry I don’t even know at who. Just…angry because you matter, and you’re ripping yourself apart like it doesn’t count for anything.”
He blinked and took it in. Her words sank into him like rounds hitting soft flesh, slow and brutal.
“You are fucking killing me,” he said, voice thick.
He meant it.
He didn’t know what to call what was happening with Blair. It wasn’t lust. Lust was simple. Physical. Temporary. He knew how to handle that. Take it. Burn it off. Walk away.
This wasn’t leaving.
She stayed.
Under his skin. In his head. In the quiet moments when he wasn’t braced for impact.
That was the problem.
He was starting to count on her.
The sound of her voice. The way she gave him room without disappearing. The way she looked at him like she saw the damage and didn’t flinch. Like she expected more from him.
Like he could give it. Trust.
The word sat wrong in his chest.
He didn’t have the wiring for it. No training block. No internal map. Every version he’d known came with a trapdoor.
But she hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t lied. Hadn’t tried to pry him open.
She’d seen the cracks, and instead of exploiting them, she’d met them.
That unsettled him more than her anger ever could.
26
Sleeping Wind Ranch, Bear and Bailee Residence, Bonita, California
The mornings still began before dawn, but now they mucked stalls and groomed the animals before their run. Copper was a bundle of nervous energy that demanded to be worked hard, a perfect outlet for Fly’s restless grief. Than’s buckskin was a different challenge. Steady. Powerful. Demanding a focus that distracted even as it mirrored the turmoil in Than’s own mind.
They rode until their legs went numb, swam until salt burned their eyes, lifted until their muscles failed. They were still trying to outwork the pain.
It was still failing.
The exhaustion ran deeper now. Bone-deep. The kind sleep couldn’t touch. The nightmares, if anything, had grown sharper.
After a week of this, they woke to a quiet that felt wrong.
