Her facial muscles grew tight. Not a wall going up—more like one threatening to. She held his gaze for a beat, then looked down into her mug. "I'm feeling like I want to burn the world down, and I can't because I don't have any fire.”
He understood that. The fury that had no target. The kind that ate you alive because there was nowhere to put it. He'd carried that for years after his father died, and it had turned him into someone he hadn’t liked very much.
"What can I do?" he asked. "With funeral plans. Arrangements. Whatever you need—I'm here." He wasn’t sure when his feelings for Dove had shifted, probably before his mother had died. Maybe before she’d been diagnosed. Caring so intensely for her scared the crap out of him, and he knew it was why he’d pushed her away after he’d been shot.
He’d only loved once, but he hadn’t loved Fallon the way she deserved. Certainly not in a forever kind of way. And honestly, Fallon had one foot out the front door the second she moved in. They’d helped each other during a moment in time, and he was grateful they’d always been able to remain friends.
Now, he was treading in waters he had no idea how to navigate but was no longer willing to swim to shore and get out.
Dove shifted against the headboard, pulling the quilt around her waist. "My mom's handling everything. She called last night while you were in the shower." Dove paused, and her eyes lightened as her face relaxed. Not quite a smile, but close. "He’d already laid it all out. Exactly what he wanted. Cremated. Wait a month so people have time to process. Then throw a big ass party and celebrate his life. But he also suggested that they have it wherever it was convenient for them. That the few true friends he had would travel. My mom’s a little confused as to where to have it now, but she said she’d follow her brother’s wishes.” A breath of laughter escaped her—thin, fragile, but real. “Because Aaron hated funerals."
"Smart man."
"He said funerals were for the living and the living should be doing something better with their time than crying over someone who couldn't hear them anyway."
Trent chuckled. "My mom was the opposite. She wanted the whole thing. Church service. Calling hours. The reception afterward with casseroles and people telling stories. She planned every detail." He stared into his coffee. “But it wasn’t for her or for people to mourn her. She did it for me. She wanted to make sure I was fed properly, and I wasn't alone."
Dove laughed. Quiet. A little broken. "And then you spent a good five days after she died alone anyway."
It wasn't an accusation. It was recognition. The kind that came from someone who understood the difference between what people wanted for you and what you were actually capable of accepting.
"I did," he admitted. "Sat right here in this house with the doors locked and the phone off and convinced myself I was handling it."
“You were a wreck when you finally let me in.” She set her mug down on the nightstand. The click of ceramic on wood was loud in the quiet room. She turned to face him fully, her legs folding beneath her, the oversized t-shirt—his, faded, and three sizes too big—slipping off one shoulder.
Her eyes were different now. The exhaustion was still there, the bloodshot redness, the dark circles that makeup couldn't touch. But underneath all of that, something had surfaced. Something raw and urgent and wide open, like a wound that had stopped pretending it wasn't bleeding.
"I don't want to be alone," she said.
Three words. Simple. But the way she said them—with her voice stripped down to nothing, no armor, no deflection, no Sergeant Quinn standing guard—made his chest crack open.
"You're not," he said.
"I need you." Her hand came up and pressed flat against his chest, right over his heart. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. “Selfish of me. But right now, all I want to feel is you. All I want is your arms around my body. I want to lose myself in you.”
He opened his mouth to say something—he didn't know what, something careful, something that acknowledged the grief driving this and the fact that she was hurting and he didn't want to be something she regretted later—but she didn't give him the chance.
She kissed him.
Not soft. Not tentative. Not the careful, measured kiss of two people figuring each other out. This was a collision. Her mouth found his with a force that rocked him backward, her hand fisting his shirt, pulling him toward her like she was drowning and he was the only solid thing in the water. Her teeth caught his lower lip and the sharp sting of it sent electricity down his spine.
He tasted salt. Tears. Coffee. The raw, desperate flavor of a woman who was using his mouth to keep from screaming.
His hands found her waist, steadying her, steadying himself, because the intensity of it had knocked something loose inside him, too. This was just her burying the pain. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t what he referred to as a little bit of love.
It was real and gut-wrenchingly honest.
She pulled back, her forehead pressed against his, her breath coming fast and ragged against his lips. Her eyes were open, inches from his, and what he saw in them wasn't just desire. It wasn’t just need. It was the bone-deep, soul-level connection that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the one thing they both had been running from their entire adult lives—and she was still avoiding love.
“I think we need to?—”
"Don't think," she whispered. "Don't be careful. Don't ask me if I'm sure." Her fingers released his shirt and slid up his neck, into his hair, gripping hard enough to hurt. “We can think later. Talk about why I need this—later. Right now, just be here. With me."
He could have stopped it. Could have been the steady one, the one who said maybe we should wait until you've had more than three hours of sleep and aren't running on adrenaline and grief. He could have held her instead. Could have stroked her hair, told her it was going to be okay, and been the kind of man who said those three little words that had never left his mouth before. And that she’d probably never heard.
However, love meant knowing, and he knew Dove. Saying those words now would only push her right out the door. Hell, just thinking them were making his heart race and making him wonder if he shouldn’t backpedal.
Dove wasn't asking to be held. She wasn't asking to be comforted or soothed or managed. She was asking for someone she trusted to help her feel something other than pain. To be reminded that she was alive, that her body could do more than carry grief, that there was still something in this world worth reaching for.
