“You cheated.”
“I used superior tactics.” I meet his gaze, and he’s already looking at me with something soft in those gray eyes. Something flutters low in my stomach. “Admit it. I’m a better hunter than you.”
“Never.”
We lie there in comfortable silence, watching the stars multiply overhead. The grass is cool beneath my back, and the sounds of the forest settling into the night surround us like a blanket. Somewhere nearby, a cricket starts to sing, soon joined by others until the meadow hums with their chorus.
“Can I ask you something?” Bryan asks, quiet and careful.
“Depends on what it is.”
“What happened while I was gone? With you, I mean. I know about your work at the medical center, but...” He trails off, leaving the question open.
I stare at the sky, considering how much to share. This is the part I’ve kept locked away, the grief I’ve never fully processed because processing it would mean accepting that I’m truly alone in a way I never expected to be.
“My parents died,” I tell him. “Two years after you left. They had a car accident on the highway outside of town. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel and crossed the median. They never even saw him coming.”
Bryan goes very still beside me. “Skylar, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you? You were gone. It was fast, at least. They didn’t suffer. One minute they were driving home from visiting my aunt, and the next...” I swallow hard against the lump forming in my throat. “The next, they were just gone.”
“Is that when you threw yourself into healing?”
“I was already training, but yes. After they died, I committed to it completely. It was the only thing that made sense.” I pick at a blade of grass, twisting it between my fingers until it shreds. “Grief has a way of swallowing you whole if you let it. I needed something to hold onto, some reason to get out of bed every morning. Healing gave me that. It gave me purpose when everything else felt meaningless.”
“You built something incredible,” Bryan muses. “The way people talk about you at the medical center, the respect you’ve earned... Your parents would be proud.”
My throat goes tight, and I have to blink rapidly to keep the moisture at bay. “I hope so. I like to think they’re watching somehow. That they can see I turned out okay despite everything that happened.”
The cricket chorus swells around us, filling the silence with sound.
“I haven’t let anyone get close since they died,” I admit, and the words surprise me even as they leave my mouth. “Ruby and Luna, sure. But really close? The kind of close where someone could hurt me again?” I shake my head. “I couldn’t risk it. Losing them nearly destroyed me. Losing you had already broken something inside me that I didn’t know how to fix. I couldn’t survive another loss like that.”
Bryan rolls onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow to look at me. His face is half in shadow, half illuminated by the emerging starlight. “And now?”
“Now I don’t know.” I meet his eyes, letting him see the confusion and fear and fragile hope that I’ve been trying so hard to hide. “Part of me wants to keep you at arm’s length forever. It’s safer that way. Easier. But another part of me...”
I trail off, not sure how to finish.
“Another part of you what?”
“Another part of me is tired of being safe.”
The admission floats into the evening air, more honest than anything I’ve said in years. I don’t know what it means or where we go from here. I only know that lying in this meadow with Bryan beside me, the stars scattered overhead, and the forest breathing around us, I feel something I haven’t felt in a very long time.
I feel like maybe I don’t have to carry everything alone.
Chapter 15 - Bryan
The security briefing runs an hour longer than expected, and by the time I finally escape, the sun has already begun its descent toward the tree line.
James kept us late going over patrol rotations and backup plans. His concern about Rafe’s prolonged silence was evident in the way he kept circling back to worst-case scenarios. He just couldn’t seem to let the discussion end.
Connor shared intel from his contacts in neighboring territories, and none of it was good. The Cheslem remnants have been spotted moving in patterns, testing boundaries, and probing for weaknesses. Everyone agrees an attack is coming. We just don’t know when or where.
My mind is still churning through tactical possibilities as I make my way back to the cabin, but all of that evaporates the moment I round the corner and see Skylar.
She’s sitting on the porch steps with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped loosely around them. The fading golden light catches the copper threads in her hair like a halo. Something has changed since I left this morning. I can see it in the set of her shoulders and how she’s watching me so nervously.
