I press my palm over his heart. Feel it beat strong and sure beneath my hand. “Together,” I say.
“Together,” he echoes.
And for the first time since I drove up this mountain, the fear feels smaller.
Not gone.
But smaller. Because whatever comes through that door when the snow finally stops— we’ll face it side by side.
Bare. Marked. Claimed.
And utterly unafraid.
NINE
BECK
The rug is soft under my back, but it’s her weight on my chest that keeps me anchored. Sabrina’s cheek rests over my heart, one leg hooked over mine, fingers tracing idle patterns across my ribs like she’s learning me by touch alone. The fire has dwindled to a nest of glowing coals; the room is warm, shadowed, intimate in a way that makes every breath feel shared.
I should get up. Check the perimeter again. Load the rifle. Do something useful besides lie here drowning in the feel of her.
But I can’t move.
Because right now she’s crying.
Not loud sobs. Not the kind that demand comfort. Just quiet, steady tears soaking into my skin, one after another, like she’s finally letting the dam break after holding it together for too long.
I don’t say anything at first. Just slide my hand up her spine—slow, deliberate—until my fingers thread into her hair. I cradlethe back of her head, press my lips to the crown like I can shield her from whatever’s tearing her open.
After a long minute she speaks, voice small and wrecked. “I keep thinking… what if I’d said yes to him? What if I’d helped him hide it? We’d still be family. We’d still have holidays and phone calls and stupid inside jokes. And I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t know you. I wouldn’t—” Her breath hitches. “I wouldn’t love you this much. And that scares me more than anything.”
My chest caves.
I roll us so she’s under me now. I’m braced on my forearms so I can see her face. Her eyes are swollen, lashes wet, but she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t hide.
I brush a tear from her temple with my thumb. “You think you’d be happier if you’d stayed blind? If you’d kept pretending he was still the brother who used to carry you on his shoulders?”
“No.” She shakes her head. Fresh tears spill. “But I miss who I thought he was. And I hate that missing him feels like betraying you.”
The words gut me.
I lower myself until our bodies align—chest to chest, thigh to thigh—until there’s no space left for doubt. My forehead rests against hers. Our breaths mingle. “You’re not betraying me,” I murmur. “You’re grieving. That’s different. And you get to do both at the same time. You get to love the memory of him and still choose me. Still choose what’s right. Still choose us.”
Her hands come up, framing my face. Fingers trembling. “I’m so afraid I’m going to ruin you, Beck. That when this is over—when the snow melts and the sheriff comes and Ethan shows his face—I’ll be too broken to stay. Or you’ll look at me and see him. See the family that tried to buy a killer. See someone not worth keeping.”
I catch one of her wrists. Press her palm flat over my heart so she can feel how hard it’s pounding—for her, because of her, only her. “Look at me,” I say. Voice rough. Raw. “Really look.”
She does.
“I see you,” I tell her. “Not your brother. Not his sins. Not the blood we might have to spill tomorrow. I see the woman who drove up a mountain in a blizzard because she refused to look the other way. The woman who trusted a stranger with an axe and a bad attitude enough to let him carry her inside. The woman who kissed me like she was starving. The woman who just let me come inside her bare because she needed to feel something real more than she needed safety.”
Her lips part on a shaky inhale.
“I see the woman who’s crying in my arms right now because she still has enough heart left to grieve a brother who doesn’t deserve it. And that—” My voice cracks. I don’t care. “That makes me love you harder. Makes me want to wrap myself around you so tight nothing can ever touch the parts of you that still hurt.”
A sob escapes her—quiet, broken—and then she’s pulling me down, kissing me like she’s trying to crawl inside my soul.
It’s not frantic this time. Not desperate.
