I help him sit on the edge of the bed, then kneel between his legs to untie his boots.
"You don't have to take care of me," he says quietly, and there's something raw in his voice that makes me look up. The flirty drunk is gone, replaced by someone who looks lost and lonely and bone-deep tired. "Nobody has to take care of me."
The words hit me like a punch to the chest. I know that feeling. The certainty that you're on your own, that needing someone is a luxury you can't afford.
"I know," I tell him, pulling off his boots and setting them neatly beside the bed. "But I want to."
The words hang in the air between us, too honest and too revealing.
I help him lie down, pulling the heavy quilt up to his chin like my mother used to do for me when I was small and scared of the monsters in the dark. He watches me with those green eyes that see too much, even clouded with whiskey and exhaustion.
"You make everything quiet," he says softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Didn't know I needed that until you showed up."
My chest tightens with emotion I'm not ready to name, dangerous feelings I can't afford to feel. "Get some sleep."
I slip into his bathroom and find aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Fill a glass with water from the tap and set both on the nightstand beside his bed, and turn on the small lamp in case he wakes up disoriented.
By the time I turn back to check on him, his breathing has already evened out into the deep rhythm of sleep.
He looks younger like this, less guarded. The lines of stress and grief around his eyes have smoothed out, and his mouth, the one that almost kissed me, the one that called me beautiful, is soft and relaxed. Vulnerable in a way he'd never allow when awake.
My hand moves before I can stop it, tucking a strand of golden-brown hair that had fallen across his forehead.
I lean down and press the softest kiss to the spot where my fingers touched, barely a whisper of contact.
It's not a kiss he'll remember, but I'll carry it like a secret pressed against my heart.
"Sleep well, cowboy," I whisper against his skin.
The walk back to my van feels endless, each step taking me further from the warmth I just left behind.
The Montana night cuts through my hoodie like a blade, sharp enough to make my eyes water against the wind that carries the scent of snow from the distant peaks.
Or maybe that's not the cold at all.
I climb back into my van and pull the sleeping bag around me, but the narrow bed feels smaller than usual. Less like a sanctuary, more like a prison cell.
One I built myself, lock by lock, mile by mile.
Through the small window, I can see the warm golden glow from Colt's nightstand lamp, a beacon in the darkness that calls to everything I'm not allowed to want.
For the first time since I started running, I let myself imagine what it would be like to stay. To wake up in a real bed, in a real room, next to someone who looks at me like I matter more than my inheritance or my last name.
To have morning coffee and inside jokes and the luxury of making plans that stretch beyond the next tank of gas or the next place to hide.
To have someone who might catch me when I fall instead of someone hunting me because I ran.
The thought terrifies me more than uncle Richard, more than the threat of going back to Rosewood, more than any of the practical dangers I've been running from for over a year.
Because wanting those things means hoping for them, and hope is the most dangerous luxury of all.
Hope is what makes you careless. Hope is what gets you caught.
Sleep, when it finally comes, is filled with dreams of green eyes and gentle hands and the taste of almost-kisses in the Montana night. Dreams of waking up somewhere I belong instead of somewhere I'm hiding.
And when I wake up in the morning, still alone in my van with frost covering the windows like prison bars, I pretend the ache in my chest is just from sleeping on the narrow mattress.
Not from wanting to be brave enough to stay.
