“I’m so sorry,” Hope whispers when she catches me staring at the stuffed animal.
I pull her onto my lap, ignoring the tug of my stitches. “No regrets,” I promise her. “I’m sleeping just fine at night.”
The investigation only takes a few days.
Getting cleared feels like a technicality, but an important one so Hope and Luna can start breathing again.
And then it’s time to renovate.
Blood is a bitch to get out of wood.
But it’s worth the effort when it was spilled to protect your family.
And I really do like the new finish I put on the floors upstairs.
While we’re remodelling, I move Dax to the basement as promised, and change his room into a new room for Hope and me.
Bellamy gets to keep the room across the hall, which she’ll share with her younger sibling once they outgrow a crib in our room—and once she moves out of our bed.
In the same way I need to hold Hope all night, she needs to hold on to her daughter. That afternoon haunts her, how close she came to taking Bellamy into the house for a nap—or, if she’d stayed in the greenhouse to talk to Luna, how close Derek came to finding all three of them there.
Thewhat-ifsspiral endlessly in her head.
Dr. Tailfeathers referred her for trauma counselling, but that healing is going to be a slow process.
I promised her patience. I meant it. Now I mean it even more. I’m hers, however she needs me.
But there’s a sadness inside her, like the joy she found when she first came to the ranch has been snuffed out.
I want to find ways to bring that joy back, piece by piece. Maybe date by date, too.
Chapter 34
Hope
Even though I’m sleeping in Zane’s arms every night, we haven’t been intimate again since everything happened.
And the more days roll by, the more nervous I get, even though I miss him like that.
I’m starting to show now. Just a little. A tiny bump that’s only visible if I’m naked, but if we’re intimate, I’m going to be naked.
With Zane.
This is shock, I tell myself.
I need to get over it, but it feels stupidly hard. Like it’s growing into a mountain of a problem, when it doesn’t need to be.
Then one night, I happen to wear a sundress from the pile of thrifted clothes Mercy gave me, that makes me feel pretty as it skims my thighs.
And sometimes it’s just that simple.
Zane watches me all evening, and it’s heady. I’m thinking about how to suggest we sneak off somewhere when he shows he’s way ahead of me in the planning department.
“After you tuck Bellamy in, bring the baby monitor outside and find me,” Zane whispers against the back of my neck as I’m tidying up in thekitchen. “I want to show your sundress the respect it deserves in the moonlight.”
He slips out the side door, leaving me staring at his retreating back. My pulse picks up, and I smile.
It doesn’t take me any time at all to find him. He’s down the hill from the house, on the slope running down to one of the ponds lining the long driveway.
