She leans back enough to look at me fully. “Maybe stop trying to do those as the same thing.”
I frown slightly.
“You can protect me,” she says. “But you don’t have to shut me out to do it.”
“That sounds good in theory.”
“It sounds necessary in practice.”
I almost smile.
Almost.
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
I slide one hand up, cup the side of her neck, and let myself feel the pulse there.
She’s still choosing to stand here after everything my world has thrown at her.
“You should run,” I say, though there’s no conviction left in it.
Aurora’s hand covers mine at her throat. “I’m getting a little tired of you deciding that for me.”
Then I bend and kiss her.
Not because desire disappears when a man is wrecked.
Because sometimes it’s the only language left that doesn’t lie.
She meets me immediately, soft and warm, and there’s comfort in it, yes, but more than that, there’s recognition. She kisses me because she knows I’m not asking to be absolved. Just held together for one more night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Aurora
The first thingI notice when we get back to Coyote Glen is that nothing looks different, which feels like a personal attack.
The same string lights are strung across Main Street like they didn’t spend the last couple of days minding their own business. The same flower boxes sit outside Granger’s Goods, and the same woman walks her dog past the square like the world hasn’t shifted even slightly off its axis.
Meanwhile, I got dragged into a storage unit ambush and accidentally developed feelings for three men with a combined talent for violence and emotional confusion.
Everything is… normal, and I am very much not.
Ryder parks behind The Hollow like he always does, controlled and precise, like even the way he turns off the engine is part of a system. Zane is out of the truck first, scanning automatically, eyes moving over exits, angles, people.
Finn moves slower, which is saying something because he usually moves like gravity is optional.
“Don’t make it weird,” he mutters as I reach for him instinctively.
“I’m not making it weird,” I whisper back, already slipping my arm around his good side.
“You’re absolutely making it weird.”
“You got stabbed.”
“Lightly.”
