“It’ll warm up in ten minutes. The pine burns hot.”
I stand, brushing the soot from my palms. The room is tight. Two steps from the stove to the desk, three more to the edge of the mattress. With both of us in here, the air feels crowded. The heat from the stove is already rising, thick and dry, making the damp flannel of my shirt stick to my shoulders.
I look at her. The lamp in the hall casts her profile in gold, highlighting the curve of her throat, the way a loose curl of chestnut hair clings to her temple. Her lips are still dry, parting slightly as she watches the fire.
There’s a heaviness between us, a shared weight that has nothing to do with the storm outside. We’re two strangers who loved the same man, standing in the room he built, surrounded by the silence he left behind.
“Bella.”
She turns her head. Her gaze meets mine, honest and completely unguarded.
I step toward her, intending to tell her where the extra blankets are, but the distance between us vanishes too fast. I’m close enough to smell the cold wind still clinging to her clothes, close enough to see the gold flecks in her hazel eyes. The space in my chest, the part Atlas pried open on the porch, gives another hard, sudden pull.
I reach out, my fingers catching the edge of her collar, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. My knuckles brush the skin of her neck.
She freezes.
Her skin is soft, warm, and slightly damp from the snow. The touch is a current, sharp and hot, shooting straight through my hand and settling deep in my gut. My thumb finds the edge of her jaw, resting there. Her pulse is fast, a frantic little flutter against my skin.
She doesn’t pull back. Her eyes search mine, her chest rising and falling in shallow, quick breaths.
“Wyatt.” Her breath catches, a warm, barely audible puff against my mouth.
My name on her tongue sounds like a question I don’t know how to answer. I lean down, my head tilting, my gaze dropping to hermouth. The heat of her breath hits my chin. Every warning in my head, every rule I’ve lived by since the Tuesday call, the funeral, and the day it became clear I couldn’t save my friend—they all start screaming.
Don’t. Keep your distance. She’s here to sell. She’s leaving.
But the draw is too strong. I slide my palm down the side of her neck, my fingers tangling in the hair at the nape. I pull her a fraction closer, my mouth hovering just an inch above hers. I want the heat of her. I want to lose the quiet in the taste of her.
Her hand comes up, her fingers pressing against the center of my chest. She doesn’t push. She simply rests her palm there, hot through the flannel, right over my heart.
Then she lets out a small, fractured sigh, her forehead dropping to rest against my shoulder.
“I still see him.” Her forehead presses harder into my shoulder, the words muffled by the flannel of my shirt. “Every time I close my eyes, he’s there in the garage.”
The words are a bucket of ice water, quenching the heat between us.
The tension in my arms snaps. The heat doesn’t go out, but the direction of it shifts, hollowing into the familiar, dull ache of the grief. I close my eyes, my hand sliding down to rest on her shoulder, holding her steady but no longer pulling her in.
“I know.” The admission is flat, stripped of the heat from a second ago. “Me too.”
I let my hand drop. I step back, putting two feet of cold air between us. The fire in the stove crackles, a bright, cheerful sound that has no business in this room.
I keep my eyes on the pine boards of the floor. “The food Eleanor brought. It’s on the counter. Eat some if you’re hungry. The plates are in the cupboard above the sink.”
“Thank you.” Her voice is small, steady again. She’s rebuilt the calm, the counselor’s wall, before I can even look back up. “How did you and Jesse meet?”
“Jesse.” The name is dry on my tongue, but I force it out anyway. “You’ve seen the scar on Atlas’s shoulder. The night he got it, a mortar came down on the south end of the kennel run.”
“He never told me.” Bella looks up, her eyes wide.
“He wouldn’t have. The shrapnel folded that shoulder like wet cardboard. I worked half the night on a folding table, and for most of it, I believed I was stitching a dead dog back together. Jesse knelt in the dirt the whole time, holding his head, keeping the light steady. Never said a word. When it was over and Atlas was still breathing, he didn’t sleep. He cleaned his rifle, over and over, until the steel was raw. He never talked about that night again. He didn’t let things go. He just kept them inside until the weight broke him.”
She watches me, her gold eyes bright with a sudden, wet understanding. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you think you missed the signs. But the signs were there ten years ago. He was always that man. You couldn’t have fixed the foundation.”
I turn before she can answer, before the look on her face makes me step back across the floor.
