I sit with her in the dark without saying anything, because there is nothing useful to say, and she doesn’t need useful rightnow. She needs the dark, the quiet, and someone beside her who isn’t going to try to fix it.
The moon comes through the glass doors and falls across her face. I look at her in it and feel something that has nothing to do with keeping a promise.
She is breathtaking.
Even now.
Even like this.
Especially like this.
After a while, her shaking eases.
She looks at me. “Stay,” she says quietly. “Please. I don’t… I can’t be alone right now.”
I look at her, the T-shirt, the hair, and the vulnerability of someone who has just been somewhere terrible, has come back, and doesn’t want to go there again alone.
“Okay.” Moving around to the other side of the bed, I get in beside her.
She immediately turns toward me, not hesitant or considered, just the instinctive movement of someone seeking warmth and safety. My arm goes around her, and she settles against my chest.
Her hand is flat against my chest. Her hair spreads across, loose and golden, even in the dark. Her scent is warm, soft, entirely hers, and settles around in the quiet.
I tell myself with considerable firmness that this is simply what it is.
A man keeping a promise.
Nothingmore.
Memphis appears in the doorway, the soft heavy thud of him settling just inside it, keeping watch the way he always does when something in the house needs watching.
Good dog.
Sophia’s breathing deepens.
The ceiling keeps moving.
Eventually, without meaning to, sleep comes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SOPHIA
Waking slowly, I feel warmth first.
The solid warmth of something real beneath my cheek, not a pillow or the mattress. It’s something that rises and falls slowly and steadily.
A heartbeat.
I become fully conscious all at once.
Not moving.
In the still gray of early morning, his arm is still around me, my hand is on his chest, and the whole of yesterday is sitting between us.
Tate.
He’d come when I screamed. He’d sat beside me in the dark while I shook and couldn’t stop seeing Ryan burning in my dream. He’d gotten into this bed, held me, and I’d fallen asleep against his chest. Somewhere in the night, the nightmare had let go, and something else had taken its place.
