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Not dulled or shoved down or white-knuckled into submission. It was gone, like it had burned itself out and left nothing behind but her. There was no buzzing under my skin, no itch in my hands. There was no restless need to get up and pace or hunt or hurt something just to make it stop.

My parents’ old master bedroom was the only room in the house I didn’t have redone after Dad’s hunting accident…which meant it hadn’t been redone since before my mother had killed herself. The iron bedframe was like a monument, the walls trapped in that same dark, depressing decor that screamed loss and ghosts I couldn’t outrun. But it had a solid lock on the door, and it was the farthest room from hers…so I’d come down here.

I’d yanked those leather cuffs tight around my wrists as the red haze had crept in, whispering all the ways I’d snap and do things you don’t come back from.

I’d chained myself up like an animal waiting out a storm.

And then she’d walked in.

I looked down at her now, at the soft part of her mouth pressed against my chest, at the faint crease between her brows even in sleep, and something in me gave way all over again.

She hadn’t known what she was doing.

She hadn’t touched me like a cure or tried to save me or fix me.

She’d just been herself…and somehow that had been enough.

I was in love with her. The realization came in wrong, pushing into places it had no business being. It was something I should have rejected on instinct because love wasn’t meant for men like me.

And still, it settled in anyway, uninvited and unmovable, threading itself through everything else until I couldn’t separate it from the rest of me, until it felt as permanent as anything else I carried.

I pressed my mouth to her hair and breathed her in, savoring the feeling.

She was mine. My girl. My everything.

Only the person meant for me could tame the darkness inside me, and I’d give her everything…burn the world down if it ever tried to take her from me.

She shifted in her sleep, murmuring something soft and unintelligible, and curled closer.

I smiled into the dark, my hand tightening just a fraction at her back.

Yeah.

I was ruined.

And I’d never felt more whole.

CHAPTER 33

SIENNA

Ihad never understood the phrase too happy until I found myself barefoot in a cowboy’s kitchen, wearing his shirt, smelling like his soap, and pretending this was not the happpiest I’d felt in, well…ever. I might have had to be with Albert all day, but at least I started my mornings like this.

Sterling stood at the stove, barefoot, those worn jeans slung criminally low on his hips, the deep V of him disappearing beneath the waistband like a personal attack. The steam curling up from the skillet clung to him like it had bad intentions.

My gaze snagged on the tattoos spread across his shoulders and down his back, dark lines curling and dipping beneath denim like secrets meant to be discovered slowly. I followed every swirl as he moved, tracking the way the ink flexed over muscle. My mouth went dry, and I had to press my thighs together under the table to stop myself from doing something reckless. Like lunging. Or making a noise.

Mine.

The word pulsed through me, equal parts possessive and absurd, because this was the same man who’d wrecked me all night and then again in the shower this morning, and he was somehow calmly cooking breakfast like none of that had happened.

The audacity.

Even watching him flip bacon was foreplay.

I sipped my coffee—which had been served to me perfectly again—when a sudden, sharp bang rattled the kitchen door, loud enough to knock me straight out of my lustful haze.

I yelped as hot coffee sloshed over the rim of my mug, splashing across my hand and the table. The cup clattered against the saucer as I jerked back, swearing under my breath.