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Those words are everything I need to hear. If she’s happy, and safe, and wants this, then I won’t hold back.

“Xavier and Yale are comfortable making this a regular thing while we’re here,” I say. “Not just the four of us. One on one, too, if you want.”

She looks up at me. “Really? You’d be okay with that?”

“Absolutely. I had no problem leaving you alone with them last night. It didn’t even occur to me not to. And fuck, baby, you looked so beautiful when I walked back into the room.”

She smiles. “I did?” I nod, and she bites her lip. “Then let’s do it. The four of us. And we’ll … I don’t know, regroup before we go home?”

“Sounds good to me.”

I dry her off and pull one of my T-shirts over her head, and we go back into the bedroom. Xavier already looks half asleep on the far side of the bed, and Yale is in the middle, texting.

“So …” Silence bounces on her feet. “What happens in the safe house, stays in the safe house.” Yale looks up from his phone and grins. Silence leaps onto the bed and sits beside him, and I get in on her other side. “Wait, this is your group chat name?” She takes Yale’s phone from him. “The Brothers? You losers.”

Xavier pipes up, “I thought of that.”

“Of course you did.” She types something into Yale’s phone, then hands it back to him. “There. Much better.”

He looks at the screen and lets out a bark of a laugh.

“What did she call it?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Sharing Silence.”

Chapter 21

Yale

Waking up with Silence isn’t unfamiliar. We’ve fallen asleep mid-movie too many times, and she’ll always snuggle into me, resting peacefully like we’ve always been this way. So, when I open my eyes to darkness and Silence’s feet tangled with mine, it feels right.

She’s cuddled into Zayden, but in the night, I felt her get closer to me, like she needed the contact. Xavier is on the other side of the bed, fast asleep. He’s not much of a cuddler, happier to be in his own space.

My phone says it’s almost two in the morning, but I already know going back to sleep isn’t an option. As if sensing my eyes opening, Bullet clambers onto my side of the bed, panting happily. I get up and leave the others sleeping and go downstairs with the dog.

Xavier went to the nearest town yesterday to pick up some food, but there wasn’t exactly a wide selection considering we’re in the middle of nowhere. So, I snatch up a brand of chips that I’m fairly sure went out of circulation when I was a kid, and head to the living room.

Sitting on the couch, I open my laptop and the bag of chips, and log into the secure server that allows me to browse without being traced. I spend the next hour looking into Mercy, full name Mercy Harrison. There’s a sealed record from when she was fourteen—assault and battery. She put a classmate in the hospital, a few broken ribs and a fractured cheekbone, and the statement she gave was that the girl was a bully and deserved it. She was given community service and put into anger management for a minimum of five years. It seems she was advised to channel her anger into something safer, so she picked up mixed martial arts and did well until her early twenties. She had her first and only daughter, Ashley, and opened an MMA center for kids. She never committed another crime—at least, not one she was caught for.

It seems cut and dry, but I delve deeper—into emails, financial records, text messages, trips, frequent stops on her car’s navigation, purchases out of town, large cash withdrawals … but nothing is out of the ordinary.

By the time I’ve decided Mercy is a safe bet, the sun is rising, and I’m not alone.

“What are you doing?” Silence asks sleepily, rubbing her eyes as she climbs onto the couch with me. She’s in one of Zayden’s T-shirts, hair mussed.

“Work.” I close the laptop and lift my arm for her to snuggle into me. “How are you feeling?”

“Sore.”

I laugh softly. “Good sore?”

“Very good sore.” She sighs. “We’re okay, though, right? We’re still friends?”

My heart warms that she’s worried, because I was, too. But after last night, I now know we’re stronger than to let something like this break us. I kiss her forehead. “We’ll always be friends. Nothing would change that.”

“What if I smothered Xavier in his sleep?”

“You’d probably have good reason.”