“Don’t leave.” The words escaped before she could stop them, raw and naked and needy in a way she’d never allowed herself to be. She caught his wrist, her fingers barely closing around the solid warmth of him. “Please.”
He went still, his back to her, tension radiating from his shoulders. For a moment, she thought he’d pull away, retreat behind those walls he kept so carefully maintained. Then his shoulders dropped, and he turned back to her.
“I’ll be right here,” he said, and there was something in his voice—a roughness, a vulnerability—that matched her own. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He settled into a chair beside the bed, close enough to touch but giving her space.
“No,” she said. “Here.” She patted the bed beside her. “I—” Her voice broke on what might have been a sob. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Ghost studied her face for a long moment, as if trying to read something written there in a language he barely understood. Then he nodded once and shucked off his wet clothes, letting them fall to the floor. He moved to the other side of the bed in a pair of form-fitting boxers, pausing only to grab a fresh pair of sweatpants from his dresser.
When he slid beneath the covers, he kept to his side of the bed, careful not to touch her.
No, she wasn’t letting him shut her out. Not tonight.
She reached for him across the expanse of sheets, and he met her halfway, his hand engulfing hers. The simple contact broke something loose inside her chest—not a dam breaking but a knot unraveling, slow and inevitable.
“I thought I was going to die in that barn,” she whispered, the confession torn from somewhere deep. “I thought I’d end up like all those other girls. Like Mary Rose. The bastard called me Little Rabbit. He knew my childhood nickname. He’s one of my community, my people…”
Ghost said nothing, just held her hand as the tears came again. She cried for the girls in that barn, for all the ones who hadn’t been found, for her cousin lost so many years ago. She cried for the fear she hadn’t let herself feel and the pain she’d pushed away.
And through it all, Ghost stayed, his hand warm and solid in hers, his presence a tether to the world outside her grief.
When the tears finally subsided, leaving her hollow and scraped raw, he reached out with his free hand and brushed her damp hair back from her face. The gesture was so gentle, so unlike the hard, dangerous man she’d first met, that fresh tears threatened.
“Sleep,” he said softly. “I’ve got you.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she admitted. “Every time I close my eyes, I’m back there.”
Ghost shifted closer, not touching her beyond their joined hands, but near enough that she could feel the warmth of him. “Then don’t close your eyes. Just breathe. In and out. Focus on that.”
She did as he suggested, matching her breathing to his—slow, steady, controlled. The panic that had been clawing at the edges of her mind began to recede, replaced by a heavy exhaustion.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. “Just breathe.”
Gradually, the tension in her muscles unwound, and her eyelids grew heavy, her body surrendering to exhaustion even as her mind fought against it. She tightened her grip on Ghost’s hand, anchoring herself to him as consciousness began to slip away.
“Owen,” she whispered, the name still foreign on her tongue but somehow right. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t.” His voice wrapped around her like a blanket. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She believed him. That was the strangest part—how completely she trusted this man she barely knew. A man she absolutely shouldn’t trust. The same man who’d pushed her away just days ago, who’d built walls so high and thick no one could scale them. Yet here he was, holding her together when she felt like she might shatter.
Sleep dragged her under in waves, each one pulling her deeper than the last. The last thing she felt was Ghost’s thumb tracing small circles on the back of her hand, a silent promise in the dark.
twenty-eight
Ghost was hovering.Again. He knew it, yet he couldn’t stop himself. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching Naomi as she attempted to button her flannel shirt with fingers that still trembled slightly. Three days since he’d found her in that clearing, three days of barely letting her out of his sight, and he still couldn’t shake the cold dread that settled in his gut whenever she winced or stumbled.
“I can do it myself,” she said without looking up, somehow sensing his presence despite his silence. “Just like I told you five minutes ago when you tried to help me with my socks.”
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Your ribs are still bruised.”
“And they’ll stay bruised whether you watch me get dressed or not.” She finished the last button and shot him a look that was half irritation, half something softer he couldn’t quite name. “I’m not an invalid, Owen.”
The sound of his real name on her lips still threw him off balance. Nobody called him that anymore. Nobody except her.
“The doctor said?—”
