Gentler.
Present.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“For what?”
“For not making me feel like a burden.”
His brows pulled together.“You’re not a burden.”
“But—”
“No.”His voice deepened, firm but not harsh.“You’re not a job.You’re not an obligation.You’re someone worth protecting.Worth keeping safe.That’s the truth.”
Warmth spread through my chest so fast I didn’t know where to put it.I looked away before I accidentally melted into a puddle on the rocky ground.
“Can we stay here a little?”I asked.“Just… for a while?”
“Yeah,” he said.“For as long as you want.”
So we stayed.
The water lapped softly at the shore.Birds chirped lazily from the branches overhead.The breeze lifted my hair and brushed my cheeks.Each sound seemed to loosen something tight inside me.Something wound so hard it hurt.
Life had not been good to me the past few years, but right now, life seemed good.
Chapter Nine
Prime
Sunlight pushed in weakly through the blinds and cast thin stripes across the clubhouse floor.It wasn’t the kind of bright morning that felt fresh or new, it just felt like more of the same tension we’d been living in.
I was on my second cup of coffee by the time Shay walked into the main room, wrapped in one of her oversized sweatshirts, her bright red hair in a messy knot on top of her head.She looked like she hadn’t slept much but was pretending she had.
She slid onto the stool next to mine at the bar without speaking, like it was already understood that the seat beside me belonged to her now.
I didn’t hate that.
“Morning,” I said and nudged her cup toward her.
She wrapped both hands around the mug and stared at the steam rising from it like it held answers.“Morning.”
Her voice was soft, still scratchy with sleep.
Lost had taken the seat at the table behind us.If you didn’t know him, he looked like he was half-asleep, one arm thrown over the back of the chair, boots crossed.But he wasn’t.He never was.The man could snap from relaxed to lethal faster than a switchblade opening.He was damn good for a prospect.
I took a sip of coffee.“You sleep?”
Shay shrugged, her eyes fixed on her cup.“A little.”
“More than yesterday?”
“Maybe.”Another shrug.
She did that when she was trying to downplay something, shrugging, pretending like it wasn’t a big deal.But it was.Every twitch in her voice, every tiny shake in her hands, every second she spent looking at anything except my face told me exactly what she didn’t want to say:
She was scared.
