I look at the room around us. At the warm lamp light. At her profile. At the trust in the simple fact that she is still here.
“Then we deal with worse,” I say.
She turns her head and studies me like she’s testing the truth of that answer. Most days, I’d question whether it was enough. Tonight, I don’t, because it’s all I have to give that isn’t a promise I can’t keep.
Maybe she hears that too. Maybe that’s why she nods and lets her head rest briefly against my shoulder before the quiet takes us both.
I don’t sleep much. Some part of me stays awake listening for the next sound that might take all this away. And because love, it turns out, feels a lot like standing night watch over the thing you can’t bear to lose.
Chapter Twenty-three – Lark
Morning comes soft and gray, with the last of the storm still clinging to the windows in beads of rain and the whole house wrapped in that quiet that only follows weather hard enough to make people pause.
For one suspended second, before I open my eyes, I forget where I am.
I forget the inn and the fire and Nolan’s expression when he realizes he’s losing control of something he thought was his to manage. I forget Kenzie’s name and the open gate and the fact that fear has started threading itself through the edges of my days here in ways I didn’t account for when I came to Coral Bell Cove.
I forget it all because the first thing I feel is warmth. Steady. Solid. Human. And then I remember. The couch. The blanket. Rook stretched across our feet like he appointed himself guardian of the entire night. The quiet after, when nobody reached for words too quickly, and nobody pretended what had happened between us was an accident of proximity or storm or fear.
Holt is awake. I know before I even turn my head.
His body is still in the way only awake bodies are—alert beneath the surface, breathing lighter, hand resting loose on his thigh instead of settled into sleep. I look over and find him watching the rain streak down the windows across the room, his profile calm in the low morning light, something thoughtful and distant in his expression.
It should feel strange to wake up like this. It doesn’t. That’s the first thing that unsettles me. Not what happened. Not the memory of his mouth or hands or the way I chose every partof it without hesitation. The fact that being here beside him feels less like a break from my life and more like I’ve stepped into something that was waiting for me before I knew to look for it.
He turns his head slowly and catches me staring.
“There you are,” he says, voice roughened with sleep and something lower underneath it.
The words hit me in the same place Bailey’s had yesterday. Somewhere deep enough that it feels like memory before it feels like the present.
I shift beneath the blanket, tucking one arm more tightly around myself just to have something to do. “That sounds familiar.”
His mouth curves, small and real.
“Yeah?”
“My dad used to say something like it.”
The smile fades, not entirely, but enough that something softer settles in behind it. Holt doesn’t rush to fill the silence after that. He just watches me, giving the memory room to land and stay where it needs to stay.
Outside, water drips steadily from the porch roof. Inside, the house is still quiet enough that I can hear the old refrigerator humming in the kitchen and the soft, wet snore Rook lets out every third breath.
“He was right,” Holt says after a moment.
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “You didn’t know him.”
“No.” His gaze stays on mine. “Didn’t need to.”
That should make me look away. It should make this feel too intimate in the hard, exposed sort of way. Instead, it feels like truth spoken quietly enough not to bruise.
Rook stirs first, lifting his head and blinking at us with the deep disappointment of a dog waking to realize neither of us has become breakfast overnight. He stretches with complete disregard for personal boundaries, paws pressing against Holt’s leg before he hops down and heads for the back door.
“Guess that’s our cue,” I murmur.
Holt sits up and rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “He’s demanding.”
“He learned from your family.”
