laughed too. Low and quiet, barely there, but real.
Finally, he stood up and reached for a towel, holding it open. “Come here.”
I stood and he wrapped it around me, tucking it in at my chest, his hands smoothing across my shoulders. Then he picked me up and carried me back to the bedroom. He laid me down on the quilt, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at me. “Sleep,” he said.
“It’s morning.”
“You worked a twelve-hour shift yesterday and didn’t sleep enough. Sleep.”
I looked at him—at the scars and the set jaw and the dark eyes that had been watching me for weeks from a corner booth, waiting. “Are you going to stay?”
He didn’t answer, just took off his sweatpants and got into bed beside me and held out his arms. I snuggled up against him as he pulled the covers up around us. My cheek found his chest, his heartbeat slow and steady under my ear—not the racing pulse of a man who was uncertain, but the deep, even rhythm of one who had decided and settled. His arm came around me and the weight of it was everything. Warm and absolute and not going anywhere.
I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for weeks. Maybe years.
Outside the window the mountain was bright, the pines moving in a low wind. Griffin’s chest rose and fell, slow and even. His thumb moved once across my shoulder, a single absent stroke, like he was making sure I was still there.
I thought about saying something. I had things I could have said—about the diner, about the first night, about the weeks I’d spent telling myself a man like him wouldn’t look twice at a woman like me. I could have told him that he’d been the first person in longer than I could remember to make me feel like the weight I was carrying was something someone else might actually want to help hold.
I didn’t say any of it. I didn’t need to. He already knew—I could feel it in the way he held me, certain and unhurried, like this was simply where I lived now and he’d already made his peace with that and was glad about it.
The endless running list of things to do and things to worry about and things I couldn’t afford to let slide—had gone quiet. Not forever, I knew that. Tomorrow there would be shifts and textbooks and brothers who needed things and a world that didn’t pause because I’d finally found somewhere I wanted to be.
But not right now.
Right now, there was just this. His heartbeat. The light through the curtains. The unfamiliar, devastating peace of being held by someone who had decided I was worth holding onto.
I pressed my palm flat against his chest, over the steady thump of his heart and his hand covered mine.
I closed my eyes, and for the first time in longer than I could count, I didn’t lie awake.
EPILOGUE
Griffin
She was asleep before nine again.
I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched her for a long moment. She was curled on her side, her hair spread across the pillow, one hand tucked under her cheek. She looked younger when she slept. Softer. Like all the weight she carried during the day had finally agreed to put itself down for a few hours.
She’d been doing this for two weeks. Falling asleep almost mid-sentence. Leaving her nursing textbooks open on the kitchen table and her coffee half-finished beside them. Keely did not leave coffee half finished. In the two months since she’d moved into my cabin, she’d made it her personal mission to drain every pot I made down to the last drop.
I’d noticed other things too. The way she winced when she rolled onto her stomach in the mornings. The way she’d gone quiet at dinner last night when I’d cooked the chicken she usually asked for by name. The way her body had changed in ways so subtly she probably hadn’t registered them herself yet.
I had.
I’d spent years training myself to observe everything. To notice details others didn’t. To read a situation before itannounced itself. That instinct had kept me alive in places that had wanted me dead.
I went to the bathroom and opened the cabinet under the sink. I’d picked up the test three days ago. I’d been waiting for the right moment even though I knew there wasn’t going to be a right moment. There was just going to be this.
I set it on the counter and went back to the bedroom.
“Keely.”
She stirred, her brows pulling together. “Mmm?”
“Wake up.”
One eye opened. “Do you need something?”
