“Tess.”
She turns to look at me.“Yeah?”
“He won’t again.”
She presses her lips together and nods.
My throat is tight. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I moved that fast. I should’ve asked.”
“Sullivan.”Her eyes are bright.“Ifyou’dasked me whether to step between me and that man, Iwould’vesaid yes.I’mnot upset that you didn’t have time to ask me.”She pauses.“Ido, however, need you to understand something.”
My chest constricts. This is the part where she leaves. WhereI’mtoo much for her to take on.
“You are not going to spend the next forty-eight hours walking around your cabin telling yourselfyou’rebad luck. Are we clear?”
I open my mouth.Close it. “Tess.”
“I see you, Sullivan Mercer. I see exactlywhat’sabout to happen in your head. Do. Not.”
I look at her.
She holds my gaze unflinchingly.
Then she puts the truck in gear, and we drivehome upthe switchbacks in a silencethat’snot awkward,just full.
I watch her hands on the wheel.She’sbeen holding it too tightly since we left the lumberyard. Working through something. Not the part about Marcus. I know thatlook.I’vehad that look.It’sthe face of a personadding upwhether a thing is safe.
Tess parks the truck and kills the engine. Neither of us moves for a moment. Then she gets out and I get out and we unload in the last of the light without talking. She goes in and puts her kettleon,and I find reasons to stay outside a little longer.
That night, I do exactly what she predicted I would do.
I lie on my back next to her and look at the ceiling of my cabin, counting all the ways my proximity to a person is dangerous. I count the man on the dock and the way I held his wrist. I count the way I lost time on the porch that day. I count the waysheanchoredmewhen she was the one that asshole touched. And I count the way that, given five more seconds and no Tess, I would’ve done far more than grab his wrist.
At some point near three a.m., I get up quietly so I don’t disturb her.
I sit at my kitchen table in the dark with a glass of water. I look at the door I keep in my line of sight and do the math the way I did it for two years before I went to Henry’s ranch in Montana.
I count the ways. The wrist I nearly brokeatthe lumberyard. Seven feet.That’show far I moved without deciding to move. The speed of it. The certainty. If shehadn’tsaid my name, I would have put that man on the ground and kept going.
I see the future as clear as day. Tess on a sidewalk, six months from now. A stranger bumps her shoulder.I’macross the street before my brain catches up. Wrong target. Wrong context. And her face when she truly sees who I am, whoI’vebecome.
Bones went down because I made the wrong call.Wirelost three years because of my mistake.I’ma man whose decisions cost people things they can never get back.
I stand up from the table withoutdecidingto stand. Walk to the sink. Runcold waterover my wrists the way I learned in thehospital, andwait for my hands to stop trembling.
And the math says the same thing it’s always said.
Bad luck.
Stay alone.
Chapter 10
Tess
I wake up to an empty bed.
The space beside me is cold.Sullivanhas been gone for a while.That knowledge does something to my stomach. I breathe through the discomfort, carefully listening until the sounds of him working in the kitchen drift from below.
