And that look just…well, it set off something inside him, something he didn’t want to acknowledge. “You said take it off,” he groused.
She blinked, nodded sharply, moved behind him. “Right. Let me know if this hurts.”
Frankly, everything hurt for so long now he didn’t know how to answer.
Her fingers settled at the base of his skull, working outward to his shoulders before tracing each vertebra with professional precision. Noah’s breath hitched—not from discomfort, but from contact. He’d endured plenty of medical exams, but this wasMeg. Meg, who’d invaded his thoughts without invitation. Meg, who made him count hours between sunrise meetings. Meg, who’d awakened things he’d buried with Mary.
And now, everything inside him was on fire.
“That hurt?”
Not yet.But it would. Because with her question, truth crashed over him like cold water. Loss struck without warning—Mary’s death had taught him that. Couples didn’t exit together, hand in hand, like that movieThe Notebookthat Mary had made him watch. Someone always ended up broken. Grieving.
“No.” He cleared his throat, forced his brain to recite Cubs statistics—batting averages, ERAs, anything to drown out the warmth of her touch tracking down his spine, vertebra by vertebra.
He couldn’t fall for her. Wouldn’t.
She stepped back, retrieving her laptop. “I’m ordering X-rays. Can you wait for the tech? It’ll be about an hour.”
An hour of quiet shut-eye sounded perfect—as long as she stopped touching him. Leaving sounded better. “Sure.”
She nodded, disappeared toward the front desk. Alone again. Preferred state.
He lay back and closed his eyes.
An hour later, X-rays confirmed what he already knew—structurally sound, temporarily sore. Felt a little like the state of his life.
But he’d discovered a bigger problem.
Meg had stopped being just morning coffee.
Attachment was dangerous territory. Nimue knew better. Yet her pencil kept tracing Liam’s features across the page—a fusionof the broken man from that Swiss newspaper and the ranger who’d interrogated her about those photos. Two versions of the same haunted soul.
She let herself study his intense eyes in the sketch. Three days ago, he’d yanked her back from the trail’s edge. The memory of his arms locking around her, his face draining white, his pulse hammering against her ear—it all crashed back with vivid clarity.
She couldn’t seem to escape him.
He’d shown up to run this morning with the same haunted expression. They hadn’t talked about it, just dropped into a regular rhythm. Then as soon as they were back, he returned to his truck and was gone. It shouldn’t matter. But it did.
She slammed her sketchbook shut, the sound sharp in the quiet of the bus. She pressed her palms against her eyes, fighting for focus.Keep him safe. Don’t get attached.Simple marching orders from Emberly.
Except Nimue wasn’t the superhero her sister was, never had been.
And she could still feel Liam’s hands on her arms, saving her from?—
A knock rattled her camper door.
She’d been so deep in her head that she hadn’t heard an engine, footsteps,anything. Her gaze shot to the grab bag at the bus’s far end, hands beginning their familiar tremor.
Pull it together, girl.The Bratva didn’t knock.
She peered through the blinds.
Liam stood silhouetted against the fading light—dark hair tousled, ranger uniform replaced by faded jeans, and a gray tee that hugged his broad shoulders. His hands stayed buried in his pockets, head down, looking less like the confident ranger she’d run with and more like someone carrying invisible weight.
Her hand reached for the door handle, then froze.
Letting him in meant risk—not just from Russian assassins, but also from what he was becoming to her. Connection. The thing she’d craved her whole life and couldn’t afford until Teresa was neutralized.
