Page 39 of Wild Thorns

My blood went cold.

"Old family. Old money. Old grudges." His eyes caught the moonlight, and for just a second, they seemed to flash amber. "They keep tabs on everything the Voss family does. Someone like you generates a lot of interest."

"Someone like me?"

But he was already walking away, disappearing into the darkness with that same fluid grace the brothers shared.

I stood on the stairs for a long time after he left, staring at the place where he'd been standing.

Someone like you.

What did that mean? What did any of this mean?

The howling started while I was still standing there. Three voices rising from the preserve, weaving together in that coordinated song I was learning to recognize.

But tonight, there was a fourth voice. Distant. Different. Answering from somewhere beyond the property line.

And it didn't sound friendly.

Chapter eleven

An Inventory of Healing

Five weeks in. I realized something.

I'd been leaving my apartment door unlocked when I was home. Not just occasionally, not every day, but more and more often this past week or so. It had started small—forgetting to throw the deadbolt when I came in with groceries, leaving the chain off while I worked on the porch. But tonight I’d realized I hadn’t even glanced at the lock before climbing into bed. For a woman who had checked every entry point twice a night for two years straight, that was seismic.

I thought about this for a while, sitting on my bed with my morning coffee. Decided it was because the neighborhood was safe, the building was secure, there was nothing to worry about.

But I knew, I knew, that it wasn't only that.

It was them. The Voss brothers. Their presence in the house below, the knowledge that they were there, that they were watching out. Some protective instinct I didn't understand had convinced my lizard brain that I was safe here. That no one would hurt me while they were near.

I should have been alarmed by this. I was the woman who checked locks twice, who slept with pepper spray on her nightstand, who had spent two years being vigilant because the alternative was being vulnerable.

Instead, I felt... peaceful.

I made myself take stock. A habit from therapy: the inventory of small changes, the evidence of healing that didn’t feel like healing until you added it all up.

In the past five weeks, I had: stopped sleeping with my phone under my pillow, started leaving curtains open at night, stopped flinching when car doors slammed in the driveway, begun humming while I worked; something I hadn’t done since before Marcus.

The unlocked door was just the latest item on a list I hadn’t meant to make.

I finished my coffee and went to the window. The magnolia tree was catching the morning light; that early Southern sun that turned everything golden and soft-edged. Jasper was crossing the yard toward his truck, moving with that elegant grace all three of them had. He looked up, as if he’d felt me watching, and lifted a hand in a wave.

I waved back.

That was another thing. The automatic responses. The way my body had started reacting to them without consulting my brain first. I’d catch myself smiling when I heard Eli’s voice through the floor, or turning toward the window when Callum’s truck rumbled up the drive. My nervous system had made decisions my conscious mind hadn’t authorized.

I should have found this concerning. The last time I’d let someone past my defenses—

But that was different. Marcus had dismantled my walls brick by brick, so slowly I didn’t notice until I was exposed. This felt more like the walls had simply... decided to open a door. On their own terms. To let in light and air… and the sound of three brothers who had never once made me feel small.

***

At the studio, Lila was in the middle of a minor crisis involving a client who wanted their logo to be “more dynamic but also calmer, you know?”

“I do not know,” she said, spinning her chair to face me. “I have never known. I will never know. Is this what design school prepared us for?”