Page 127 of After the Burn

The barn was filthy and cold, but for now the doors held.

I sighed in relief as I dropped onto a hay bale. For the moment, Harper was alive. And for the moment, we were all together.

In this world, that was as close to safe as anyone got.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LUCAS

Beck had his arm around her… again. It seemed like either he or Adrian was touching her constantly now that they were a big happy family.

That was what kept my attention.

Not the storm gathering beyond the barn walls. Not the wind worrying at the loose tin overhead. Not the distant rumble of thunder rolling beyond the trees.

Beck’s arm… around Taryn.

She sat beside him in the hay, one knee bent, her shoulder pressed against his chest as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Adrian sat on her other side, close enough to notice when she shivered before anyone else did.

He reached behind him, grabbed his jacket out of his pack, and dropped it across her lap. “That’ll help keep you warm, baby.”

Taryn smiled at him gratefully. “Thanks.”

Beck tugged the jacket higher and handed her an energy bar he’d stashed beside him. “Eat this. It’ll help you recover from the blood loss.”

I looked away.

There was no reason the sight of either of them touching her should bother me.

None.

Which was probably why it bothered me so much.

Across the barn, Finley sat beside Harper, his back against a stall. He had insisted on taking the first watch.

No one argued.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since we got here, so it seemed like the logical choice.

Rory slept curled on her side a few feet away, with Max pressed against her back and Mojo trapped beneath one arm. Wren lay next to her. Colson sat between them and the door, his attention laser-focused on Wren’s chest as it rose and fell with each breath.

I leaned my head back against the wall as another flash of lightning lit the barn through the gaps in the boards.

Taryn chuckled at something Beck said, and Adrian smiled at them both.

Weren’t they cute?

I had to remind myself that I didn’t care.

Taryn wasn’t mine.

She’d never been.

She’d been a little girl who followed Adrian and me around until we escaped to whichever room she wasn’t in.

Then she became my student.

Then she became Adrian’s obsession.