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I’d never had that kind of chemistry with anyone. It had nothing to do with age. Whatever had sparked between us then, it still sparked between us three years later, and there was a nine-inch part of me that wanted to prove that to her right now.

But I couldn’t do that.

I wouldn’t do that.

So I breathed.

Then I grabbed an apple from the bowl and sliced it down the center. Another cut, and the halves became quarters. I chopped off the core and turned to the cheese.

Lila cleared her throat. “I do have one condition about the sleeping arrangements, though.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” I sent her a teasing smirk over my shoulder. “You want to be the big spoon?”

She rolled her eyes. “You wish. No, the condition is…You have to wear clothes. It doesn’t have to be pajamas. I know you’re a hot sleeper. Boxers and a T-shirt are fine. I don’t care what you wear, honestly. But something.”

I snorted a laugh. “All right. I won’t come to bed with my dick out. But just know that I won’t make the same request of you. That’s how considerate I am.”

“Truly magnanimous.” Her eyes rolled.

“I like to think so. Here, eat something.” I nudged the plate of apples and cheese toward her. We’d stopped at a diner for a quick burger soon after we’d left the hospital, but Lila enjoyed a bedtime snack, and three days of hospital food had probably left her starving.

She stared down at the plate, that pinch of her brows and roll of her lips telling me something hurt.

“Pills are in the car. I can go grab them,” I offered, even though I knew what her reaction would be. She hadn’t even wanted to fill the prescription, but I’d insisted. “Take one now so you can sleep.”

“You know I’m not going to do that.”

Yeah, I knew, but that didn’t mean I liked it. We’d been here before. I hadn’t liked it then, either.

She kept staring at the food like it had insulted her mother. Fair enough, because Red Delicious apples were a travesty unworthy of ingestion, especially when Honeycrisps were right there, but they happened to be Lila’s favorite, so I figured her expression had more to do with her aching body than the snack I had prepared for her.

“Pain is part of the healing process,” she went on. “Dulling it with medication only prolongs recovery because masking the pain lets you push past limits your body needs, and then you hurt yourself even more.”

“A couple pills aren’t going to turn you into your dad,” I said because I knew what this was really about. I snagged a slice of gruyere and pointed it at her. At least her taste in cheese was good. “And pain is only helpful to a certain extent. There are limits to what a body can tolerate.”

“I haven’t met mine yet.” She took a vicious bite out of an apple slice, eyebrows arched in defiance, like it had been the apple we were talking about this whole time and not the six stitches holding her side together.

Mornings came early at the ranch, which meant that most nights my head hit the pillow no later than nine. But now the minutes were ticking closer to midnight, and my body was ready to keel over from exhaustion, yet every time I took a step toward the bedroom, my brain lit up with a flashing red danger sign.

Not that I was scared of the woman currently occupying my bed. Scared was too small a word to encompass everything I felt about Lila Ford. Maybe fear was somewhere in that tangled mess. Who was to say? Not me, for damn sure. I knew to leave those feelings well enough alone. They could stay in that jumble forever, unexamined and unlabeled.

But every time my gaze slid to the hallway, I got twitchy.

The kind of twitchy that made me want to grab my wingsuit and head for the mountains.

I needed sleep. My body was willing, but my brain was a snake eating its own tail, circling the same thoughts round and round again like a lariat twirling in an endless loop that never lassoed a solution.

Lila was here. In my bed. Fucking stabbed. I was going to kill that son of a bitch. I needed to find him first. Before he found Lila. She was here. In my bed.

The loop started again.

I dragged my fingers down my face, tugging at the puffy skin under my eyes. Tonight I needed to sleep. Tomorrow we would plan. With an aggravated grunt, I forced myself to my feet. Forced myself to take one step toward the bedroom. Then another.

Lila was starfished across my queen-sized bed like she owned the damn thing. She was half in and half out of the covers, one pale leg extended diagonally with her foot dangling off the side of the bed. Her T-shirt had ridden high enough on her thigh that I knew she didn’t have shorts on under there. That was her preferred sleeping arrangement: a man’s stolen T-shirt, underwear optional.

Four years ago, it had been my stolen T-shirt, underwear never.

It was too dark to verify, but it was a safe bet that wasn’t the case tonight. Not my T-shirt. Underwear on. Maybe I felt some kind of way about that, but I’d never know. I added it to the mess rioting in my chest and locked it down.