Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 20
ELENA
The day started out horribly, but ends far better than I expected.
I didn’t realize how much my body needed sex.
Once I got past the discomfort, Buck made my body feel incredible, relaxed and sated, like every tight place in me had finally let go.
But it’s more than just the physical act, and more than the release. Being close to a man again, even for just a night, satisfies something in me at the deepest level.
Every touch from Buck and every careful action says the same thing: I’ve got you. I want you. I’m here.
Afterward, we lie together without speaking. The room is quiet except for our breathing and the muted wind outside the windows. His warmth surrounds me as my pulse slowly settles, and I’m surprised to find I feel light rather than weighed down by guilt or regret.
When I married Tyler, I never thought I’d be with another man again. But I never thought I’d lose him, either.
Buck kisses my shoulder, letting his lips linger, then he looks down at me. “Talk to me.”
I study his face in the soft light. All the hard lines are there, but something unguarded has opened beneath them. It makes him look dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with size or strength.
“I don’t regret this,” I say.
Lines between his eyes soften. “Good.”
“I probably should.”
He brushes hair back from my temple and presses his lips there. “I’ve been fighting this ever since you came to town.”
“Why?” I know the answer, but something inside me wants it to be voiced.
“Because you were Tyler’s.”
My throat tightens, and I go still in Buck’s arms.
“He loved you, and he was my brother. But none of that changes what’s real now.”
I stare up at Buck as old grief and new wanting tangle together in a painful way. My throat is thick when I can finally speak. “It feels wrong to even think about it. Any of it.”
He’s quiet for a long moment before he says, “I don’t think Tyler would have wanted you alone for the rest of your life.” His hand is wrapped around my middle, and his grip tightens. “He’d want you to be loved. Protected. Surrounded by people who’d lay down their lives for you and your boy.”
As I blink back tears, Buck buries his face in my neck, kissing me there before whispering against my skin. “I’ll keep you safe.”
He says it like an oath, the kind a warrior makes when he intends to stand between you and whatever comes next, but I’m not sure I’m ready to hear it.
“You can’t know what he would have wanted,” I say softly.
“No.” His voice is calm yet firm. “But I knew him. And I know the men he trusted.”
“Men,” I repeat, and Buck keeps holding me tightly. “You said before that I shouldn’t have to choose.”
His fingers press into my side, then he slides his hand upward, under my breast, where it triggers a flood of warmth low in my belly. “That’s right.”
Though there’s very little space between our bodies, Weston’s easy smile and Calder’s watchful silence join us there for a moment, and I imagine what could happen if I stop insisting my life fit inside the lines I drew long ago. I already stepped over one of those lines by being here with Buck.
“You make it sound simple,” I say.
The back of his hand, warm and rough on my skin, rubs the underside of my breast, and my nipples start to tighten. “It won’t be simple, but being complicated doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
I close my eyes and draw in a breath. Tyler is still part of me. He always will be. The life I had with him made T.J., and it shaped me. It broke me, too, when it ended.
But grief isn’t a vow. It’s not a house I’m meant to live in forever just because I still love the man inside it.
When I open my eyes, Buck is watching me. He bends and kisses my forehead in a way that’s so slow and reverent, it makes me ache.
His hand stills, and he holds me tight as we lie there, warm in the cold night, while danger waits somewhere in town.
Nothing’s been fixed. The threat hasn’t disappeared, and tomorrow there’ll be reports and meetings and students and fear.
But something has changed. Something real.
He kisses my shoulder again. “You don’t have to figure everything out tonight.”
I let the weight of my head relax onto his arm as his heartbeat pulses against my back.
“No,” I murmur, “but I think something changed anyway.”
His arm tightens around me. “Yes, it did.”
CHAPTER 21
WESTON
By the time the book fair winds down and most of the parents’ SUVs have pulled out of the lot, I’ve circled the school twice on foot.
It’s the kind of cold night that makes sounds carry farther than they should. Branches scrape against brick, the flagpole line clinks against the metal, and my boots crunch noisily over old snow and frozen dirt.