Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
He’s not wrong. I got the bed to myself last night and they didn’t. I can’t exactly claim it all to myself two nights in a row.
“Fine by me,” I say, surprising myself. “If you two can manage to stay on your own sides.”
The challenge hangs in the air between us. Knox looks at Liam. Liam looks at Knox.
“We can manage,” Knox says.
But the way he says it makes me think managing is the last thing any of us is going to do.
We turn off the lights and climb into bed together. Me in the middle, Knox on my left, Liam on my right. The mattress dips under our combined weight. Sheets rustle as we each try to find comfortable positions that don’t involve touching.
It’s impossible. The bed is big, but not that big. Knox’s shoulder presses against mine. Liam’s leg brushes my calf. We’re breathing in syncopated rhythm, none of us sleeping, all of us pretending.
I lie there in the dark, acutely aware of the warmth radiating from both of them. Knox, whom I’ve spent a year circling without ever closing the distance. Liam, whom I spent five years trying to forget. Both of them inches away, and the darkness making everything feel closer than it should.
The snow falls. I close my eyes and listen to them breathe, feeling their bodies against mine, and wonder how long any of us can hold out before something gives.
Chapter Twenty
Knox
The dream starts the way it always does. Dust and heat and the high whine of something mechanical failing. Kandahar, maybe. Or Helmand. The geography stopped mattering years ago. What matters is the convoy, the sudden wrong silence before the world tears itself apart, and the face I see through the smoke when I turn my head.
Liam. Covered in blood. Reaching for me.
Then the convoy becomes the lodge. The smoke becomes the hallway. Men in tactical gear drag Liam away while I watch, paralyzed, unable to close the distance no matter how hard I try.
Then Hailey’s there too. They’re dragging her in the opposite direction, her mouth open in a scream I can’t hear, and I’m standing between them unable to save either one and the explosion finally comes and—
“Knox. Knox, wake up.”
Hands on my shoulders. Gentle pressure. A voice cutting through the static.
My eyes snap open and I’m already half-sitting, muscles coiled, pulse pounding in my ears. The cabin. Stone fireplace, floor-to-ceiling windows, white morning light spilling across the sheets. Not Afghanistan. Not the lodge.
Hailey’s face swims into focus. She’s propped on one elbow beside me, hair a mess, those dark eyes causing my chest to ache. She’d slept between us last night—a buffer zone, a no-man’s-land—and sometime in the night she must have shifted closer to my side.
On her other side, Liam is awake too, sitting up against the headboard, watching us in a way I can’t parse.
“You’re okay,” Hailey says. “You’re safe.”
The lie of it almost makes me laugh. None of us is safe. We’re locked in a cage by a woman who talks about murder with the same inflection she uses to recommend wine pairings. But Hailey’s touch is warm and steady, and for a moment I let myself believe her anyway.
“Bad dream,” I manage. My voice comes out wrecked.
“I figured that out from the thrashing.” Her thumb traces my jaw. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t push. Doesn’t pry. Just keeps up that slow, grounding pressure like she knows exactly what I need without me having to explain it.
From the other side of the bed, Liam shifts. “Afghanistan?” he asks quietly, and there’s no judgment in it. Just understanding. He has his own version of these dreams. You don’t spend years in combat zones without accumulating some ghosts.
“Yeah.”
“Those never go away.” His voice is rough with sleep. “They just get quieter.”
Something in my chest loosens at his words. At the fact that he knows. That I don’t have to explain.
“Coffee,” Hailey announces, sitting up. “I’m making some. You two stay.”
“You don’t have to—” I start.
“I want to.” She leans down and kisses my forehead—brief, almost sisterly, nothing like the way she looked at me yesterday. Then she slides out of bed, still in the oversize T-shirt she found in the dresser, and pads toward the kitchen.
Liam and I watch her go. Neither of us moves to fill the space she left.
“So,” he says after a moment. “That was the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had.”
“Worse than Kandahar?”
“Different kind of uncomfortable.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I pulled a muscle in my neck trying to stay on my edge of the mattress.”
“You could have taken the floor again.”
“And admit defeat? Never.” He meets my eyes, and there’s something almost vulnerable there. “Besides, Hailey would’ve dragged me back by the ankle.”
I don’t have a good response to that, so I don’t try.