Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
By morning, my thoughts are a mess. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. She’s here for Josie. She’ll leave. This doesn’t touch me unless I let it. But by the time I hear through the grapevine that she’s staying at the house, helping out, settling in like she’s part of the damn furniture, I know I’m lying to myself. Because I want to see her again.
Not in the way I usually want things. Not physical. Not reckless. More than anything, the scariest thing of all … knowing she’s here makes me want to stay put.
When I stop by later that afternoon under the pretense of dropping off groceries Raff asked for, I don’t pretend it’s coincidence. Danae answers the door. She looks tired. Real tired. Hair pulled back, no makeup, sleeves rolled up like she’s been working nonstop.
And she still knocks the breath out of me. “Hey,” I greet casually.
“Hey,” she replies.
We stand there a beat too long.
She steps aside. “Come in.”
The house smells like clean laundry and something warm baking. Home. It makes something ache in my chest that I don’t have a name for.
“She’s asleep,” Danae says, nodding toward the bedroom. “Both of them.”
“Justice?”
“At school. Raff went to pick him up.”
Of course he did. She’s already slotted herself into the rhythm. I set the groceries on the counter and begin shuffling around the kitchen to put the stuff away.
“You didn’t have to do all this.”
She looks at me then. Really looks, actually studying me so I tell the truth. “I wanted to.”
Silence again. But this one’s different. Less sharp. More fragile. “I didn’t expect to see you,” she says finally.
“I didn’t expect to see you either,” I answer with the same respect of the truth she gave to me.
Her lips press together. “Funny how that works.”
I hesitate, then take the risk. “That night—”
She lifts a hand. Not angry. Just firm. “Don’t.”
I stop immediately.
“I’m not pretending it didn’t happen,” she adds, quieter now. “I just can’t unpack it right now.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
“But,” she continues, meeting my eyes, “we’re going to keep running into each other. So we should at least agree not to make this weird.”
A humorless smile tugs at my mouth. “That might be asking a lot.”
She snorts despite herself. “You always get to me.” The familiarity of it hits us both at the same time. Her eyes soften. Just a little. “Truce,” she says. “I don’t know what to say to you. And you don’t know what to say to me. This is unexpected for us both. I’m not here for you. I’m not some crazy stalker. I’m here for my cousin and I’ll be gone before you know it. So no need for heavy conversations.”
“For now,” I agree.
I leave not long after, heart pounding in a way that has nothing to do with danger or adrenaline.
She’s here. And I’m not running. For the first time since I left her sleeping in that bed without a name to hold onto, I wonder if this wasn’t an accident at all, but the start of something that’s been circling back toward me the whole damn time. I wanted to give her my name, my number, but didn’t. Why? I don’t know. But now here she is and I’m supposed to let it be. She’s going to be gone before I know it, that’s what she wants me to believe.
She’s under my skin so how will she be gone when distance doesn’t matter to damn desire.
I tell myself not to go back over there. That it’s not my place. Raff’s got enough on his plate with a newborn, a recovering wife, and a kid figuring out how to be a big brother. Me hovering doesn’t help anyone. And maybe that’s true.
But it doesn’t stop the pull. It sits under my skin all day, restless and insistent, like an itch I can’t reach. Every time I hear a bike on the road, every time my phone lights up, every time my thoughts drift even a fraction too far from whatever I’m supposed to be doing, they slide right back to Danae.
To the way she moved through Raff’s house like she’d been there forever. To the way her presence shifted the air without demanding anything from it. To the way my chest felt quieter just knowing she was down the street.
That’s the part that gets me.
Quiet isn’t something I’m used to.
Normally, when I’m restless, there’s only one cure. I ride. I disappear into the road until the noise in my head burns off and all that’s left is motion and wind and miles. I’ve built my whole life around that pattern—need, escape, return. It’s predictable. Safe.
Except the need to escape isn’t there.
It should be. I haven’t left town in weeks, and that alone should have me climbing the walls. Instead, I wake up and my first thought isn’t where I could go. It’s how long will she be here and can I see her again.