Chapter Six
~ Danny ~
I woke to warmth, which was wrong. Every muscle in my body had memorized the choreography of cold: morning air on bare skin, cheap polyester blanket that didn’t cover my toes, the metal frame of my cot biting into the backs of my knees.
This—this was something different.
The mattress cradled me, not like a slab of packing foam but like a hand that knew exactly where the bruises were and shaped itself around the ache. The pillow smelled like laundry, yes, but also something older: pine resin, river rocks, a metallic whiff I couldn’t place.
When I tried to move, pain traced a slow red line from my ribs to my shoulder, electric and almost beautiful in its clarity.
It took a few minutes for the world to finish booting up.
My head throbbed, fuzzy with either drugs or trauma—maybe both. Sunlight knifed through the space between heavy curtains, painting the floor in gold stripes. There was a chair beside the bed, and in it, the shape of a man: elbows on knees, head bowed, not asleep, but deep in some private disaster.
Burke Callahan.
Of all the ways I’d pictured him, “sitting still” was not on the bingo card. But there he was, every muscle tight as a baling wire, fingers laced together, hair mussed like he’d been fighting his own skull. The kind of posture that said he’d been there a long time.
I blinked and he noticed. His eyes snapped up, green and sharp and full of things I didn’t know how to read. For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then: “Hey,” he said, voice pitched low and gentle, like he was afraid he might break me just by speaking.
“Hey,” I managed, which came out more like a hiss than a word.
“You’re awake.” He sat back, relief skidding across his features so fast I almost missed it. “That’s good. That’s—uh, great.”
I tried to shift, just to see if I could. The pain was instant, hot and blooming, but at least my parts were still attached. My left eye wouldn’t open all the way, and my tongue felt like it was covered in carpet fibers.
“How long,” I said. “Was I out?”
Burke looked at his watch, then at me. “Couple of hours. You’ve been in and out.” He hesitated. “We had to give you something for the pain. Sorry if it makes you loopy.”
I wanted to say I was always loopy, but the joke got lost on the way to my mouth. Instead, I watched the way he fidgeted—his hands constantly in motion, like he was building something only he could see.
“Is this the… guest room?” I asked. The words came slow, like pulling taffy through a keyhole.
He nodded. “Best room in the house.” He paused, then shrugged. “Okay, only guest room in the house, but still.”
There was a glass of water on the nightstand. I eyed it with the desperation of a man lost at sea. Burke saw, reached for it, then stopped, as if remembering not to spook the wounded animal.
“You want a sip?”
I nodded. He moved so slow it was almost funny, cradling my head with one hand and holding the glass with the other. His fingers were warm, gentle, and he never touched the bruised side. I drank, let the cold settle the burning in my throat.
He set the glass down and sat back, still hovering at the edge of my space. “You’re safe,” he said, and his voice broke a little on the word safe. “Nobody’s getting in here unless they want to eat lead or get shamed by Jojo.”
“Jojo could kill with kindness,” I said. This time it sounded more like a joke.
He grinned, quick and wild. “He’s got a black belt in compassion. And he’s running point on your recovery.” Burke’s face sobered. “He’s got some kind of herbal crap he wants you to try, but I told him nothing until you were conscious and could give consent.”
I tried to laugh, but the sound stuck. “Thanks. For… all of this.”
He shook his head. “Don’t. It’s nothing.”
It was not nothing. It was everything.
We sat in silence for a minute, sunlight crawling across the floor. I was aware of every inch of my body—the throbbing at my temple, the dull ache in my side, the weird comforting pressure of the blanket that wasn’t mine.
The one thing that didn’t hurt was my hand, because I realized Burke was still holding it, his thumb tracing a lazy pattern over my knuckles. Like he didn’t know he was doing it, or maybe like he did and just didn’t care.
His scent—pine and leather, but also something sharper, almost electric—wrapped around me. It was stupid how safe I felt, with him right there. Stupid and dangerous.
I tried to pull my hand away. Not out of fear, but because I didn’t want to get used to it. I didn’t want to forget, even for a second, what came next. What always came next.
He let go, but the warmth lingered. “You want more water?” he asked.
“I’m good.”
A shadow crossed his face. He looked like he wanted to say something but was afraid it would make things worse. “Can I get you anything? Food? Jojo said you used to like those protein shakes, but if you’re not up for it—”
I shook my head, the motion dizzying. “Just… need to think for a minute.”
He nodded, then went quiet. The room felt full of words neither of us could say.
Outside, I heard the distant whinny of a horse, the low bark of a ranch dog.
I tried to piece together the timeline in my head: the fight, the escape, the walk across town.
The blood. And then waking up here, in a bed that didn’t hurt, under a roof that wouldn’t collapse in the next hour.
I blinked hard, just to make sure it was real.
Burke was still watching me, but his expression had changed. There was a hunger in it—not the bad kind, not the Dennis kind, but a hunger to understand, to be let in. It was almost worse. I wasn’t used to people wanting the truth.
“You’re really not going to ask me what happened?” I said.
He shrugged, but the motion was tight. “You’ll tell me if you want to. Or not. I don’t need the details to know it wasn’t your fault.”
That got me. I had to look away.
For a long time, I stared at the ceiling and tried to find a crack in it. But the plaster was perfect, unbroken. I could hear Burke’s breathing, slow and steady, a metronome in the quiet.
“Is it always this quiet here?” I asked.
He smiled, small and sad. “Sometimes. Unless Jojo’s baking, or the horses decide to put on a show.” He shifted, clearing his throat. “If you want noise, I can turn on the radio. Or I can just talk until you get tired of my voice.”
“I don’t think I could ever get tired of your voice,” I said, surprising both of us. The words slipped out, soft and unguarded.
He didn’t laugh. Instead, he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked at me with a kind of naked honesty I’d never seen on an alpha. “You can stay as long as you want,” he said. “No expectations. No payment required. We’ve got the room.”
I wanted to say yes. God, I wanted it so much my teeth ached. But there was a clock in my head, ticking down to when Dennis would come looking. When the universe would remember it had made a mistake and correct for it.
I tried to smile, but it cracked at the edges. “For how long?”
He got up, paced to the window, and stared outside for a second before turning back. “For as long as it takes. Or until you get sick of ranch life and decide to run away with the circus. I hear they’re always hiring tech support.”
I let out a noise that was half a laugh, half a sob. “I’d be the world’s worst clown.”
He crossed back to the bed and crouched beside it, bringing his face level with mine. “You’d be the best damn clown,” he said. “Because you wouldn’t have to pretend.”
There was nothing left in me to argue. Nothing left to fight with. I let the words settle into the cracks of my brain, and for the first time since I could remember, I let myself believe, just a little, that it might be true.
Burke stood, stretching his arms overhead, and the light caught the line of his jaw, the shadow of stubble there. He looked tired. But also—if I was seeing it right—happy, in a low-battery kind of way.
“I’ll let you rest,” he said, voice soft. “If you need anything, just yell. Or, you know, text. Jojo fixed your phone.”
He started to leave, but I reached out, caught his sleeve with my good hand. He turned, and I felt the world tilt on its axis.
“Don’t go far,” I said.
He grinned, wide and wild, all the exhaustion burning away in that one flash of green. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he said.
He left the door open behind him.
And for the first time, I didn’t mind the sunlight at all.
* * * *
I woke the next morning—or maybe afternoon, time meant nothing now—to the gentle hush of eggs frying in a distant pan.
My head felt clearer, the way a mud puddle does after a hard rain.
The light outside was different: brighter, less like a surgical lamp and more like the world was daring me to look up.
There was a new glass of water on the nightstand, condensation fogging its sides. I drank, careful of my split lip, and tested the rest of my body. Everything still hurt, but the pain was blunt now, dulled by time or Tylenol or both.
A voice floated down the hallway, arguing with itself about the proper toast-to-butter ratio.
I managed to swing my legs over the side of the bed, which was a mistake. Agony flared in my ribs, like someone was trying to play them as a xylophone with rebar. I bit down a gasp and clutched the blanket, waiting for the world to steady.
The door creaked, and Burke’s head appeared, grinning and sheepish at the same time. “Sorry. I know it smells like burned calories, but it’s technically food.”
He set a tray on the foot of the bed and backed away, as if he expected me to swat at him.
The tray was a masterpiece of apology: scrambled eggs, two slices of toast, a banana sliced with surgeon-like precision. There was even a tiny bottle of hot sauce.
“You don’t have to eat it,” Burke said. “But Jojo will literally have an aneurysm if you don’t at least pretend.”
I picked up the fork and poked at the eggs. “I’m not sure my digestive system has rebooted yet.”