Chapter 6
Chapter six
Abigail
Idon’t realize I’m cataloging them until I’ve already started.
It’s instinct at this point, though. It’s also proof. Proof that I’m awake. That I’m here. That this is all real.
Lawson is standing close to the fireplace, one shoulder braced against the mantle.
He’s in a pair of dark jeans and a sweatshirt, and the light from the flame reflects across the scar along his jaw, the same one that’s covered in stubble that somehow looks significantly longer than it did yesterday.
His eyes have yet to leave me. Not once.
They track every movement I make like he’s afraid I might vanish if he so much as blinks.
Lincoln is sitting in the armchair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles are white.
He’s in a thermal Henley and a pair of black sweats.
He looks wrecked in a way I’ve never seen him.
Like everything he’s feeling has been folded inward, stacked neatly, and locked in the depths of his soul.
His gaze is gentle. Devastatingly so. And every time our eyes meet, something in his face softens, like relief is still catching up to him in waves.
Beau’s perched on the edge of the coffee table directly across from me, restless and unable to sit back.
He’s in gray sweats and a faded ranch tee, blond curls still damp from jumping out of the shower when Lincoln told them all I was awake.
He keeps flexing his hands open and closed, like he’s trying to give them something to do besides run them all over my body—desperate to be sure that I’m in one piece. That I’m really okay.
And Jasper…
Jasper’s pacing.
Barefoot, with his hoodie sleeves shoved up his forearms, allowing me to see them flex every time he makes a fist at his sides.
His jaw is tight, and his eyes have a wildness to them that I’ve only ever seen that day in the alley.
He keeps dragging a hand through his black hair, stopping only when he catches me watching him—then he freezes, like he’s been caught doing something wrong.
Like needing me this much might bring him to his knees.
They all look different.
I was out only a little over twenty-four hours, and somehow it looks as if every tick of the clock chipped away at them piece by piece.
They look exhausted. Frayed. Terrified in ways they’re not used to being.
And yet…
There’s something else there, too.
Something hidden behind all the worry. Behind the anger. Behind the bone-deep fear that they almost lost me.
Something that looks a lot like—
Something that looks a lot like what I’m starting to feel for them.
The realization hits me so hard that I have to look down into the mug clasped between my hands before any of them see it on my face.
I take a long sip of my coffee—which Lawson made just the way I like—even though it’s well into the evening, and I let the warmth of the ceramic ground me.
Even though I’m bundled up in one of Lawson’s sweatshirts—one that’s so big, I had to roll the sleeves several times—and a pair of Lincoln’s sweatpants, I can’t quite shake the chill.
But the longer I sit here on this couch with wool socks hugging my feet, my hair twisted up into its usual messy bun with loose strands tickling my neck, and each of their stares on me, I feel it.
Warmth.
Protection.
And a knowledge that whatever happens after today will change everything.
“You don’t have to tell us yet,” Lawson says quietly, breaking the silence. “We can wait if you’re not ready.”
I shake my head. Slowly. Carefully. “No,” I say, my voice somewhat hoarse. “I want to.”
That gets all of their attention.
Jasper stops pacing.
Beau’s hands stop moving.
Lincoln leans forward slightly.
I take a breath. Then another. And then… I tell them. “My sister is alive.”
The words land like that broken mug all those weeks ago.
Jasper swears under his breath, sharp and vicious. Linc closes his eyes for a brief moment. And Lawson’s jaw tightens with so much force I worry for his teeth.
Beau is the one who asks, “You’re sure?”
I huff a humorless laugh. “I know what my sister looks like. Or at least… I did. She looks so…” I shake my head at the memory of the woman I know to be my sister.
A woman who looks just how I remembered her, and yet, so…
so empty. “She was there. In the barn. She tried to take me out to the tree line because she didn’t want to risk one of you seeing her.
I thought she just wanted to talk, but—she didn’t want me near them. ”
“Who?” Lawson seethes, clearly already knowing the answer.
“Miles Keller,” I answer. “And the Coates brothers. They—” I know as soon as I tell them this, the way they view my sister will change.
But they need to know the whole picture.
They deserve to know. “They told her they were going to attack the four of you. She thought she was protecting me. But they double-crossed her.”
The room shifts.
“Why is she working with him in the first place?” Jasper asks, his eyes dark as night.
My fingers tighten around my mug. “He’s… he’s not just some low-life developer. He’s Bratva.”
Lincoln curses under his breath. “You’re sure?”
“She told me,” I say. “They sent her here after… after everything that happened in New York.” I take my time telling them everything Kat shared with me—how my parents were buried far deeper in debt than either of us ever knew.
How handing Katerina over to Aleksandr was no longer enough.
Now they wanted me, too, for Maxim. I tell them what kind of men Aleksandr and Maxim were, and how Maxim was—by far—the worst of the two evils.
How Kat didn’t know how to undo the damage our parents had done, but she believed she could at least keep me safe from Maxim.
I explain everything she did to get herself sent away, forcing me into a marriage with Aleksandr, instead—the heir to the Russian mafia in New York.
And I tell them that, despite Katerina’s relentless efforts to protect me, despite being sent here to serve yet another monster, despite spending her entire life trying to shield me from the worst of it all…
Aleksandr still died at the hands of the very men who saved me.
And in the end, I suffered Maxim’s wrath anyway.
And that, somehow—by some cruel twist of fate—I ran straight to the same place that became her new prison.
Lawson exhales slowly through his nose. “Jesus Christ.”
“She didn’t know I’d ever end up on this ranch,” I continue quickly, the words tumbling now. “On your ranch. Her mission was you long before I got here. She said if she had known I’d show up—she never would have agreed to any of it.”
“Agreed to what?” Beau asks softly.
I hesitate. Because this is the part that hurts.
“She thought… she thought that if she helped them, if she stayed useful, they’d leave me alone.” My voice cracks. “She thought it was the only way to keep me safe.”
Jasper lets out a sharp laugh. “By puttin’ you in the middle of it?”
“I know,” I whisper. “I know how it sounds.”
The silence stretches.
“Do you trust her?” Lincoln asks.
I look at my hands and think about Kat’s face as she was ripped away from me.
The fear in her eyes. The way her voice shook when she said my name.
“I—I don’t know how to feel,” I admit. “Part of me is just so… so mad. Part of me feels betrayed in ways I don’t even have words for.
” I look up at them. “But I also know my sister. And I know what it looks like when she thinks she’s run out of choices. ”
Lawson’s gaze sharpens. “That doesn’t mean she gets a free pass.”
“I know,” I answer quickly. “I’m not asking you to give her one.”
“Then what are you asking?” Jasper demands, pain flaring hot and bright in his voice.
I meet his eyes. “I’m asking you to remember that she gave up everything for me. She protected me the best she knew how, just like any of you would have done—have done.”
That does it.
Beau straightens as the rest of them go still. “We have to assume they caught her again. We can go look in the woods, but there’s no way she’d—”
“There’s no way she’d survive even the night out there,” I finish for him, and he nods.
Jasper looks like he might punch a wall. Whether that’s for me, for my sister, or for the entire fucked-up situation, I’m not sure. “I don’t know if we can trust her,” he says finally. The words raw and honest.
My chest tightens, even though I understand exactly where they’re coming from.
“If Abigail trusts her sister,” Beau says, his voice steady despite the storm raging in his blue eyes, “then so should we.”
“Trust,” Lawson says, “isn’t the same as forgiveness.”
Jasper, Lincoln, and Lawson look at him.
Beau just shrugs. “Doesn’t mean we’re stupid about it.
Doesn’t mean we don’t verify everything.
But if she believes Kat didn’t want this, that she did what she did because she felt like she had to…
” His gaze softens when he looks at me. “Then that counts for something.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive her,” I answer. “Hell, I don’t even know if I can forgive her. Not yet.”
My chest aches as the truth of that settles in. Because loving Kat has always felt like muscle memory. Automatic. Unquestioned. She’s my sister. My constant. The person who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms and whisper that everything would be okay, even when I was sure it wasn’t.
And now…
Now she’s also the reason my life nearly ended in the snow.
“I hate that she let them near you,” Jasper snaps, turning back toward me, pain blazing in his raw eyes. “I hate that she watched it happen. That she didn’t run to us the second she thought you might be in danger.”
“I know. I hate it too.”
“But you still trust her,” Lincoln says quietly.
I nod. Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. “When she ran last night, she didn’t look like someone protecting herself. She looked like someone who was already resigned to the fact that she might be punished. Or worse.”
Beau rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “That kind of fear doesn’t come from nowhere.”
“No,” I agree. “It comes from knowing exactly what happens if you make the wrong move.”
The room is quiet for what feels like an eternity before Lawson finally says, “Then we move forward under the assumption that they have her and that she’s alive.”
Emotion surges up so fast it almost steals my breath away. “Thank you,” I whisper as tears sting my eyes.
Lawson studies Beau for a long moment before nodding once. “We’ll do everything we can to get her back. But you”—he looks directly at me—“are our priority. Always.”
I nod, and Jasper drags a hand down his face. “We won’t let any of them touch you again,” he promises, voice shaking.
“I know."
“You should rest,” Lawson instructs, his tone still gentle. “We can talk more in the mornin’.”
“Come on, Abbie Girl,” Jas says as he reaches out to me. “Let’s get you washed up and tucked into bed.”
Beau takes my mug from my hands and sets it next to him on the coffee table before I wrap my hand in Jasper’s and let him pull me off the couch. Beau places a soft kiss on my other hand before Lincoln stands, cups the side of my face, and whispers, “Goodnight, Sweetheart. See you in the morning?”
I smile softly. “See you in the morning, Mr. Taylor.”
Jasper and I move toward the stairs, but I’m sure to stop once we reach Lawson.
“If she tries to contact you again—”
“I’ll tell you,” I promise him. “Everything. No secrets.”
He clenches his jaw before bending down so his forehead rests against mine. “You’re ours, Abigail.”
“I’m yours, Lawson,” I answer softly.
He places a long, deep kiss against my forehead before Jasper pulls me up the stairs.
And once I sink deep into the tub in his bathroom while he carefully washes my hair, I can’t help but think that for the first time in my life, as I stand in the face of danger—again—I feel totally and unequivocally safe.