Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
TWIGGY
I wake up to the sound of hooves.
For a minute I don’t know where I am. The ceiling is too high, the light too soft, the sheets too nice. My body does that adrenaline jolt thing, ready to fling me out of bed, and then my brain catches up.
Emery’s estate. Cotton’s office-slash-guest room. Bran down the hall, stationed in the den like a very large, very stubborn watchdog. Henry somewhere out there thinking he’s the wolf.
The clock on the dresser says 6:17.
Outside, something snorts, and hooves begin a steady clop clop in the frozen dirt. One of the horses, in the field next to the house. That’s what woke me.
I flop back against the pillow and stare at the ceiling.
I don’t remember falling asleep. Last night is a blur of firelight, cheesy movie dialogue, Bran’s hand warm over mine, the word anytime in his voice like it cost him something to admit.
I should be more freaked out by that than I am.
“Okay,” I tell the ceiling. “We’re not gonna think about that. We’re thinking about…coffee.”
The promise of caffeine gets me upright.
I shove my hair into a messy knot, pull on the hoodie from yesterday, and pad out into the hallway in my socks. The house is quiet in the way big houses are—little sounds wrapped in a lot of space. Pipes ticking. Someone moving in another wing.
The den door is open.
A glance inside shows Bran is exactly where he said he’d be.
He’s in the armchair nearest the patio doors, one boot on the floor, the other braced on the ottoman like he sat down intending to watch something on television and fell asleep halfway through the decision.
A blanket is partially draped over his legs, and his head is tipped back against the high back of the chair.
The normally firm line of his mouth is relaxed for once, the scruff on his jaw darker in the early morning light.
His big hands splay loose on the armrests, leaving the broad expanse of his chest open.
I bite my lip. What would he do if I just…crawled into his lap and curled up against him? Laid my head on that chest and closed my eyes…went back to sleep?
The urge to do so is unbearable.
He doesn’t look younger asleep, the way some people do. If anything, he looks more tired. The lines at the corners of his eyes are deeper, the crease between his brows still faintly there even in rest.
I stand in the doorway and watch him for longer than is strictly polite.
It hits me all at once, in the quiet—I could stand here and watch him for hours without growing tired.
“I am definitely getting attached to the guard dog,” I whisper.
His eyes open.
I jump.
“Motherfuck,” I say automatically. “You scared me.”
He doesn’t move right away. Just blinks at me, completely awake way too fast for someone who was definitely asleep thirty seconds ago.
“G'damn, you have a potty mouth,” he says, voice roughened.
“Did you get any sleep at all, crunched up in that chair like that?” I ask, ignoring his statement.
“Some,” he says.
“That’s not an answer,” I say.
He huffs. “Enough.”
I roll my eyes and lean on the doorframe. “You know, you’re allowed to be human in this time zone. It’s not a crime to do more than blink.”
He shifts in the chair and then stands, turning to fold the blanket and revealing…everything. I suck in a breath. His T-shirt delineates every dip and plane of his muscled torso and back, and his powerful thighs and ass are outlined by a pair of sweatpants instead of jeans.
Gray sweatpants, and sweet saint Mary he looks good in them. I bite my fist.
“You okay?” he asks, ignoring my commentary about his blinking habits.
“No! All good.”
He narrows his eyes, lifting his arms in a stretch. The T-shirt lifts along with them. “You sure? No weird messages? Nightmares?”
“Nope. I shut Nightjar down last night and went straight to bed,” I say. “Phone’s on do-not-disturb except for you guys. No nightmares. Just hooves.”
His brow furrows. “Hooves?”
“The horses,” I say. “One of them woke me up. That’s why I’m invading your perimeter.”
He rubs a hand over his face, scrubbing sleep from his jaw. “Invade the kitchen next,” he says. “You need to eat something before your brain gets back on the internet.”
“You’re very bossy in the morning,” I tell him.
“I’m the same as I was last night,” he says.
There’s a tiny beat there. A shared flicker of memory. His hand on mine. My fingers on his arm.
I look away first.
“Savvi’s probably already up,” I say. “If I time this right, I can get coffee before Saoirse wakes up and demands I make a blanket fort.”
He actually smiles at that. Just a little. It’s unfair, how much it changes his whole face.
“I’ll walk you down,” he says.
“You don’t have to walk me to the kitchen,” I protest, backing away a step. “This isn’t a horror movie. The fridge isn’t going to leap out and attack me.”
“Kitchen has exterior doors,” he says, standing. He’s back in full giant mode now, awake and solid. “Windows. Sightlines. You want coffee? I escort you past the glass. Non-negotiable.”
“You’re so fucking paranoid,” I say.
“And yet you keep following me,” he says.
I hate that he has a point.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But if Savvi yells at you for being underfoot, I’m not helping.”
Savvi does not yell at him. Savvi hands him a mug of coffee before I even get one, which I find personally offensive.
“I see where I stand in your affections,” I tell her.
“You stand somewhere between Miss Cotton and the horses,” she says. “Mr. Kelly is company. Company gets coffee first. You get seconds.”
“I’m telling Brodie you said that,” I say.
She snorts. “You tell Mr. Gallagher whatever you like. He knows how it is.”
The kitchen smells like heaven—coffee and cinnamon and something yeasty and warm. Outside the back windows, the pasture is pale with frost, the horses ghost shapes against the line of trees.
Saoirse’s plastic bowl from last night is still on the table, spoon abandoned in a puddle of melted marshmallow. There are little glitter stickers ground into the rug by the back door.
Cotton’s family farm is an undeniable estate—a level above anything I’d ever imagined when I thought of wealth, and my own family had always been very well-to-do—but I’ve always loved and been impressed that it’s first and foremost a home.
It’s a house that’s lived in, a place where shoes are toed off by the door and little messes abound.
Bran stands at the window, mug in hand, watching the horses. The early light catches in his hair, making it look more brown than black.
“Do you ride?” I ask him, stealing a piece of toast off the plate Savvi just put down.
He doesn’t turn from the glass. “I’ve ridden a few times. I spent some time on one of the boss’s farms in Ireland. He had horses.”
One of the horses breaks into a lazy trot along the fence line, breath puffing in clouds.
“That’s Jasper,” I say. “The gray. He likes peppermint and hates umbrellas.”
He glances at me. “How do you know that?”
“I exist,” I say. “And I’ve been here before.”
His gaze flicks back to the horse, then to me again. “You want to go out?”
“Yes,” I say, immediately.
He gives me a look.
“In a controlled, measured, accompanied way,” I add.
He sighs, like he regrets every life choice that led to this moment.
“After breakfast,” he says. “And we clear it with Brodie.”
“Fine,” I say. “You, Savvi, and Brodie are all conspiring against me. I see how it is.”
“Someone has to,” Savvi mutters.
She hands me my own mug of coffee—finally—and kisses my forehead on her way past, like she’s been doing it my whole life. She has.
“You eat,” she says. “Then you can go annoy the horses and Mr. Kelly at the same time.”
“Being annoying is my love language,” I say.
Bran doesn’t argue with that, but I see the corner of his mouth twitch.
The air outside bites.
The sky is that particular winter pale, almost colorless. Frost sparkles on the grass and the fence rails, glittering like someone went wild with a bedazzler. I shove my hands into my hoodie pocket as we cross the yard, breath puffing in little clouds.
Bran walks half a step behind me, matching my pace easily. He’s scanned the tree line three times since we left the porch.
“You know, if Henry is lurking in the bushes out there, he’s freezing his ass off,” I say. “Silver linings.”
“Don’t joke about him like he’s incompetent,” Bran says quietly. “That’s how people get careless.”
“I’m not careless,” I say. “I’m coping.”
“Try coping with less self-endangerment,” he says.
We reach the barn doors. They’re big, red, and familiar. I pull one open. Warmth and the smells of hay, leather, and horse wrap around me like an old blanket.
“Hey, boys,” I call softly.
Jasper, back in his stall, lifts his head over the nearest door, ears pricked. The other horse—Rook, the bay—snorts and stamps a hoof.
Bran hangs back just inside the barn, giving the space a quick once-over. It’s empty at the moment. Twice a day a boy from town comes in to muck stalls and feed the animals.
I slip into Jasper’s stall, moving slow so he knows I’m there. He noses at my hoodie pocket immediately.
“No treats,” I tell him. “I didn’t come prepared.”
He huffs, offended, and nuzzles my shoulder anyway.
My muscles, which have been at useless, hummingbird-level tension since last night, finally start to unclench.
Horses don’t care about anonymous handles or anonymous men at windows. They care about hay and weather and whether their people show up when they say they will.
I rest my cheek briefly against Jasper’s neck, breathing in the horse smell. It’s earthy and warm and completely unconnected to the mess in my head.
“You’re cheating on me with livestock,” Bran says dryly.
I look back.
He’s closer than he was, leaning one shoulder against the stall door, arms folded. His eyes are softer than his voice.
“Jealous?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, without missing a beat.
It hits me harder than it should.