Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
TWIGGY
I dream in fragments.
Shiloh’s wrist, small and bruised, caught in Jason Adams’ hand as he drags her through the trees. Her bare feet slip on wet leaves, leaving smeared crescents behind them.
The Falls roar, louder than they should, drowning out her voice when she tries to scream.
Henry’s eyes in the cabin window. Henry’s voice in my headphones. “Smart little bird,” he croons. “Look what you did.”
The chat screen bleeds into the rocks below the waterfall—lines of text etched into Mia Hart’s skin.
Her hair fans around her face, ice-laced, river water catching on her lashes like glitter.
When I reach for her, she blinks, and it’s Miguel’s face staring up at me instead, throat cut, hay stuck in the dried blood along the edge of the wound.
Hoofbeats pound somewhere behind me. I turn, but it’s not horses—it’s Bran. His boots slam against stone like hooves. His hands are red. His mouth is red. “It’s too late, Tinkerbell,” he says, but I can’t tell if he means for them or for me.
I look down and realize my fingers are on a keyboard, typing his name over and over—HENRY THURSTON HENRY THURSTON HENRY—until the letters blur and Henry’s face peers up out of the pixels, smiling, smiling, smiling.
“You didn’t stop me,” he says. “You just picked the next scene. The next girl.”
I try to shout no, but water fills my mouth. Not river water—blood. It tastes like pennies and panic. I choke, clawing at the air—
“Tallulah. Twig. Hey. Tally. Wake up.”
The voice cuts through the dream like a new sound file layered over a corrupt track. Hands on my shoulders, big and hot and real, shaking me once, twice.
“Come on, Tally girl. Open your eyes for me.”
I jerk awake with a gasp, the sound ripping out of my throat like it’s been trapped there for days. For a second, everything is wrong—the dark, the unfamiliar ceiling, the way the air feels thinner without my ancient heater wheezing in the corner.
Then the details snap into place.
Cabin. Tennessee. Bran.
The mattress dips beside me under his weight. One of his hands is still on my shoulder, solid and steady; the other is braced on the far side of my body, caging me without pinning.
“Hey,” he says, low and rough and too gentle for a man with that voice. “You with me?”
My heart is sprinting. Sweat slicks the back of my neck, my T-shirt clinging to my chest. I drag a shaky hand over my face and blink at him.
The bedside lamp is on, casting everything in a soft gold. His hair is tousled, like he raked his fingers through it on his way in. There’s a faint pillow crease on his cheek.
“I—” My voice cracks. I clear my throat. “Sorry. Did I…was I loud?”
His mouth tightens. “You were screaming.”
Oh. Cool. Love that for me.
“Great,” I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut again. “Fantastic. Exactly the impression I was going for. ‘Hi, welcome to my trauma concert.’”
“Tally.” His thumb moves, just a fraction, brushing my collarbone through the cotton. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” I ask, even though I know.
“Turn it into a joke before you even look at it.”
I open my eyes and stare at him. His irises are darker in this light, edged in shadow.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
One eyebrow goes up. “That why you were begging me not to let him take you?”
My stomach lurches. “I said that?”
“Yeah.” His jaw ticks. “You also told him you were sorry.”
Heat floods my face, part mortification, part anger at myself. Of course I did. Of course my subconscious would apologize to my own personal serial killer for inconveniencing him.
“Cool,” I say, voice wobbling. “What the hell.”
“Tally.” His tone gentles again. “Look at me.”
I do. I wish I hadn’t.
Because what’s there is worse than pity and better than indifference—something careful and intent, something that feels too much like the way he watches my hands when I’m working, like whatever’s happening inside my head is worth mapping.
“Nightmares make sense,” he says. “You’ve had a long couple of years.”
“Understatement of the century,” I mumble.
“What did you see?” he asks. “If you can stand to tell me.”
Talking is better than letting the images loop in my skull, so I bite down hard on my embarrassment and give him the highlights.
“Shiloh,” I say. “The mountain. Henry at my window. Mia on the rocks. Miguel in the barn. It was all…mashed together. Like someone opened every file in a folder and just dragged and dropped them into the same document.”
His hand on my shoulder loosens, thumb rubbing a slow, absent line along the curve of bone. “Sounds about right,” he says quietly. “Your brain trying to sort data it doesn’t have categories for yet.”
“Yeah, well, my brain needs to get better hobbies,” I say. “Like macramé. Or tax law.”
“Hey.” His hand leaves my shoulder. For one awful second I think he’s going to pull away completely, but instead he shifts further onto the bed, settling his weight beside me, back against the headboard. “Come here.”
I blink. “What?”
“You’re soaked,” he says. “You’re shaking. And I’m not going back out to that couch to listen to you do this again in twenty minutes. Come here, Tallulah.”
There are a dozen reasons I should say no. Kael. Brodie. Basic common sense. The fact that every time we’ve been in physical range of each other lately, something’s caught fire.
Instead, my body moves before my brain votes.
I roll onto my side and let him haul me up against him, my cheek landing on the solid wall of his chest. His arm comes around my back, hand spreading between my shoulder blades, fingers moving in slow, grounding strokes.
His heartbeat thuds against my ear, heavy and steady.
I exhale for what feels like the first time all night.
We stay like that for a while. Long enough for the edges of the nightmare to blur, for the worst of the adrenaline to drain out of my limbs. My muscles unclench one by one, like someone’s flipping off switches.
“Better?” he murmurs into my hair.
“Define ‘better,’” I say. My voice is muffled. “I still know all the details. I just can’t see them as clearly.”
“That’s improvement,” he says. “I’ll take it.”
His scent wraps around me—soap and skin and something faintly smoky, like he spent too many years in bars and backrooms with bad ventilation. My fingers find the hem of his T-shirt, curl there without permission.
“You don’t have to do this,” I mumble. “Play human weighted blanket. It’s not in the job description.”
“Maybe I negotiated a new clause,” he says.
I huff out a half laugh. “Highly doubt Kael would sign off on that.”
He goes quiet for a beat. “You dreaming about apologizing to Henry?” he says. “That’s not something I’m leaving you alone with if I can help it.”
The knot in my chest tightens, then loosens in a sharp, painful rush. I turn my face into his shirt so he doesn’t see whatever expression I’m making.
“Hey,” he says again, softer. His hand slides up into my hair, fingers combing through the tangled mess at the nape of my neck. The sensation sends a shiver straight down my spine, pleasure braided with comfort.
“You’re okay,” he says. “I’ve got you. He’s not here.”
“He was,” I whisper, before I can swallow it. “At the farm. He walked where Saoirse plays. He opened the barn door. He—”
“I know,” Bran says. His voice is tight. “And he’s going to pay for that. For Miguel. For all of it. But not tonight. Tonight he’s not here. You are. With me.”
The way he says with me does something to the air. Makes it thicker. Makes every inch of contact between us feel like a live wire.
My fingers flex against his side, sliding under the hem of his shirt to bare skin. Heat jumps under my palm, muscles tightening.
He draws in a breath.
I freeze. “Sorry. Sorry. That was—”
“It’s okay,” he says, but his voice has changed. Rougher. Darker. “You can touch me, Tally. I’m not going to break.”
“Not the one I’m worried about,” I mutter.
Silence stretches, full of unsaid things. His hand is still in my hair, thumb stroking the sensitive skin at my nape. Each pass sends little sparks racing down into my chest, lower.
“Do you ever…” The words come out before I can snatch them back. I stare at the buttons on his shirt like they’re going to save me. “Do you ever feel like you’re only alive because you’re useful?”
He’s quiet for a second. Two. Three.
“All the time,” he says finally.
I blink, surprised into meeting his eyes.
He’s looking down at me, expression unguarded in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen before.
“Kael pulled me out of a very specific kind of fire,” he says.
“He keeps me around because I’m good at certain things.
The day I stop being good at them…” He lifts one shoulder.
“I don’t spend a lot of time imagining that day. So, yeah. I get it.”
The admission punches straight through the armor I keep around my softer parts.
“I hate that,” I say quietly. “For you. For me. That we both understand that equation too well.”
His fingers flex in my hair. “You’re more than what you do,” he says. “More than your brain. More than the cases you crack.”
“You’re more than your body count,” I shoot back. “You know that, right?”
His jaw tightens. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
“I am,” I say. “And I’m usually right.”
That earns me the ghost of a smile. “Arrogant.”
“Accurate,” I say.
We’re too close. I can feel his breath on my forehead, each exhale a stroke of warmth. The nightmare haze has burned off, replaced by something sharper, hungrier.
I don’t know who moves first.
One second I’m pressed against his chest, safe and wrapped and almost calm. The next, I’m tilting my head back, and his mouth is there, a breath away.
“Tally,” he says, warning and plea threaded together. It hits me that he calls me by my full name maybe to keep me at arm’s length.
“You already broke the no-touch rule,” I whisper. “Might as well commit the crime.”
Something snaps in his eyes.
He closes the distance.