Chapter 6
CHLOE
The crying woke me.
Not a loud sound. Not the kind that breaks through walls and demands attention.
This was quieter than that, buried and muffled, like someone trying very hard to keep it inside and failing.
It came through the thin wall between my bedroom and the spare room in fragments, low groans and ragged breaths and something that sounded like a name, repeated over and over until the syllables blurred into a single wounded sound.
I pushed the covers back and stood, my bare feet finding the cold floor. I didn’t think about whether this was a good idea. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons of walking into a room where a man twice my size was trapped in a nightmare. I just went.
The spare room door was still open the crack I’d left it. I pushed it wider and the light from the hallway fell across the bed in a thin stripe.
Sawyer was on his side, curled in on himself the same way he’d been on the sidewalk that first night.
His knees were drawn up, his hands fisted in the sheets, and his whole body was shaking.
Not a small tremor. A deep, full-body shudder that made the bed frame creak.
His face was pressed into the pillow and his breathing was wrong, too fast, too shallow, the panicked rhythm of a man who was somewhere else entirely.
“No,” he said into the pillow, and the word was cracked and raw. “No, no, no. Jimmy. Jimmy, stay with me. Stay with me, please.”
My heart broke clean in half.
I crossed the room in three steps and sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress dipped under my weight and he flinched, hard, his whole body jerking away from the contact.
But I didn’t pull back. I reached for him, sliding my arms around his shoulders, pulling him toward me the way I’d pull a child who’d woken from a bad dream.
His body was rigid, locked tight, every muscle tensed against whatever was happening behind his closed eyes.
“Sawyer,” I said softly, close to his ear. “Sawyer, wake up. You’re safe. You’re here. You’re with me.”
He made a sound that wasn’t quite a word. A gasp, broken and desperate, and his hands came up and grabbed my arms, gripping so hard I knew there would be bruises. I didn’t care.
“It’s okay,” I said, tightening my hold on him. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re not there. You’re in Pinewood Ridge, in my apartment, and you’re safe. Come back to me.”
His breathing started to slow. Not all at once, but gradually, like a storm spending itself out.
The shaking eased from violent to trembling to a fine, persistent vibration that ran through him like a current he couldn’t shut off.
His grip on my arms loosened by degrees, and I felt the moment awareness returned, the sudden tension in his shoulders, the sharp intake of breath that said he knew where he was and who was holding him.
He pulled back.
Not gently. It was an abrupt, wrenching withdrawal, his body recoiling from mine like my touch had burned him.
He sat up against the headboard, his chest heaving, his eyes wide and unfocused in the dim light.
His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and his shirt was soaked through, clinging to his chest and shoulders.
“I’m fine,” he said, and his voice was raw enough to bleed.
“You’re not fine.”
“Go back to your room, Chloe.”
“No.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and I could see the war happening behind his eyes.
The shame, thick and choking, fighting against something else, something that looked like relief, like the desperate, terrified gratitude of a man who had been drowning and found someone’s hand in the dark.
I reached for him again. He tensed, his jaw locking, every line of his body saying don’t. But I didn’t grab him or pull him or force anything. I just placed my hand on his forearm, light enough that he could shake it off if he needed to.
He didn’t shake it off.
“It is not required for you to share what you don’t want to share,” I said quietly. “I’m not going to ask you about the nightmare. I’m not going to ask you about Jimmy. You don’t owe me that. But at least let someone be here for you, Sawyer. That’s all. Just let me be here.”
His jaw worked. I could see the muscle jumping beneath the stubble, the effort it took to keep everything locked down. His eyes were shining, wet and furious about it, and he blinked hard and looked away.
I moved closer. Slowly, carefully, giving him every chance to stop me.
I slid my arm around his shoulders and pulled him against me, his head coming to rest against my collarbone, his face pressed into the curve of my neck.
He was stiff at first, unyielding, his body fighting the comfort the way a wounded animal fights the hand trying to help.
But I held on. I held on the way I held my kindergartners when they fell on the playground, steady and warm and unrelenting, and after a long moment, the rigidity broke.
He sagged against me. His arms came up around my waist, pulling me closer, and his shoulders shook with something that wasn’t quite crying and wasn’t quite breathing but was somewhere in the broken space between.
I held him and said nothing. I stroked his hair, damp and thick under my fingers, and let the silence do what words couldn’t.
When his breathing had finally steadied, when the trembling had stopped and his arms around me had loosened from desperate to holding, I started talking. Not about him. About me.
“You know, my parents are the best people I’ve ever known,” I said, my voice low and easy, the voice I used for story time when the lights were dim and the kids were tired.
“They raised me in this little yellow house outside of Denver. My dad is a history teacher. My mom makes the best cinnamon rolls you’ve ever tasted in your life, and she sings in the car so loud that strangers at red lights stare.
They love me. I know that with every cell in my body. They would do anything for me.”
I paused. His breathing was slow against my neck, warm and steady.
“But I needed to go,” I continued. “I needed to do this on my own. Not because anything was wrong, but because I wanted to know who I was without the safety net. I wanted to experience things, the hard things, the scary things, the standing-in-your-kitchen-at-midnight-eating-cold-pasta-because-you’re-too-tired-to-cook things. I wanted to earn my own life.”
I felt him shift against me, settling deeper, his ear pressed to my chest like he was listening to my heartbeat.
“My mom cried when I moved to Pinewood Ridge. My dad drove the moving truck and didn’t say much, which is how I knew he was trying not to cry too.
I miss them sometimes so much it feels like a physical ache, like someone reached into my chest and squeezed.
But I’m proud of myself. I’m proud that I figured out how to fix a leaking faucet at two in the morning by watching a YouTube video.
I’m proud that I can pay my own rent, even if it means eating ramen for the last week of every month. I’m proud that I’m here.”
The room was quiet. The dripping from the gutters had stopped. Somewhere outside, a night bird called, thin and distant.
“Anyway,” I said, pressing my cheek against the top of his head. “That’s my story. Nothing dramatic. No tragedy. Just a girl who wanted to build something on her own and did.” I took a breath. “Let’s sleep.”
I shifted, pulling him down with me so we were lying on the narrow bed, his head still against my chest, my arms still around him. The bed was too small for this, really, his legs hung over the edge and my shoulder was pressed against the wall, but it worked. Somehow, it worked.
“Chloe.” His voice was rough with sleep and everything that had come before it. “Go to your room.”
“I am way too lazy to move.” I yawned for emphasis, which wasn’t entirely manufactured. “Don’t worry. I won’t touch anything. Just sleep.”
He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I thought he might have actually fallen asleep. Then I felt his arm tighten around my waist, pulling me closer by a fraction, and his breath evened out into the deep, slow rhythm of someone who had finally, reluctantly, let go.
I fell asleep with his heartbeat under my palm.
When I woke, the room was filled with pale morning light. The yellow curtains turned it golden, and tiny dust motes drifted through the air like miniature stars. I was warm, almost too warm, wrapped in the solid heat of a man who was very much awake.
Sawyer was looking at me.
Not the guarded, sideways glances I’d grown used to.
This was direct, unfiltered, his green eyes tracing my face with the quiet concentration of someone memorizing something they expected to lose.
His head was on the pillow next to mine, close enough that I could count the darker flecks in his irises, and he wasn’t trying to hide that he’d been watching me.
“Did you sleep?” I asked, my voice still husky with morning.
“I did.”
The answer was simple, but the way he said it, like it was remarkable, like sleeping through the night was something that didn’t happen often, made my chest ache.
“Do I look good in the morning?” I asked, because if I didn’t break the intensity with something light, I was going to do something embarrassing, like cry, or tell him I was falling for him, which was the same thing.
He didn’t answer. His eyes stayed on mine, steady and unreadable, and the silence stretched between us like a held note.
I sat up, swinging my legs off the bed and running my fingers through the catastrophe that was my sleep hair. “Fine. Don’t answer. I’ll cook breakfast.”
I stood and padded toward the door, the cold floor biting at my bare feet. I was two steps into the hallway when his voice followed me.
“Yeah. You are beautiful.”
I stopped.
My hand found the doorframe and held on, because my knees had just done something unreliable. The words hung in the air behind me, low and rough and reluctant, like they’d been pulled out of him against his will, like he’d tried to keep them in and they’d escaped anyway.
I didn’t turn around. If I turned around, he’d see my face, and my face would tell him everything, and I wasn’t ready for him to know everything yet.
“Pancakes or eggs?” I asked, and my voice only shook a little.
“Pancakes.”
I walked to the kitchen and gripped the edge of the counter and breathed.
Yeah. You are beautiful.
I made the best pancakes of my entire life.