Chapter 29
The smoke is thick enough to sting my eyes, curling in lazy spirals toward the yellowed ceiling.
Mom is perched on the edge of the couch, a cigarette burning down between her fingers, forgotten, the ash long and trembling.
Her pupils are blown wide, her leg jittering so fast the whole coffee table shakes.
“They set me up,” she hisses, more to herself than to me.
Her voice is jagged, ragged, the kind that makes my stomach twist before I even understand what she’s saying.
“They knew exactly what they were doing. All of them. Smiling in my face, pretending they loved me, and the whole time they wanted nothing more than more power.”
Her hand flails out like she’s batting away invisible enemies, and the cigarette ash scatters across the carpet. My throat tightens, but I don’t move. I’ve learned better than that.
“You don’t know, Peyton,” she snaps suddenly, eyes locking on me with a sharpness that makes me flinch. “You don’t know what they’ve done to me. What they took from me. They ruined everything. Every-fucking-thing!”
She throws her head back, a harsh laugh scraping through her chest, and for a second, she looks less like my mother and more like some wild-eyed stranger. My fingers dig into the threadbare blanket bunched in my lap, nails biting my palms to keep me grounded.
Then her gaze narrows, sharp as broken glass, and I feel the shift like a storm changing direction.
“This is your fault,” she spits. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be stuck here. I wouldn’t be drowning in this mess. I never should’ve had you.”
The words hit harder than any slap, sinking into me like claws. My chest burns, and my vision blurs, but I don’t cry. I don’t dare. Crying only feeds the fire.
“I should’ve walked away when I had the chance,” she mutters, shaking her head, muttering now more to the shadows than me. “Should’ve left you in the hospital, let someone else deal with you.”
I bite down so hard on my lip that I taste copper, but it’s the only way to keep from begging her to stop.
Because some part of me already believes her.
And that’s the worst part.
The first thing I notice is the silence.
Not the heavy, suffocating kind I grew up with, but a softer silence, broken only by the whisper of wind rattling against the windows.
The second thing I notice is him.
Colter.
He’s stretched out beside me in the wide bed I hadn’t realized was his until he carried me here last night. Sheets tangled low around his hips, chest bare. There is a kind of stillness in him that isn’t still at all.
One arm is flung over his head, the other draped across my waist like he can’t let go even in sleep. His hand is heavy, possessive, fingers splayed across my stomach as though he’s reminding me that I’m his, even in sleep.
And God help me, it doesn’t feel like a lie.
My thighs ache when I shift, a deep, insistent throb that’s as much memory as it is soreness.
The granite counter flashes in my mind—my knees burning, his hand fisted in my hair, the way he split me open like he needed to carve himself into me.
I bite my lip, heat curling through my gut before shame can catch up.
I shouldn’t have let it happen.
I definitely shouldn’t be lying here still in his bed, watching the sun stain the wooden beams overhead with gold.
But I can’t move. Not yet.
“It’s still early,” Colter whispers, curling his large body around mine, yanking me further into his possessive embrace. “Go back to sleep.”
Sleep normally doesn’t come after a dream like that.
My chest still aches with the echo of my mother’s voice, those words seared so deep I sometimes wonder if they’re stitched into my skin. I never should have had you. Should’ve left you in the hospital. It’s a kind of poison that doesn’t leave, no matter how many years pass.
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the memory to fade, but all I see is her face. Wild, hollow, cruel. It’s a face that makes a girl believe she’s a mistake simply for existing.
And there’s him.
Colter’s heat seeps into me like a shield against the cold that the memory drags with it.
His arm tightens across my waist, pinning me closer, his breath a slow, steady rhythm against the back of my neck.
He’s all control and fire when he’s awake, but right now, he’s nothing but warmth, heavy and grounding, as if he’s daring the world to try and take me from him.
My hand moves before I can stop it, fingers brushing over the ridges of his forearm where it rests across me. He stirs, nuzzles against my hair, and murmurs, “Sleep, Peyton.” His voice is low, rough from sleep, but gentler than I’ve ever hear it.
Something in me splinters.
I’ve never belonged anywhere. Not with my mother.
Not with John. Not in the life I left behind.
But here, in this moment, in his arms, the jagged edges inside me go quiet.
My pulse slows. The ache in my chest eases.
For the first time in years, maybe ever, I don’t feel like I need to brace myself for the next blow.
I should pull away. I should get up, put distance between us before I start confusing survival with comfort. But instead, I let myself sink back against him, my body molding to the hard planes of his chest, my cheek pressed to his arm.
His fingers flex once against my stomach, like even in sleeps he knows I’ve chosen to stay.
And for a little while, I let myself believe that maybe I’m not the mistake she always said I was.
When I wake again, the room is dark. The heavy black curtains have been drawn, blacking out the light that would normally be shining through the large floor-to-ceiling windows. It takes a moment for the night to come back to me.
Shit. John is going to be pissed at me.
I’d fallen back asleep easier than I ever have after one of my nightmares. That, in itself, is unnerving. My body doesn’t obey anyone, not even me half the time. But Colter? Somehow, he can command even my dreams into silence. He says sleep, and I do. Like I don’t have a choice.
Slipping out of the covers, I pad across the floor, the wooden planks cool under my feet.
The bathroom lights flood on when I step inside, illuminating what can only be described as an architect’s wet dream.
Slate gray walls, glass-enclosed shower with twin rainfall heads, dark bronze fixtures polished to shine.
It’s masculine, clean, expensive without being gaudy, like the rest of the house.
Rustic charm hiding in quiet luxury. Not unlike Colter himself.
Steam curls up quickly once I step under the spray.
I tilt my head back, letting the water beat against my face, trying to rinse off the memory of last night.
The rough edges, the intensity, the way he made me unravel until I didn’t recognize myself.
But the water doesn’t wash it away. It only reminds me, the ache deep in my thighs proof that it wasn’t some fevered dream.
When I emerge, my skin flushed and damp, I find a sundress laid across the bench at the end of the bed.
Cream-colored cotton, soft and simple. It’s not something I ever imagine Colter picking out himself.
It fits when I slip it on, like it was chosen deliberately, waiting for me.
That knowledge makes something flutter low in my stomach I don’t want to name.
Barefoot, I make my way to the stairs. The house is quiet at first, shadows stretching long across the rustic beams, the faint smell of coffee drifting up to meet me. But as I descend, voices filter through from the kitchen. Low, steady. But it isn’t Colter’s voice I hear at first.
I pause in the hallway, the cool floor grounding me, straining to catch the words.
“…shouldn’t have brough her here,” a man says, voice sharp, controlled.
“She’s not a liability,” I hear Colter answer, and my stomach tightens at the sound of his voice. It’s calm and steady, but there is no mistaking the underlying edge to it that could cut glass.
Another voice joins, quieter but firm. “The longer she’s here, the harder it will be to keep her out of it. You know that.”
My pulse kicks up and my hands grip the banister. Keep me out of what?
I take one slow step forward, then another, until the kitchen comes into view.
Three men stand around the island. Colter’s broad shoulders are turned toward me, his posture deceptively relaxed. The other two, men I don’t recognize, look carved from the same stone. Their eyes are hard as they stare at Colter, arms folded against their flannel covered chests.
Every instinct screams for me to walk away. That I have no business listening in, but I can’t help but creep closer, barefoot and quiet, the cotton hem of the sundress brushing my thighs as I hover beyond the threshold of the kitchen.
The men don’t see me. Their attention is locked on Colter.
“She’s a risk,” the man with wind swept brown hair says again, his tone carrying the weight of authority. His hair is silver at the temples, but his eyes are sharp assessing. “You know how fast word travels. One slip and—”
Colter cuts him off with what is no doubt, a dark look. I can’t see his face from here, but I feel the air shift, tense like a storm ready to break. “I said she’s not a liability.” His voice is calm, but final, a warning wrapped in velvet.
“You’ve been keeping your distance to prevent a target from being put on her back,” the man with a military cut argues.
He’s younger and broader than the other one, his words biting with impatience.
“She doesn’t know who we are. We don’t know if we can even trust her with that information.
Look at what Sadie fucking did. That bitch nearly wrecked John. ”
My chest tightens at the sound of my mother’s name. Hearing it here, in Colter’s kitchen, makes the air too thick to breathe.
Colter’s tone drops low, lethal. “Careful how you talk in my house, Ford.”