Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Tessa
Ididn’t remember the drive. My brain folded in on itself the second Wyatt’s hands closed around me outside that cabin, and the world finally stopped tilting. Everything after that blurred like someone dragged water across wet ink.
But I remembered Wyatt’s hand on my knee. Heavy. Warm. Steady. An anchor in a world that wouldn’t stop spinning.
Every bump in the road vibrated through me.
Every breath he took seemed to move straight through my skin.
I didn’t cling to him, but some part of me leaned toward that heat like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
My body reacted before my head caught up, curling toward the place his hand rested.
Holt’s voice crackled through the radio in low, broken pieces. He sounded controlled, but too controlled. Shaken under the surface. Like one wrong syllable would shatter something he didn’t have the strength to pick up tonight.
Headlights carved tunnels through the dark prairie. They flicked across the windows and caught my reflection again and again. My eyes didn’t look like mine. They were too wide, too bright, rimmed with the kind of fear that didn’t fade just because the danger moved thirty miles behind you.
My breath kept sticking in my throat.
My chest felt hollow and tight at the same time.
The truck slowed. I felt the shift before I heard it. Gravel crunched beneath the tires. Holt said something through the radio. Wyatt answered, but the words blurred before my brain could make sense of them.
A door opened.
Cold air rushed in.
“Easy,” Wyatt said. His voice was rough, low, scraped raw at the edges. “Hey. Look at me.”
It took a moment before I realized he was talking to me.
My hands were shaking. I didn’t even notice until I saw the tremors catching in the passing glow of the porch light. My teeth began to chatter. Not loud. Not frantic. Just enough that the bones in my jaw clicked.
Wyatt saw it instantly. His whole body shifted toward me.
“Hey,” he murmured, voice dropping into something gentle. “You’re safe. You hear me.”
I nodded because speaking felt impossible.
My tongue was thick. My throat refused to open.
He reached in, helping me down from the truck like I was made of blown glass about to shatter. One hand braced at my elbow. One warm palm steady at the curve of my back. His touch made my knees react, not with fear, but with something like collapsing relief.
I hated that I needed him.
I held on anyway.
The house rose ahead of us with every step. Too bright. Too open. Too safe. My home. Mine. Yet the sight of it made my throat clench in a way I didn’t understand.
The porch light spilled in a golden pool across the boards.
And then Dani burst out of the doorway.
She didn’t shout my name. She didn’t waste time asking questions. She ran straight at me with a sound caught between a sob and an exhale.
She crashed into me with enough force to rock me back.
I let myself fold into her. My fists clutched at her shirt like it was a rope, and I was sliding off a cliff. She smelled like lavender soap and fear and the stale coffee she always forgot in the microwave.
“You’re here,” she kept whispering. Her breath shook against my ear. “You’re here, you’re here, you’re here.”
“I’m here,” I whispered back. The words cracked. They scraped out of my chest like something breaking loose.
Wyatt stepped back without being asked. I felt it more than saw it, the way his body withdrew to give us space. It hit me somewhere deep that he knew when to move and when not to.
Dani pulled back just far enough to grab my face in her hands. Her palms were warm. Her thumbs brushed under my eyes as if she was checking for bruises.
“Did he hurt you?” she asked, voice sharp as a blade.
“No.” The word flew out fast. Too fast. “No. He didn’t.”
Her jaw clenched. Her eyes flashed. “I don’t care. I’m still going to key his face.”
A laugh tried to escape. It came out as a shuddering breath that sounded like a sob.
She kept her hand wrapped around my wrist as she pulled me inside, holding me like she thought the wind might steal me again. The house felt wrong. Familiar, but shifted. Or maybe I was the one who shifted. Maybe something inside me had been rearranged without permission.
Wyatt came after us. He closed the door softly and controlled.
The click of the latch echoed inside my ribs.
Final.
Safe.
Contained.
I sagged into the couch. I didn’t remember choosing to sit.
My body simply dropped.
Dani hovered like a small, furious hawk before disappearing into the kitchen, muttering threats about blankets and homicide and hydration.
Wyatt stood a few feet away. He didn’t fold his arms or loom or fidget. His hands slid into his jacket pockets like he didn’t trust them. Dirt streaked his jaw. Sweat dried in the collar of his shirt. There was a scrape across his knuckles, swelling, blood dried dark in the cracks of his skin.
His eyes devoured me.
Trying to decide if I was whole.
Trying to decide if he could breathe yet.
“You need anything?” He asked. His voice was rough and tired. “Anything at all.”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. The truth felt strange on my tongue. Raw and heavy.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to know right now.”
Dani reappeared with a blanket and a glass of water. Both her hands shook as she draped the blanket over my shoulders. She pressed the glass into my palms like she was handing over something sacred.
“Drink,” she ordered.
I obeyed.
The water tasted like metal and dust and safety.
She looked at Wyatt then. Really looked. Something wordless passed between them. A silent conversation layered with gratitude and warning of I swear to God if you break her, I’ll bury you in the yard.
“I’m going to make a call,” she said. “And then I’m not leaving her side.”
Wyatt nodded. “I’ll be outside.”
“No.”
The word ripped out of me and hung in the air.
Both of them froze.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
I felt my pulse in my throat, in my fingertips, everywhere.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I said. Softer. Smaller. “Not yet.”
Wyatt didn’t move. He just watched me with that look that made my chest ache. He gave me space to take it back. I didn’t.
Dani let out a long breath and nodded. “Fine. But if either of you start trauma bonding or spilling your souls or whatever, I’m throwing something at both of you.”
Wyatt’s mouth twitched. “Fair.”
She stomped down the hall, already dialing.
Silence stretched across the room.
Not awkward.
Just full.
Wyatt finally lowered himself into the chair across from me. He didn’t crowd me. He didn’t talk. He just sat there with the kind of stillness that made my lungs want to work again.
“You don’t have to talk,” he finally said.
“I know.” My fingers tightened around the blanket. “I know.”
My hands trembled. The glass shook. I didn’t bother hiding it.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said. Not accusing. Not angry. Just truth.
“I know.”
“You don’t get to do that again.”
My gaze snapped up. His eyes were raw. Not watery. Not shining. Just torn open.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered.
“I don’t care,” he said quietly. “Meaning to or not, doesn’t matter.”
Something in my chest shifted. Loosened. Tightened. I didn’t know how to hold myself upright under that kind of intensity.
“I didn’t think you’d find me.”
His jaw flexed. His breath left hard and controlled.
“I was always going to find you.”
The certainty in his voice hit me somewhere deep and trembling.
My throat burned.
“Why?”
He didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t look away.
“Because you’re mine.”
The words crashed into me. Hot. Sharp. Terrifying. Alive.
My pulse spiked so fast my vision shimmered at the edges.
I felt it in my ribs. In my stomach.
He saw the effect immediately. His voice dropped to something rougher.
“Not like ownership, or control. Not anything he ever told you it meant. Mine like I couldn’t lose you and stay standing.”
My breath wavered.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know.” He leaned forward just enough that I felt heat radiate from his body. “That’s why it’s mine to give.”
The room felt too warm.
Too alive.
Like every molecule shifted toward him.
“I keep thinking I should feel relieved. But mostly I just feel hollow.”
“That’s shock, it’ll pass.”
“And then what?”
“Then we deal with the rest.”
I huffed out something that wasn’t a laugh. “You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not easy. But it’s doable. Especially if you let people help you.”
I studied him. The man who tracked me across fields. The man whose voice pulled me out of fear like a rope. The man who held me with both arms when my legs refused to work.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “You don’t thank someone for doing what they’d do again without hesitation.”
My eyes stung. The room swayed slightly.
“I don’t know how to be normal after this.”
“You don’t have to be normal.” His voice softened again. “You just have to be here.”
The house creaked. The wind tapped against the window. Dani murmured into her phone down the hall.
I breathed in slowly, the movement shaky but real as Wyatt watched me. Not like I was fragile or broken. Like I was alive.