Chapter 12
SAWYER
I wake up gasping.
The ceiling swims above me, dark and too close, like it’s about to cave in.
The sheets are soaked. My skin’s freezing. Hank’s claws scrape against the floor a second before he jumps onto the bed, landing heavy at my side. He presses his head against my lap, breathing hard as if he’s the one who had the nightmare.
I scrub both hands over my face, dragging in a shaky breath. The phone on the nightstand glows when I reach for it.
3:14 AM.
I lean back into the pillows, closing my eyes, trying to slow it all down. The nightmare’s still fresh.
The slick sound of tires on ice. The low thud of impact. The Christmas lights on the neighbor’s porch swinging in the wind. Sirens somewhere too far away.
The wrong kind of silence settling over everything after.
I breathe through it. Count backward from ten the way Dom once taught me to do when this happens.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Name five things I can feel: Hank’s head heavy against my leg. The wet cotton of my T-shirt clinging to my back. The cold press of the sheets. The dull throb in my temples. The slight, steady rise and fall of my chest.
Four things I can hear: Hank’s slow breathing. The hum of the heater kicking on. A tree branch scratching against the window. My own heartbeat, loud and uneven in my ears.
Three things I can see: The faint outline of the dresser. The red glow of an old alarm clock. The way Hank’s eyes blink up at me, patient and worried.
I exhale, slow and rough. It doesn’t erase it. It never does. But it’s enough to keep me from drowning in it tonight.
I scratch behind Hank’s ears, feeling his whole body relax under my hand.
“Good boy,” I murmur, my voice wrecked and low.
He lets out a soft whine, nuzzling closer. I close my eyes again, my body still wired and aching. There’s no going back to sleep now.
There never is, after nights like this.
Grief isn’t loud.
People expect it to be—all shattered glass and wailing, pain that demands an audience. And sure, I’ve had those moments, too. But that’s not the truth of it.
The truth is, grief is quiet. It slips in like a draft under the door, unnoticed until the whole room is cold. It lingers in your bones, becomes a part of you, until you forget what it felt like to breathe without its weight pressing down on your ribs.
Most days, it’s just background noise. A song you don’t like but know all the words to anyway. Other days—like today—it gets its hands around your throat before you’re even fully awake.
I don’t dream about the accident, not the way you’d think. I dream about before.
The little things—the ones that didn’t seem like anything at all until they were everything.
Julia in the kitchen, barefoot on the tile, swaying her hips to some old Christmas song she loved even though she could never quite stay in key. The way she used to hum along anyway, making up half the words, laughing when I caught her.
The smell of cinnamon rolls burning in the oven because we got too busy arguing over whether the lights on the Christmas tree were lopsided. She swore they were perfect. I swore the whole tree was tilting, but she just rolled her eyes and told me to let it be.
Her sitting cross-legged on the couch, balancing a bowl of popcorn on her pregnant belly and tossing pieces at me whenever I said something she didn’t like. The way she’d crinkle her nose when she missed.
The porch light flickering when I stepped out to grab more firewood, the cold biting at my skin, the sky so clear it almost hurt to look at. The world was still so damn beautiful. We never asked ourselves if we’d run out of time.
It’s been almost five years since that Christmas Eve. Since the worst night of my life.
Since the moment everything I had been building cracked wide open, split down the middle, and collapsed in on itself.
And still, here I am. Breathing. Moving. Existing.
Some days, that feels like a betrayal. Some days, it feels like the only thing I know how to do anymore.
I turn my face into the pillow, the cotton damp and cold against my skin.
Nobody tells you how quiet it gets. How the world keeps moving, and the grief slips under your skin like a second bloodstream, and most days you don’t even realize you’re carrying it until you’re already drowning in it again.
There was a time I thought I’d never laugh again. Never want anything again. Never wake up and not wish I hadn’t.
But somehow, without meaning to, I keep waking up. I keep wanting. In small ways at first.
A dog.
A job that mattered.
And now this—this crazy, reckless thing Wren and I agreed to—it’s another crack of light against the dark.
I don’t really know why I agreed to it. Maybe because it’s temporary, and temporary things feel safer.
Maybe because it’s fake. Wren won’t be my wife.
Not really. Just like I won’t be her husband.
We’ll pass each other when we have to. Share a kitchen, a roof, the occasional word, but otherwise, keep living our own lives.
Separate, clean, uncomplicated.
And maybe that’s the reason I said yes—because even pretending is still more than what I’ve had.
Because the life I’m living now, the one where I move from day to day like I’m stuck in some endless loop, the one where I work and run and fix things and stay too busy to feel anything—it’s not much of a life at all.
Most days, it’s just survival. Going through the motions, counting the hours, waiting for the noise in my head to quiet down enough that I can call it a day and do it all over again tomorrow.
And maybe I’m tired of that.
Maybe I’m tired of coming home to a house that feels more like a museum than a place a person lives in. Tired of the way silence sits on my chest until it’s hard to breathe. Tired of pretending I don’t notice how empty everything feels.
The idea of someone else being here—someone like Wren—even if it’s just pretend, even if it’s just for a little while—it’s a comfort I didn’t realize I missed until now.
And if it has to be someone, I’m not disappointed it’s her. Not even close.
I’m not blind. Wren’s beautiful. That long red hair she never seems to bother with unless it’s falling in her face while she’s working.
Those blue eyes that look like winter—sharp, clear, endless.
The lean frame of someone who’s spent more hours in a saddle than anywhere else.
The long legs. The freckles dusting across her nose and cheeks like the universe tried to map something there just for me.
I never gave a damn about freckles before. Now I can’t look at hers without wanting to count every single one.
But it’s not just how she looks. It’s Wren herself. I don’t know her well, and I’m not pretending I do.
But what I know, I like. I like that she doesn’t waste words, that she says exactly what’s on her mind.
I like that Hank took one look at her and decided she was his person, too.
I like the way she threw herself between a terrified horse and two grown men swinging a whip, as if fear wasn’t even part of the equation.
There’s something about that—about the sort of loyalty that runs so deep you don’t stop to think it through. You just move. You just protect.
The way she shows up for the people she loves—the way she’s willing to stand here in front of me and suggest something as insane as marriage, just to keep her family whole—that’s not something you see every day.
And if I’m being honest, if I’m stripping it down to the bare bones, there’s a part of me that trusts that already.
Trusts her . More than I should. More than makes sense.
And maybe that’s why this doesn’t feel as crazy as it should.
Because if I’m going to bet on someone, someone stubborn enough, strong enough, loyal enough to burn herself out trying to save everyone else—I’d bet on her.
I scrub a hand over my face and let out a breath that rattles in my chest. The room’s still dark, the edges of the sky outside barely starting to turn that deep indigo that means morning’s coming whether I’m ready or not.
Hank lifts his head from where he’s sprawled across the bed, his tail thumping once against the mattress like he’s been waiting for me to get my shit together.
I swing my legs over the side and sit there for a second, letting the cold seep into my skin. Letting the weight of everything I just agreed to settle into the cracks I’ve been trying to patch for years.
Then I push up, grab a sweatshirt off the chair by the window, and pull it over my head.
Hank jumps down with a soft whine, already nosing around for his leash.
“Yeah, yeah,” I murmur, reaching for it. “I’m coming.”
We slip out the back door and into the cold, the cold that burns your lungs the first time you breathe it in.
The world’s still asleep. The ground’s slick from a hard frost, the stars still sharp overhead, and for a second, it feels like we’re the only ones left awake.
I like it this way. No noise. No expectations. Just the sound of my shoes hitting the pavement and Hank’s steady breathing at my side.
The world keeps moving forward, whether I’m ready or not.
And maybe, for once, I’m ready to move with it.