Chapter 30
SAWYER
There’s so much snow.
I can’t see the road. Just white, endless and blinding, swallowing the horizon. It’s quiet—too quiet. The trees are lined with icicles, glittering like Christmas lights, but colder somehow. Meaner. And the road—fuck, the road is slick with it. Ice blacker than the sky.
She should’ve never gone alone.
I should’ve driven. Or insisted we ride together. I should’ve done something. But I didn’t, and now—
The sound hits before the panic does.
Metal. Bone. Rubber. The screech of brakes and then the crunch—this awful, twisting, shattering sound like the world falling apart at the seams. Like someone taking a crowbar to my chest and ripping it open.
“Julia!” I scream, but it’s too late.
The snow’s red now. I don’t know how that happens, but it is.
And then I’m shaking. No—someone’s shaking me.
“Sawyer.”
I know that voice. Even half-buried in a nightmare—where the sky is black and starless and the snow falls like shattered glass, where the trees stand frozen and brittle—I know it.
That voice doesn’t demand anything from me.
It waits for me, as if it’s always known I’ll come when I’m ready.
And I do. Every time. Because some part of me has always leaned toward that voice, whether I meant to or not—a pull etched into my being, the way flowers bend toward the sun without ever needing to be taught.
It’s soft and certain and real in a way almost nothing else is. Like sunlight breaking through after weeks of rain and you realize you’d forgotten how warmth felt on your skin. Like a hand finding mine in the dark, threading our fingers together and not letting go.
That voice is my true north. My way back home.
Wren.
“Hey.” She’s close now. Closer. “Sawyer. You’re safe. Wake up.”
My eyes blink open. The ceiling is pale and unfamiliar. My forehead is covered in a film of sweat. My chest is tight, my ribs aching like I’ve been fighting something off in my sleep.
She’s leaning over me now, worry etched between her brows. Her blue eyes flick over my face, cataloging every breath, every tremor. The lamplight makes them look almost silver.
Her hair is a mess—damp and loose—clinging to her neck in some places, falling around her face in others.
It’s the color of late July—clementines ripening on a windowsill and bonfire embers and dried marigolds and every warm thing I’ve ever missed.
It’s a sunset pressed into something soft.
It brushes my chest where she’s leaned in, and for a second, I forget what it feels like to be afraid.
I forget what it feels like to brace for impact. I only feel her.
She’s wearing one of my old T-shirts. The gray one from the Hart Clinic with a faded logo and a frayed collar. She’s swimming in it, and somehow, even like this—with messy hair and sleepy eyes—she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
My heart’s still racing, but slower now. I swallow and shift against the mattress. Hank’s snoring at the end of the bed, dead to the world.
“What time is it?” My voice is scratchy, like it got dragged through gravel on its way out.
She reaches over and grabs her phone off the nightstand. “Three fourteen.”
I nod, scrubbing a hand over my face.
“Bad dream?” she asks, quieter this time.
“Yeah.” I glance up at her again. She hasn’t moved. Still right there, steady and soft and mine. Even if just for tonight. “Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s okay.” She brushes my hair back from my forehead, her fingers lingering like she’s trying to smooth away whatever’s still stuck there—whatever the nightmare hasn’t let go of yet.
I just look at her.
At the curve of her mouth, still a little swollen. There’s a hint of pink to her cheeks, and her lips part just slightly as her gaze drops to my bare chest, then back up again.
“Tell me something good,” she says, her eyes meeting mine.
I let out a shaky breath. It’s not quite a laugh, but it’s close. “That’s my line.”
“I know. But I wanna hear it from you.”
Her knees are tucked under her, her arms loose at her sides, the hem of my shirt falling somewhere around mid-thigh. She’s just… here . In my bed. In my shirt. In my life.
Something good.
“You’re here,” I say, reaching for the ends of her hair, curling a few strands around my finger.
Her face softens.
“You’re here, and it’s three in the morning, and I’m not okay—but I’m better with you next to me. So that makes you my good thing, Wren.”
She doesn’t say anything at first. Her eyes are wide and searching, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth like she’s weighing the risk of whatever she’s about to do next.
And then she leans forward, just slightly, and her fingers find my jaw. Gentle. Certain. Her thumb brushes the edge of my cheekbone, and then her mouth is on mine.
It’s soft, but sure. Her lips are warm and plush and still taste a little like toothpaste, and something in me eases that I didn’t even realize was wound tight.
She pulls back, just enough to whisper, “You’re my good thing, too.”
And then she kisses me again—just once, quick and quiet—and starts crawling across the bed like she means to leave me here with that.
Absolutely not.
I reach out and hook an arm around her waist before she can get more than a few inches away, pulling her back to me.
She lets out a quiet yelp of surprise, which sends Hank lurching upright at the foot of the bed with a startled snort before flopping back down. I tug her into my chest. “Stay with me. Right here.”
She turns slightly to look at me. “Are you sure?”
I nod, already tugging her closer. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
She settles beside me, her back pressed to my chest, her hair spilling across the pillow and into my face.
It smells like the conditioner we used earlier and I bury my nose in it for a second before pressing a kiss to the nape of her neck.
She lets out a content hum as her hips shift back, barely a graze against me—but it’s enough to make my body respond before my brain can.
I suck in a breath, my hand tightening at her waist.
The sex earlier—fuck. It had ruined me completely. I can’t remember the last time I had sex that good. Hell, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that good in my life.
And it wasn’t just about how she felt. It was the fact that she let me see her.
Let me have her. And I know Wren—she doesn’t hand herself over like that.
Not unless she means it. She’s guarded for a reason, and I’ve never asked why, never pushed.
But she still gave me something I don’t think she gives easily to just anyone.
That trust? It means everything to me. And I’m not about to fuck it up.
She shifts beside me, her voice barely above a whisper. “We don’t have to remember any of this after tonight if you don’t want to.”
My fingers pause where they’ve been trailing the curve of her waist. “What do you mean?”
She looks up at me then. “I just mean…tonight was a lot. And I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to just forget it, you know? Go back to how things were.”
I stare at her. I don’t say anything at first because I can’t. Her words hit me in the chest, sharp and all wrong. Like she’s already halfway out the door, even while lying in my arms.
I brush a strand of hair off her cheek. “Why would you think I’d want that?”
She swallows nervously. “Because this is all fake, remember?” She forces out a breath. “And people usually don’t want more than that, anyway.”
She looks so small all of a sudden, in my shirt, her fingers twitching where they rest on my chest like they don’t know if they’re still allowed to be there.
“We had champagne,” she adds. “Kind of a lot of it. So maybe this was just…we got caught up in it. You know?”
I shake my head immediately. “I wasn’t drunk.”
She blinks up at me. “You weren’t?”
I smirk, hand drifting into her hair again, twisting a soft strand around my finger. “Not even a little. Were you?”
Quiet as ever, she whispers, “Not even a little.”
“Trust me,” I tell her. “The last thing I want is for things to go back to the way they were before you, Wren.”
She’s looking at me like she’s trying to lock this in. Like she’s filing it away in case she needs to pull it out later and remind herself it happened—that I actually said it. That I meant it.
And it breaks my heart in this slow, suffocating way because someone—maybe a few people—taught her not to trust this. They taught her to be suspicious of joy. To hold love at arm’s length. They made her think it always ends. That even when someone stays the night, they still leave in the morning.
I hate that.
I hate that she flinches when something feels safe. That she keeps waiting for the part where it all goes wrong.
She shouldn’t have to question this. She shouldn’t have to wonder if she’s safe with me.
And I swear to God, I’ll spend as long as it takes proving she is.
“You’re just saying that because it’s three in the morning,” she murmurs, her eyes not quite meeting mine. “You’re delirious. You’ll come to your senses once you’ve had some decent sleep.”
She’s trying to play it off. Turn it into a joke. Something easy to brush aside. But I see it anyway—the way her fingers pull at the edge of the sheet, like she’s already preparing for me to say something that hurts.
I shift closer, slow and careful, leaning over her just enough to keep her in my reach. The strands catch on my fingers and I don’t stop touching her because I think maybe that’s the only thing keeping her here with me. She swallows, and my gaze tracks the movement before it slips back to her face.
“You think this is me being delirious?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
Her eyes flick to mine, cautious. “You’ll feel differently in the morning. Most people do.”
I shake my head. “I won’t.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I see the way her chest rises and falls like she’s trying to fill it with air that’s suddenly harder to find.