Cover Me

chapter 15



Wade kept his hand tucked away in his parka, holding the 9 mm as the snowplow slowed in front of him. Morning sun glinted off the windshield of the rusted-out blue truck with one helluva blade across the front channeling snow into a tidal wave that rolled over the cliff’s edge.

Wind tore at his clothes, pummeling him so hard, Sunny gripped his coat to anchor herself behind him, her jagged-edged knife still in hand. He slid his other arm behind him to make sure she stayed on her feet.

She whispered from behind him. “My sister, Misty, is sitting in the passenger side.”

He should have guessed that right away, since fear of Misty leaving had driven Sunny up this frozen hell on earth in the first place. Chances of running into a stranger up here were pretty slim.

Wade squinted against the sun, peering deeper at the woman with shoulder-length dark hair, the same color as Sunny’s—without the sapphire streak. She also appeared to be a couple of years younger than Sunny, but he knew threats could come in any age range, any size package.

“And the driver?” Wade asked, tightening his hold on her against gale-force winds. “The guy with her?”

“Ryker Everett, twenty-two. I’ve told you about him before.” She leaned into his back. “He’s the one who runs a snowplow business with his father and twin brother, Flynn. Ryker’s married with a kid on the way. A laid-back, free-spirit kind of guy. He’s a big-time conspiracy theorist, but seems to be all talk, no action. But like I said…”

“You’re questioning everyone now. Not a bad idea these days.”

The brakes squealed, rocks and icy chunks spitting from behind the tires. The truck stopped a foot shy of the snowmobile.

The passenger-side door flung open. Misty leaped out, surprise stamped on her face.

“Sunny? Oh my God!” Her voice carried on the wind with a guttural sound that would have cued him in to her deafness if Sunny hadn’t already told him.

Wade felt Sunny shift behind him, saw the blade of her knife reflect the sun’s rays before she sheathed it again. She bolted around him and scrambled along the icy road toward the snowplow. Misty palmed her way along the truck’s quarter panel, staying as far from the road’s edge as possible. Meeting at the snowmobile, the sisters hugged each other, holding so tight their arms sunk into layers of winter clothing.

He kept his eyes on the other guy just past them. Ryker Everett, Sunny had called him. Everett slid from the truck, attention locked on the two women across the hood without intruding on the moment.

Wade studied the hulking Paul Bunyan wannabe in front of him and figured out one thing about the guy fast. Ryker Everett might be married with a kid on the way, but the man standing a few feet away had some hefty feelings for one of those two women. With the sisters still hugging tight, Wade couldn’t tell which one the fella stared at with his heart planted firmly on his wind-worn sleeve.

But he intended to find out.

Sunny cupped her sister’s face, tears streaking down her cheeks and glinting as they froze. “I’m so glad you’re all right. I was worried about you.” She turned to the guy still standing on the other side of the hood, shuffling from boot to boot. “Thank you for taking such good care of her, Ryker.”

“Ryker?” Misty pulled back, then laughed. “You never could tell them apart. This is Flynn.”

The other twin? Did that change Sunny’s thoughts on whether or not to trust the man?

Misty cocked her head to look past Sunny. “Who’s that with you? Where have you been? Are you ’kay? I was so worried ’bout you.”

Sunny looked back over her shoulder at Wade, her hazel eyes relaying her uncertainty. He weighed the options and decided on the path that made the most sense.

Wade stepped forward, his fingers still wrapped around his 9 mm in his pocket. Just in case.

“I’m with a military rescue team. I helped Sunny when she got stranded up here. A lot has happened in the past few days.” An understatement, for damn sure. “Why don’t we all shuffle this conversation into the truck where it’s warmer?”

They had a lot to discuss and a limited amount of daylight hours left to reach the community where hopefully they would find some answers. He just prayed those answers weren’t going to plunge Sunny right back into harm’s way.

***



Truck jostling in a pothole, Misty grabbed the cracked leather seat in front of her as she sat in the back of the extended cab with her sister. The world outside the windows was pitch-black, no city skyline. Nothing but the moon, stars, and twin beams of the headlights streaking ahead. The dim glow of the dashboard cast the men’s faces in a spooky green glow as they talked to each other.

In the nine hours since they’d miraculously run into each other, she hadn’t been able to peel herself from Sunny’s side. The vehicle wasn’t handling as well in the dark, but both Flynn and the military guy, Wade, had insisted on charging all the way back home, no stops other than refilling the tank with the extra fuel in the back. The last few miles were the clearest and easiest anyway, the ones traveled most around their village, which she’d once thought to be safe and remote.

She could still barely wrap her brain around the fact that so many of their dear friends had been murdered. What a devastating loss for their community. And why? It seemed so arbitrary, those who hadn’t died. Unless their bodies simply hadn’t been found. She shivered again in spite of the blasting heater. She could have been one of those corpses in the ice, if not for her sister.

While she’d wanted to leave and resented some of the restrictions that came with living there, she’d never expected to be afraid of her own home. She’d been so close to Deputy Rand Smith on more than one occasion when she’d helped Sunny, or when he’d come farther up the trail to get someone. And she couldn’t help but wonder now if his trips all the way to the community had been for a different purpose, perhaps to touch base with an accomplice, someone who could be plotting new murders.

Tears stung her eyes every time she looked at Sunny. She hadn’t fully grasped until now how horrible it would have been never to see her again. Close on that thought followed the sting of grasping how deeply she’d felt betrayed over Sunny not returning to say good-bye.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d wondered if her sister had delayed returning on purpose, to keep her from leaving. Yet now that she looked back she saw what she should have known all along. Sunny wasn’t passive-aggressive. Sunny met life head-on. She’d been out there stranded in a snowstorm, with a mass murderer, and had come out alive.

With Flynn’s handsome face reflected in the rearview mirror, she could see from his jaw that he was still talking—even if she couldn’t hear him.

She nudged Sunny and signed for about the tenth time today. “What’s he saying?”

Sunny’s hands flew as she answered. “We need to check in with Flynn’s father, prepare him for the notifications about to come through.”

Misty kept her arms low, not wanting to draw attention to what they were discussing in case Flynn started watching in the rearview mirror. “What about Phoenix?”

Pain flashed across Sunny’s face. “We’ll talk to him. Then we have to wait and see. I think he probably always knew this day was coming. It’s up to him how to handle it.”

Nodding, Misty continued, “Do you trust this guy Wade?”

“Yes, I do, actually.”

“Even though you’ve barely known him a week?”

“He’s saved my life more than once, even today actually. He risked his own neck to pull me off my snow machine. I was so close to going over the edge of that cliff, no one in their right mind would have even tried. But he did. And after everything that’s happened this week, I’ve learned knowing someone a long time—like the deputy—doesn’t mean they’re trustworthy.”

Misty’s eyes slid to Flynn as if against her will. She’d known him for fifteen years and still she didn’t understand what happened four years ago. And yet the past couple of days, he had been the man she knew, remembered.

Sunny ducked into her line of sight. Her sister signed, “Why are you with Flynn?”

Misty sagged back against the seat. “Because he offered.” And she finally admitted the truth to herself. “Because I’ve missed him. And because today has made me realize how really rare second chances are.”

Her eyes slid back to the front seat even though that meant her world would go silent again without her sister signing the conversation. She wasn’t even close to getting over Flynn, but she was still just as committed to moving into the real world and having the cochlear implant surgery. She was committed to leaving the mountain. And now she had Sunny and her military friend to escort her out once they’d cleared away matters here. Flynn didn’t need to help her any longer.

He steered the truck round a jutting mound of boulders she recognized well, the final barrier shielding her village from anyone who may have wandered unwittingly into this remote corner of the world. The landscape opened up to her moonlit valley with a hundred buildings built alongside a small lake. So familiar. A place she could no longer call home. She’d said her good-byes, or so she’d thought.

Life had offered her a second chance here. A second chance for a last night to find closure with Flynn.

***



Wade paced in a circle around the open main floor of the log cabin that housed Sunny’s business. Well past midnight, they had finally arrived at Sunny’s home after meeting with Flynn Everett’s father, head of the town council.

The bottom floor was sectioned off into four areas, mirrors all around and a skylight above making the small place look larger. One corner held fitness equipment. By the door, there was a check-in counter with fresh muffins, granola, coffee, and a water dispenser. Tucked behind it were two computers and some toys and kiddie tables set up with books, paper, and crayons. And the remaining space—not much—appeared to be used for aerobics or martial arts with mats. A narrow corridor at the end of the room led deeper inside the building. Given his view of the outside before they’d entered, there must be some sort of loft space upstairs—her apartment perhaps?

Sunny flipped on a single light over the workout equipment in a corner and stopped beside him, wearing her own clothes now for the first time since he’d seen her the day they’d met. Purple jeans hugged her legs, and a bold red sweater fit every curve. She was a splash of color in the middle of an oatmeal-colored world.

She toed an itch on the back of her calf. “That hallway leads to a couple of bathrooms that double as locker rooms. Out the back door, there’s a natural hot springs pool. My apartment is upstairs.”

She didn’t just manage this place. Apparently she also owned it with her brother.

He was impressed.

This whole little community wasn’t at all what he’d envisioned for what appeared to be a town of no more than about a hundred and fifty people. It was much more organized and technological than he’d expected. When he met Flynn Everett’s father, he’d been able to use the town leader’s satellite phone to check in with McCabe. The conversation had been short and frustrating. Nothing new about the deputy, other than that he was from Oklahoma, deeply in debt, and moonlighting as a security guard at a power plant. There was nothing in his past to suggest he was a psychopath. Just flat broke.

McCabe had apologized for being abrupt, but he was heading into a brief about the security concern he’d mentioned earlier. Wade got the message. The defense issue with Russian intel leaks must have escalated. McCabe had quickly assured him the dog—Chewie—was recovering well. Wade had turned to tell Sunny.

But she’d disappeared and stayed gone for fifteen conspicuous minutes.

Wade walked along the dumbbell rack, shifting a twenty-pound weight that had been mistakenly placed in the twenty-five-pound slot. “What did your brother have to say?”

Sunny’s legs folded and she dropped onto an exercise bike seat. “How did you know? Never mind. I didn’t get to speak to him anyway.”

“Are you covering for him?” He leaned back against the weight rack, wishing they didn’t have all this crap between them and could just end the day the way he wanted. In bed with her, with him peeling the jeans off her legs.

“I realize you have plenty of reasons not to trust me, but all I know is that Astrid’s parents were at the house baby-sitting my nephew. They said Astrid and Phoenix had gone camping together.”

“Do you believe them?” Sounded too damn convenient to him that Phoenix would disappear right before the lid was about to blow off their private little village hideaway.

She shrugged. “They do that sometimes, go off together for time away from the stress of being new parents, enjoy back-to-nature kinds of meditation like they used to when they were dating. Yes, the timing seems coincidental, but the behavior is in keeping with something they would do.”

“And your brother, do you think he got a warning we were coming?”

“I sent that email,” she said carefully, resting a foot on a bike pedal, her red Converse high-tops as full of personality as she was. “He could have run, although I don’t believe he would have left his son behind.”

“And his wife went along too. I’m assuming she wouldn’t leave her child either. All the more reason to assume he hasn’t run. So why is he conveniently gone now? Something’s off.” He could sense it. “But still, I stick by my gut feeling that the wife—Astrid—isn’t on the run with her husband. Plenty of wives I know aren’t even willing to pack up and move to another state for even a job change. Your brother wouldn’t be offering a helluva lot of security.”

He knew he wasn’t talking about just her brother anymore. He’d seen more than his fair share of military relationships hit the skids because of a transfer. The crackle of connection snapping from Sunny to him said loud and clear that she was having the same thoughts, the same concerns.

He waited for her to answer, to give him some kind of indication where they could go from here. If they could. Tough to figure out when he knew so little about her and her family. He’d slept with her, faced death with her, and he didn’t even know the most fundamental things about her. And time was running out fast to learn.

Memories of the day and her brush with death came back to scare the hell out of him when he least expected it. He was pretty sure his insides were still a little numbed out about that.

“Where did you live before going off-the-grid?” Why hadn’t he thought to ask that before? Had he been holding back too?

“On a farm in Iowa.” She spun the bike pedal with her toe. “We grew corn and soybeans. The land was in the family for a couple hundred years. The farm barely paid for itself, but Dad had a store too, and Mom worked at a bank in town. They said moving here was the perfect way to get their priorities back in order.”

“And your brother?”

“They wanted to help him. I was twelve at the time and I didn’t ask a lot of questions.” She looked around the small business she’d managed to build in the middle of nowhere as if seeing it with new eyes. “Maybe I should have.”

They’d cut their two daughters off from the ability to ask questions or reach out for any help, any other way of thinking. The place might not call itself a cult, but unquestionably there had been a closed society, cultish mentality at play.

Was Sunny even able to just break away from that? Sure she’d been scared of him finding out about her brother when he first found her, but she hadn’t freaked out in the city when she was at his place. Looking back he knew now that she’d wanted to be at his apartment rather than base because of the intense proximity to the military. But she was comfortable enough there.

Seeing what she’d built here, with no help from the outside world, made him recognize how self-sufficient she was. What might she accomplish with the resources of the world he knew at hand?

He wasn’t ready to say all their obstacles were out of the way. But for tonight, it seemed he’d cleared away a few.

Above all, Sunny was alive. Thank God, she was still alive.

Wade extended an arm to her. “Let’s go up to your apartment.”

A spark lit in her eyes. “I can think of nothing better than forgetting about all the things we can’t change.” She placed her hand in his, her smile almost chasing away the shadows in her hazel eyes. “But I have a better idea than going to my apartment.”

Tugging him, she guided him toward the corridor, deeper down the hall, past the staircase leading to the second floor. Curious, he followed, his eyes gravitating to the sway of her hips, the swish of her ponytail, as she walked.

She unlocked and opened a door leading outside the log cabin. Turning, she clasped both his hands and pulled him out onto a huge deck overlooking… Holy crap.

The winding wood stairway with icicles led down to a bubbling pond of steaming waters. She’d told him the survival school sported a hot springs area, but he hadn’t envisioned anything like this. A privacy fence wrapped around, stopping at the slope of a mountain wall with a waterfall trickling down over two tiers of rock slab.

Sunny peeled off her sweater and tossed it over her shoulder onto the deck. Her nipples went tight against her thin undershirt.

His jaw damn near fell there as well. “What are you doing?”

“Going skinny-dipping.” She tugged off one red high-top, then the other.

He eyed the mounds of snow around the edges. “You’re going to freeze to death before you make it into the water.”

“Not a chance.” She smiled at him with bold wickedness, the wind whipping her hair around her face. “Don’t tell me you’ve lived in Alaska all this time and you’ve never hung out in a hot tub naked to watch the northern lights?”

His gaze slid from nature’s hot tub to Sunny.

Best of all, the place was completely deserted. “Is that what we’re going to do? Watch a cosmic laser show?”

“Afterward, perhaps.”

“After what, exactly?” He stepped closer, closer still, until her hair brushed his chest. “I need to hear you spell it out.”

“Take your clothes off and join me. I’ll fill your ears full of exactly what I want.” She backed away, crooking her finger and making it clear that she had more in mind than lazing around. “It’s the least I can do for the man who saved my life today.”

Just like that, his body remembered the intense adrenaline surge that had accompanied that moment, the fear and fierceness that had charged through him after seeing her broken snowmobile in pieces at the bottom of the cliff.

Hunger for her, for this moment to celebrate surviving the day, had him reaching for her.

She made fast work of the buttons down his camo uniform and flung the top over the railing. “Take off your T-shirt.”

“You first.” He tugged her undershirt over her head, leaving her bared to the frigid air with only her purple jeans and red bra. Her nipples beaded in the cold.

“You’re such a guy.” She yanked his T-shirt over his head, careful of his shoulder. “Has anyone checked your shoulder since you tangled with my dog and the car earlier?”

“I’m a medic. I can look after of myself.”

“You can’t treat yourself or your family. I do have some training in basic first aid—comes in handy on survival treks.” Staring down the icy steps, she flung aside her bra, goose bumps raising on her flesh. “And the sulfur in volcanic springs carries healing, revitalizing qualities.”

Her eyes as steamy as the waters, she shimmied out of her jeans and waded in, magnificently naked.

***



Misty sat on her bed in her bathrobe, towel-drying her hair. She’d never expected to be back in this familiar shabby-chic room she’d decorated with her mother and sister, painting all the reclaimed furniture white. They’d worked together on patchwork curtains and a quilt made from outgrown clothes. Rag rugs lay on the floor to warm her feet in the morning.

Tonight should have ended so differently. She should have been back in civilization, meeting up with Ted and Madison, her heart breaking over saying good-bye to Flynn while trying to convince herself that Brett was really “the one.”

But Ted and Madison were dead. Many more were gone as well. She’d dreamed of leaving here for so long, and now she could only mourn how the place would never be the same. She didn’t even know what to think of her brother and Astrid disappearing. At least her little nephew was settled downstairs with his grandparents, who’d insisted on helping and staying here so he could sleep in his own bed.

She tossed aside the towel and reached for the comb beside her bed.

A cold rush of air blasted over her. She straightened, her stomach lurching with fear. The air smelled of outside, of an open window.

She started to scream just as the patchwork curtains flapped and Flynn’s big head poked through. He pressed a finger to his lips. Just like all the times he’d climbed through her window during high school. She closed her mouth, her stomach flipping with a wholly different sensation that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with anticipation.

Flynn swung his legs through and stood in her room, his head almost touching the sloped ceiling. “I’m not here to push you. I just needed to see you, to reassure myself that you’re okay, and the stuffy old watchdogs downstairs insisted you need your sleep.”

Her skin tingled with heated awareness under her robe. Her naked skin. She should tell him to leave.

But she didn’t.

“Well, close the window before we both freeze to death.” She swung her legs off the bed, waiting to take her cue from whatever he said next.

He shut the window and draped his parka over a bentwood rocking chair, then turned away abruptly to toss another log in the wood-burning stove, seeming hesitant. How strange to see him unsure, when his body and presence filled her room so vibrantly.

Abruptly, he dropped to his knees in front of her so they were eye to eye. He searched her face, his throat moving with a slow swallow.

His eyes glazing with unshed tears?

“Flynn?”

His chest pumped, his breathing ragged. “Everything’s gone so crazy, all those people dead. And it could have been you. If that deputy hadn’t died, if Sunny hadn’t come back in time”—his eyes squeezed shut tight as if to hold the tears, the emotion, inside himself—“it could have been you.”

True to his word to keep his hands to himself, his fists stayed plastered against his sides. The pain on his face was so real, so intense, it took her breath away. She thumbed a lone tear escaping from the corner of one eye. His weather-toughened skin felt so familiar, so dear.

She cupped his cheek. “Why did you sleep with June four years ago?”

“I honest to God don’t know.”

“That’s bullshit.” Her hand fell away.

He opened his eyes, finally meeting her gaze dead on. “I was scared.”

“Bullshit.”

A wry smile tucked dimples into his cheeks. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” Her pride still stung over his silence. Sure, he’d made an effort at first, but before that first year was out, he’d given up. People who loved each other never gave up, they never stopped fighting for the people they cared about, even going to the ends of the earth. Her parents had taught her that.

“I was an eighteen-year-old idiot. I heard you and your sister discussing what kind of wedding you would like to have, and I freaked out. I self-destructed. And I would do anything to change that day, anything. I knew it was a mistake the second after—”

She held up a hand. “I do not want to hear about your postcoital thoughts. Although it sounds to me like the sex sucked, and for that I am so, so glad.”

His mouth went wide with laughter and her heart ached all over again that she would never hear the sound. She placed her hand on his chest to feel the vibrations. He stopped.

“Please, don’t quit,” she said quickly. “I miss the sound of laughter more than anything. I miss your laughter.”

She signed, “I miss you.” The same words he’d used back at the bed-and-breakfast.

He signed back, “I am so very sorry. There is no one for me but you. If that means I live the rest of my life alone, then that’s the way it will be.”

This time, she believed him.

Her fingers crawled from his chest, up the strong column of his throat, and over his stubborn square jaw to his lips. She traced the chapped outline, remembered the feel of him nibbling along her bare skin. He’d been intent on learning what she liked, both of them so inexperienced.

So very hot for each other.

Carefully, hesitantly, he lowered his head and kissed her. He sealed his mouth to hers, fully. Her sigh slipped into him, his into her.

Without hesitation, she slid her arms around him, holding tight. His body was broader and harder than the teenage boy he’d been when they were together. The warmed flannel of his shirt was soft against her fingertips, the scent of him and the crisp air filling her senses. Muscles bulged beneath her touch in sleek definition from a combination of hours spent in the gym during the winter months and exertion outdoors.

Her need for him turned frantic until she could almost swear she heard it buzzing in her ears. She fumbled with the buttons, finally giving up on finesse and yanking his flannel shirt off his shoulders. Buttons popped and fell to the floor. She grasped for his jeans fly. He covered her hands and whispered something against her mouth.

She angled back, looking at him inquisitively.

“Are you sure?” he repeated.

“I have never been more certain of anything.” She tossed aside the flannel and stared at his bared chest.

The washboard lines of his stomach contracted from the caress of her eyes, his jeans open at the zipper and revealing a trail of hair. Her breath hitched in her throat, her limbs turning liquid with desire. She shrugged her robe from her shoulders, savoring the glide of the chenille along her skin, anticipating the feel of his touch.

His pupils widened with appreciation, never leaving her body as he tugged off his boots and shucked his jeans. Moonlight streaked across his body, casting shadows over every well-defined sinew. Her eyes dropped farther and her pulse quickened.

The length of him hard and standing upright against his stomach was so much more than she remembered. Before, she’d reveled in making him groan with the touch of her hand, her mouth. He’d returned the sensations to her tenfold. They’d fooled themselves into thinking they were holding back, but she’d shown him every inch of her body. Given him pleasure, taken pleasure, made herself vulnerable to him in sensual ways she’d never let any other man have.

Standing, she let the robe fall away from her body. His hands shook as he touched her, carefully, reverently, cupping her breasts. He stepped closer, the rasp of hair along his legs a sweet abrasion against her thighs.

And then he lowered her to the bed, his hands moving over her with a familiarity that spoke of how deeply ingrained their time together still was in his mind. He knew just where to touch to make her knees go weak, exactly where to kiss, lick, nip to make her thrash restlessly against the sheets, aching for release.

Her hands carried the memory of him just as firmly. Those recollections were burned in her mind, guiding her touch over him, around him, stroking until a slick creamy bead sliding over her fingers told her just how close he was to the edge as well.

His chest vibrated with what she knew must be a growl and he drew himself away from her. The brush of air across her overheated flesh made her whimper.

Until he nuzzled one breast, then the other, on his way lower, lower still. Her head pressed back into the pillow. She almost surrendered to the pleasure she knew was a simple flick of his tongue away.

Quickly, urgently, she grabbed his shoulders, pushing him off. He looked up at her, confusion staining his blue eyes.

“Everything,” she said. “I want it all this time.”

His face flooded with understanding a second before he crawled back up her body. She’d waited four years for the fulfillment she hadn’t received all those nights he’d sneaked through her bedroom window. She wasn’t waiting a second longer.

The weight of him was so dear and familiar she ached in corners of her heart she hadn’t dared acknowledge for years. Inching her legs apart, she made room for him, her hands roving his arms and shoulders, soaking up the feel of him.

He kissed her jaw toward her ear, whispering sweet words that she felt in the movement of his lips and the warmth of his breath on her skin. The words didn’t matter. He knew how he’d wanted this moment as much as she had.

Lifting his head, he pushed inside her, slowly, his eyes fixed on hers until he met the thin barrier of resistance. His eyes went wide with surprise that she didn’t want to deal with right now. She arched up to kiss him and wrapped her thighs around him, pushing, straining… A stinging burn throbbed through her as he broke past, filling her, stretching her.

She buried her face in his shoulder while he waited, holding her, stroking her with his hands and his mouth. His chest vibrated against hers and she knew he spoke, but his face was in her hair.

Dampness sealed her cheek to his and she knew the tears weren’t only hers. Her own had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with the emotion welling inside her.

His hand in hers spelled over and over, “I love you. I love you.”

And he kept repeating the words in her palm as he moved inside her, thrusting, determination stamped on his face that he wasn’t leaving her behind. And she trusted him, with her heart and with her body. This was the Flynn she’d known before, but stronger, more mature, the man she’d dreamed he would become.

Bliss swelled inside her, tingling and spreading until even the roots of her hair shimmered with the impending…

Release.

Her arms flung wide, her fingers twisting in the sheets as ripple after ripple crashed over her. Flynn covered her mouth with his and she realized she must have been moaning with the power of the orgasm slamming through her.

Or maybe he was covering his own shout of completion. His muscles bunched against her. His skin darkened with the flush of desire culminating. Just seeing him launched a fresh wave over her until her body lay spent and his arms gave way. He collapsed on top of her, his weight a welcome blanket grounding her to earth again.

His forehead rested on hers, his mouth so close she could read most of what he said, enough to understand the gist. “I love you.”

“You told me.” She cradled his face in her hands the way she still cradled his body inside hers.

“I want to be sure you believe me.” He slid beside her, stroking her hair from her brow. “If I could go back in time.”

“We can’t go back. But we can start from here. A day at a time being honest with each other.”

“Okay, then, I’ll take that.” Relief shuddered through him as he kissed her once, twice, again, punctuating his words. “God, I’ll take that. Because it’s more than I expected to ever have and more than I deserve. If you really can give this a day at a time, then I will work my ass off each and every one of those days, earning your trust back.”

He tucked her closer to him, his chin resting on top of her head. His rapid breathing slowed, evened out until a slight snore ruffled her still-damp hair.

Holding him to her, holding on to the moment, she waited a little longer to be sure he slept deeply. Because she had one last loose end to tie up before she committed to him fully. She needed to send Brett an email to tell him she was sorry, but she had made a mistake. She couldn’t meet him and she didn’t love him.

Her heart still belonged fully and irrevocably to Flynn Everett.