Page 116 of Breaking Free

Chapter 28

HIS BLADE CAUGHT THElight. The blood on the steel and her fair skin appeared starkly vulgar and chilled him to the bone.

“No!” he shouted desperately as he raced toward her.

“Tristan...” Piper’s whisper sounded final, like a goodbye.

Ignoring the burning in his lungs, he refused to accept that and sprinted faster. Except the harder her tried to reach her, the farther away she seemed. When their eyes met, hers dull as if the spark in her was fading, it told him time was running out.

Tristan woke with a start, his chest heaving. Sunshine flooded his bedroom instead of the darkness he expected. The nightmare too closely resembled the reality of what had happened.

“Fucking dreams,” he muttered, sitting up, elbows to his knees and cradling his head in his hands. He’d traded the horror of Afghanistan and Nolan for Piper and her stalker, but thank fuck she was still alive.

He turned to take her in his arms and prove to himself that was true, but the place next to him was empty once again. He didn’t leap from the bed in a panic like the last time because the aroma of cinnamon and something he couldn’t quite place but smelled delicious reassured him Piper was here, just up and about.

He flopped back onto the pillows, staring at the ceiling, a little stiff from being in bed for more than his standard threehours. Throughout the night, he’d held her while she slept peacefully. He knew because he hadn’t, except in brief intervals. Not that it mattered. Awake or asleep—mostly the former—the shitstorm Perry had rained down had run through his mind on repeat.

When they returned home after the briefing, the yellow police tape was still across her door. He could tell from her panicked expression and her nails digging into his arm that she wasn’t ready to go in, even if the investigators were through. He took her straight to his place.

Piper showered. Her third in twenty-four hours. Scrubbing until the hot water ran out. Tristan checked on her twice, but he hadn’t lingered, giving her time to herself. He needed it, too. To process all that had happened. They piled up on his couch for the rest of the day. Ordering in and watching silly crap on TV that didn’t require thinking. He’d given her the remote and let her choose. All old classics and rom-coms, but he didn’t give a fuck. It was enough for him to be there for her, reach out and touch her when he wanted, and reassure himself she was all right.

When a local news update reported a stabbing at the Netflix studio on Vine, Tristan reached for the remote.

“It’s okay,” she said, stopping him with a hand on his forearm. “Have you had any updates on Axyl?”

“Not since this morning.”

“Can you check?”

“Yeah, sunshine. I’ll text Keiran.”

His phone buzzed with a response in minutes. After he read the message, he tossed his phone onto the coffee table and gathered her in his arms again.

“Axyl’s condition has been upgraded from serious to stable, and he’s expecting to be discharged in the morning.”

He felt the tension leach out of her, and she breathed the same thing she had that morning. “Thank goodness. He saved my life.”

“And he’d do it again. We all would. What pisses me off is that he had to do it at all, and it had to come at the eleventh hour in a dramatic rescue.”

She angled her head on his shoulder to look up at him, a wan smile on her lips. “It was a Hollywood ending, Tristan. What else would I have? It’s funny, though; the dramatic rescue is a lot like my current script. Knives, blood, and a nasty bad guy—the whole nine yards. Except my hero is Dirk.” She stroked his beard, grinning now. “He’s a far cry from Axyl, whose dialogue was a heckuva lot better.”

Rather than amusing, he found the coincidence worrisome. He rolled onto his side to face her, which shifted her into the crook of his arm. “I didn’t read that far. Can you handle doing something similar so soon?”

She relaxed against him. “What choice do I have? Besides, if it gets heavy, I have shibari and the rope master to help me relax and forget.”

“You’re a glass-half-full kind of person, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said, using the remote to change to TV Land and a rerun of an old sitcom. He realized what she was doing. They’d had comfort food, although she didn’t even eat one slice of pizza, along with comfort TV—something familiar, with no surprises or dramatic rescues, and required very little brain power. To go with it, she snuggled up against him, his arms and protection surrounding her. This was Piper’s version of aftercare following an intense event and several emotional weeks.

Good for her, whatever it took.

They slept in his bed, with her in one of his T-shirts, again plastered to his side. Or at leastsheslept. Dawn was visible through his curtains before he’d ever shut his eyes.

A crash from downstairs jolted him back to the present. Taking time only to pull on boxer briefs, he ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. Piper stood in the middle of the floor, holding Jaxx.

“I’m sorry we woke you.”

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