Page 46 of Pucked Up

Noah nodded. "Same."

Then, he was gone, his footsteps receding down the hallway. The bedroom door closed with a soft click that echoed in the cabin.

I sat alone in the near-darkness, listening to the walls settling around me. The whiskey remained untouched. I didn't need it anymore—not tonight. The burning in my chest had subsided, replaced by a different sensation—something lighter, almost buoyant, that I couldn't yet name.

The confession was difficult, but for the first time in fifteen years, the memory's edges were less razor-sharp, as if sharing my story had dulled its power to cut.

Eventually, I rose from the couch, joints protesting after sitting motionless for so long. I extinguished the remaining embers.

I walked down the short hallway and paused at Noah's door, my hand hovering near the frame. No light spilled from underneath. There was no sound inside. After hesitating, I continued to my bed in the main room, undressing mechanically.

The sheets were cold against my skin as I slid beneath them. I lay on my back, staring at shadows that stretched across theceiling. I thought sleep would be impossible, my brain wired despite bone-deep exhaustion.

Minutes or hours later, I heard the guest room door open. Noah's silhouette appeared against the hallway's deeper darkness. He moved without speaking, crossing to my bed with quiet purpose.

The mattress dipped beneath his weight. He settled beside me, not touching but close enough that his body heat radiated across the narrow gap between us. He lay on his side, back to me, spine a perfect line I could trace without seeing.

Neither of us spoke. Words would have been inadequate for the understanding that had formed between us. I turned onto my side, mirroring his position—back to back, not facing away from each other but facing outward together, spines aligned.

We didn't touch except where the mattress created a shallow valley that pressed our shoulders together. That single point of contact anchored me, a physical reminder that I wasn't alone with the ghosts I'd unleashed.

Noah's breathing gradually slowed, deepening into the rhythm of sleep. I lay awake longer, feeling the subtle expansion and contraction of his ribs against mine with each breath. There was something profound in sharing the same air—not intimacy in any conventional sense, but connection.

A thought surfaced just before sleep claimed me:He didn't flinch when I showed him the worst parts. He stayed. That could be the closest thing to an apology I've ever needed.

In my dreams, I ran through a winter forest. Snow crunched beneath paws I shouldn't have had. My breath clouded white against midnight air.

I wasn't alone—shapes moved through trees around me, silver-gray and silent. They were wolves, running alongside me.

One broke from the pack, larger than the others. It paused, watching me with eyes that reflected moonlight. A scar markedits flank—jagged and familiar. It was my scar, somehow transferred onto this creature of the night.

In the peculiar logic of dreams, I understood that I was the wolf, and it was me. We were separate but the same.

"Wolves don't apologize," I whispered, the words visible as frost in the dreamscape.

The wolf—my wolf—inclined its head. The phrase transformed between us, reborn as something different. It wasn't a taunt or condemnation. It was a recognition.

Wolves don't apologize because survival requires no justification. The pack doesn't question the origin of your scars, only whether you can still run.

I woke before dawn, Noah's back still pressed against mine. For once, I didn't immediately move away. I let myself exist in that shared warmth, absorbing the comfort of not being alone with my history.

Outside, snow continued to fall, covering our tracks from the day before. Like a scar, it erased most of the evidence of our presence but not the memory.

That was the thing about scars—they remained regardless of whether anyone else could see and acknowledge them. The difference was that now, someone had seen mine. And he didn't look away.

Chapter fourteen

Noah

The morning following Micah's confession, I sat at the kitchen table, fingers wrapped around a steaming mug. He moved around the cabin with deliberate steps.

Something was different. The weight on his shoulders hadn't disappeared, but he no longer braced for a new impact.

He poured coffee into his own mug without speaking, his back to me. Steam curled upward, blurring the hard lines in his face when he turned. Our eyes didn't meet, but it wasn't avoidance—more like giving each other room to exist in the aftermath of shared raw truth.

"Sleep okay?" I ventured, testing the waters.

"Fine." His voice was morning-rough but without the edge that usually accompanied it. He leaned against the counter, one hand absently rubbing his shoulder where I'd noticed stiffness before.

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