Page 39 of Sunrise

My sunrise.

So I make myself his dad’s new target…

“What is it?” Knox pulls back and runs his thumb across my lips. “I can hear you screaming in there.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “Loudly.”

I’ve never felt more seen in my life than when I’m with Knox. “I was thinking about when I almost lost you.”

He smiles sardonically. “Which time?”

“When your pops had my gun.”

His humor drops instantly. “I still have nightmares about that one.” Knox turns the water off and steps back as if needing space from me.

“He got better, though.” That means there’s still hope for me too, right?

“He just traded drugs and booze for gambling and strippers. That’s not getting better.”

“But his PTSD,” I say, following him out of the shower. “That’s better, right?”

“Oh, for sure. That night was definitely his rock bottom.”

I’m glad I was able to save Knox at least once in our life. It just cost me a bullet graze to the shoulder, which Dmitri sewed up in a decently straight line. My parents never paid much attention to me. As long as I smiled, they thought I was happy. And as long as I had my boys, I was smiling. Guess they weren’t completely off base, huh? The only time they got in my business was if a grade slipped, so I made sure not to let that happen either. Even if I had to hack into myschool’s system to change a B to a fucking A.

“The thunderstorm got to him that night,” Knox says like it was no big deal. “And I knew better than to bring a gun into the house. I still don’t know how he found it, but that episode was all my fault. I should have taken better precautions, both with the weather and the weapon.”

His father checked himself into a facility the next day and was in heavy therapy for many years afterwards. We ended up staying over at Ryker’s that night and I held Knox on the living room floor until sunrise. We didn’t say a word to each other and when daylight hit, we pretended like everything was good.

He hands me a towel and then looks down at my shoes. “Damn, you’re more soaked than we made Sophie.”

We both laugh. It feels so damn good.

My shoes squish as I step back into the shower and strip. Knox wrings out my clothes for me and hangs them on the towel racks to dry.

“I got spare clothing in my office,” I say, wrapping a towel around my waist. He’s got one around him already, but his dick’s chubby under the terrycloth and I stare at it a little too long.

Hard-ons can be contagious.

“We need to check on her,” he says, opening the door.

Ryker and Sophie are sitting on the couch. She’s been crying and Ryker looks ready to murder someone. They both relax when they see us coming.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” I say to Ry. “Much better. Sorry.”

“There’s no I’m sorries, remember?” Knox heads to Sophie. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Areyou two?” Her gaze bounces from me to Knox.

“Yeah,” we say in unison.

“Jesus, I’m getting flashbacks already.” Ryker steps around me and heads for the door. “I nearly forgot how you two can sometimes share a brain cell.”

“It’s like the only functioning one I have left,” Knox jokes.

“True.” Ryker opens the door to leave us but turns to me at the last second and says, “Remember, baby steps.”

The door clicks shut behind him and I look up at the camera. Dmitri’s watching. He’s the only one left who’s allowed to, and this room is nevernotunder surveillance.

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