Page 125 of Carrick
The screen door creaked open behind me, then clicked shut again. I didn’t have to look. The footsteps were steady, familiar. Deacon. He joined me without a word, leaning on the railing like the weight in his bones matched my own. For a moment, neither of us said anything. The night breathed around us.
“You good?” he asked eventually, voice low.
I considered lying. Then shook my head. “Not even close.”
He nodded like he expected that. “She’s in your skin.”
“She is.”
“That a problem?”
“Could be.”
He didn’t press. Just let the quiet stretch again, then murmured, “Sully’s got a bet going. Says you’ll do something stupid for her inside a week.”
I huffed a breath. “He’s already behind.”
Deacon straightened, glanced over with a look that landed like a warning, but wasn’t cruel. “She’s not built for temporary, Carrick. None of us are. If this means something, hold it like it does. Don’t make her think it’s safe just to walk away when it gets hard.”
I nodded once, throat tight. He didn’t wait for more. Just stepped back inside and let the door click shut behind him.
And I stayed. Let the stillness return. Let the night wrap around me like the towel still clinging to my shoulders. I didn’t know where this was heading. But for the first time in a long damn time, I wanted to stay long enough to find out.
24
Bellamy
I wasn’t asleep.I was suspended, hovering in the soft hush between exhaustion and unrest, stretched beneath Carrick’s blanket like a body pressed between memory and aftermath. The sheets were warm, still steeped in sunlight and the breath of the day, but they couldn’t hold me steady. Not against the undercurrent that kept tugging beneath my ribs; the low, slow pull of dread that didn’t howl or scream, just sat quiet and certain, coiled tight in my chest like a secret I didn’t want to name. I wasn’t dreaming. I was remembering. Rehearsing. Bracing for something that hadn’t happened yet but already lived in the back of my mind like it had.
Carrick hadn’t touched me. Hadn’t spoken since we’d come back from the water. But I could feel him across the room, just beyond the bed, sitting in that chair like he belonged to the dark and was only humoring the light. He didn’t need words to fill a space. His presence was enough; steady and charged, like a storm that had chosen stillness instead of thunder. Not looming. Just listening. Waiting. Watching for the moment I’d stop pretending I was okay.
And I was close. The threads were unraveling, one by one. Rayden. The silence of the burner phone. The invisible violenceof waiting. I’d carried it all for so long it had etched itself into the shape of me—but tonight, the weight shifted. Not enough to break. But enough to buckle something beneath the surface. He felt it. Of course he did.
When I opened my eyes, his were already on me, lit faintly by the moon, unwavering, sharp. He didn’t blink. Didn’t soften. Just watched me like he already knew what I was about to say.
I swallowed hard. My voice came quieter than I meant, thick with everything I hadn’t let myself feel. “I can’t do this much longer.”
“Can’t sleep?”
His answer was a low rumble, more breath than sound. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
I shifted beneath the covers, slow and deliberate, the blanket slipping low over my hips to reveal the curve of my waist, the hem of my tank twisted up. I didn’t fix it. The air slid cool across my skin, but his gaze burned. That pull between us—unspoken, electric—had been simmering for days, but tonight it had teeth.
I didn’t want comfort. I didn’t want to be asked what I needed. I wanted to be taken. To stop thinking. To stop holding myself together with nothing but silence and breath. Carrick saw it—the tension in my jaw, the way my body coiled beneath the stillness. He read me like always. No instructions needed.
So I gave him the only line I had left.
“Will you help me forget for a little while?”
The silence that followed wrapped the room like smoke, thick, hot, and waiting to ignite. My pulse kicked, but I didn’t look away. I didn’t have to explain. He already knew.
Carrick stood with that same grounded fluidity, each step across the room an answer. He didn’t speak. Didn’t rush. Just looked down at me like I was already his, and this was the moment I stopped pretending otherwise.
He brushed a strand of hair from my cheek, fingers light as breath. And something in me stilled. Not disappeared—just quieted. Because that touch wasn’t about control. It was about recognition. He wasn’t offering a distraction. He was offering surrender. The kind that doesn’t ask you to let go, just gives you a place to fall.
I didn’t blink.
