Page 201 of Break the Ice
I think she means forever. For everything.
Jayden’s gaze flicks to mine over her hair, steady and serious for once, and I know he heard it the same way I did.
So, I nod. Just once.
Her smile curves soft as she curls into his side, her hand finding mine again even as her eyes start to flutter shut.
It hits me harder than I expect, watching her drift like this. Safe. Content. Trusting us to keep the world away while she sleeps.
The blanket is warm, the room quiet except for the rain outside the windows. Jayden’s head tips back against the couch, his fingers still moving absently over her hip.
And me… I can’t stop looking at her.
At them.
At the way the last hour sits in my chest like something cracked open that can’t be put back the way it was before.
I used to think I was too broken for this. Too wrong in all the ways my grandmother said I was.
But right now, with Jayden steady on one side and Finley soft against my shoulder, I don’t feel wrong at all.
I feel…home.
CHAPTER 61
FINLEY
Do it.
Cross the road.
It won’t kill you.
The words loop in my head like a dare, but my feet stay planted on the sidewalk, Samson’s leash coiled tight around my hand. The sea glints at me from across the street, all sunlit blues and silvers, the same view Elijah coaxed me toward a couple of days ago. That day, with him beside me, I made it all the way down to the sand.
Without him here? My chest cinches tighter the longer I stare at the crosswalk.
Samson sits at my heel like he knows I’m stalling, tail sweeping across the pavement in steady thumps. He’s quieter than yesterday. Last night, when I settled him into his bed beside Elijah’s, the house felt emptier than it has in weeks. Like it wasn’t just my guys leaving for the road trip, but the life that’s filled every corner of my days lately.
I miss them. Both of them.
Jayden’s laugh echoing through the apartment, his warm hands at my waist every time he walks by like he can’t help touching me. Elijah’s calm presence lingering in doorways, the faint trace of his cologne trailing after him like a second heartbeat in the hallways.
Waking up in his bed this morning, wearing one of Jayden’s shirts—one he slept in so it would smell like him—didn’t ease the ache in my ribs one bit.
A pair of arms wraps around me from behind, jarring me out of my head.
“Dude!”
I jerk forward as Christina laughs in my ear, already bending to greet Samson, who instantly forgets I exist in favor of slobbering all over her.
“You scared the crap out of me,” I say, my pulse still hammering.
“Looked like you needed rescuing from your own thoughts.” She drops a meat stick into Samson’s eager jaws and scratches behind his ears. “Hi-yah, handsome boy. Look at you. So big. So pretty.”
He leans all sixty pounds of himself against her legs, tail wagging like she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“You spoil him,” I tell her, but my voice comes out softer than I mean it to.
