“I erased all my social media after everything that happened when Oliver took me. I couldn’t handle strangers trying to pry into my life. But Salem must still have hers up because Mom knows she’s pregnant. That’s why she called.” I let out a sharp laugh. “She was crying. Can you believe that?” I didn’t expect him to answer, so I kept the words coming. “She was crying. She was sobbing because she didn’t know that she was going to be a grandmother because Salem hasn’t spoken to her since she was eighteen other than to threaten her to stay the hell away from me.” I sighed and hugged my folded-up legs more tightly to my chest and started to rock back and forth a little. “She called me because she knew I would listen. She called me because she knew I was the one that would hear her out.” I blinked back tears and dug the sharp points of my fingernails into my skin. “She called me because she knew I understand what it’s like to be trapped in a marriage that might very well end up killing you.”

I choked a little on the emotion that was clogging my throat, so it took me a minute before I could finish telling him everything that was crowding my mind and punishing my heart. “She told me she missed me. She’s alone in that house with my father, suffering through the gossip of everything that happened with me and Oliver, and you know what? … I feel bad for her.” Like the sap that I was. My stupid heart couldn’t stop caring about the wrong people. “I worry about her bearing the brunt of my father’s wrath, about her having to shoulder the blame he no doubt levels on her for both my and Salem’s failures. That’s enough to crush anyone.” I sighed again. “Somewhere in all of that, I went numb and let go of the leash. I was so caught up in feeling bad because I was hurting for someone that previously hurt me that I let go of the one thing in my life that actually needs my constant love and attention. I got swept up in what was and forgot all about what is. That’s a dangerous place for anyone to be.” I could get lost in the dark and lose all the ground forward I’d gained.

Wheeler stayed by the door but the intensity shining out of his baby blues was strong enough that I felt it like a touch as he stared at me from across the room. His voice vibrated with unidentified emotion as he told me, “Like I said, it’s easy to get a little bit misplaced, honey. It didn’t take you very long to get back to where you were supposed to be. Cut yourself some slack. I told you what happened to me when I was little.” He’d been left, callously dropped like he was lost luggage when he was too little to understand what was happening to him. That hurt to think about as much as imagining my mother living alone under my father’s rule. “We all need someone to bring us in from the cold.” He would have died if someone hadn’t been there to take him in, and chances were I would have been in a similar situation if all the people that had been there, holding the door open for me to places that were warm and safe, hadn’t pulled me in out of the cold when I was ready to freeze.

Wheeler disappeared out the door. Watching him go, I realized he’d been at work all day, with very little sleep, and had dropped everything to come to me the second I called. He brought me inside and we collapsed. All of it was a little hazy and a lot fuzzy but I knew that in all of it there had been no time for food. He was always feeding me, making sure I had fuel to keep going, so I figured the least I could do was return the favor.

I climbed off the bed, took a few seconds to pull my hair up in a shifty topknot, and detoured to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face so that I looked a little less like a train wreck. I wasn’t any kind of gourmet chef, and since my appetite was iffy at best I didn’t keep a stocked pantry. I had the basics and the staples, so I decided breakfast for dinner was going to have to do. It was creeping up on midnight according to the clock on the microwave but my suddenly growling tummy didn’t seem to care.

I was scrambling eggs in the pan and jumping around by the stove to avoid popping bacon grease when Wheeler came in through the front door. He paused for a second, eyes locked on me as I moved around the kitchen as if the sight of me doing something as normal as cooking was some kind of modern marvel.

“I figured you didn’t get a chance to eat dinner.” I waved a hand around the mess I was in the middle of like it was self-explanatory. “You’re always feeding me. Now it’s my turn.”

He blinked and those bright eyes of his got heavy-lidded and dangerous looking. “You didn’t have to do that.”

I shrugged and started shoveling hot food onto plates. “I didn’t have to, but I wanted to.”

He made a noise low in his throat as he took the plate from me and sat down on the opposite side of the counter. We ate in companionable silence and I didn’t bother to argue when he offered to do the dishes when we were done. I took my time setting up Happy’s bed and blankets in the kitchen after Wheeler put his doggie gate up across the opening and I realized I was stalling because I didn’t want him to go.

My mom’s call had resurrected a lot of bad memories and old ghosts, and I knew once I was alone with them they were going to do more than haunt me. When I woke up with Wheeler wrapped around my back, with him holding me so tightly that there wasn’t any room for anything to get between his skin and mine, I felt protected. It felt like all the sharp and pointy things that pricked at my vulnerable places were going to have to get through him before they could lodge into me. He wouldn’t let them draw blood. I wanted to be the kind of woman that could face all the things in the dark that scared her, face them alone, but I wasn’t, at least I wasn’t yet, but I was slowly getting there.

Wheeler was wiping his hands on a dish towel and watching Happy turn circles on his bed. There was a grin on his face and those dangerous dimples were flashing, and I knew I was about to say something I would immediately want to take back. It was one thing to be in bed with him when I was practically catatonic and unaware of my surroundings. It was another to ask him to be there when I was wide-awake and in full control of my actions.

“It’s late. You can just stay the night here if you want.”

His head turned toward me so fast I was sure he gave himself mild whiplash. His dark eyebrows shot up and his hands curled around the edge of the sink. “Thanks for the offer but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I was surprised how disappointed I was by his answer. Teeth sinking into my bottom lip, I was petulant when I asked him, “Why not?”