Across the Vanishing Sky (Starlight Grove, #1)(81)

The blond lock of hair curling across his forehead fluttered with one of his deep exhales. He was safe. And he’d asked remarkably few questions for a kid who always had a million. I’d ended up telling him that someone had played a mean joke and scared me but that everything was okay now.

It wasn’t altogether untrue. Someone was playing with me. It was just far more twisted than I’d ever let my son know. I stared at him for just a moment longer. God, I wanted to preserve this—the innocence Owen carried with him now. But I knew it wouldn’t last forever. Because the world was a balance of sweet and suck, and nothing would change that.

Closing my eyes, I shut the door, hoping my boy would hold on to the sweet. As I stepped deeper into the hallway, I heard the shower running. Everything in me stilled. Dex, in my shower.

Images flooded my brain that I had no business seeing, even in my imagination. I forced myself into the primary bedroom and shut the door behind me. “Your best friend is still missing, and there’s a monster out there leaving sick trophies behind. Maybe don’t think about your hot, unhinged neighbor in your shower…naked.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face and hurried toward the dresser. I needed a task. Focusing on getting ready for bed seemed like the best option, one where I didn’t have to hear the fall of the water against a tub or flesh.

“Think about something else. Anything else.” I recited every French command I’d taught Yeti as I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I started all over again as I pulled on my coziest pajamas.

Even though it was getting into the eighties during the day, the mountain air turned cold every night. I loved it. I’d sleep with my window cracked and let that brisk air sweep through.

I stilled. I couldn’t do that anymore. Not now. Instead of that scaring me, it pissed me the hell off that someone would steal my simple pleasures on top of everything else.

Then I spotted the skylight. It was something that looked like it had been added to the cabin later. Maybe in the eighties. And there was a crank to open it.

I climbed up onto the chest at the end of my bed and stretched up onto my tiptoes. I could just reach. Gripping it as best I could, I tried to turn it. Nothing.

A grunt escaped my lips as I threw more of my weight into it. The chest shifted slightly beneath me, and I let out a startled sound.

A second later, my door flew open, and a shirtless Dex was striding inside, fury lighting the gold in those hazel eyes. The fury quickly turned to confusion, but my arms were already windmilling, my balance knocked clean out from under me.

Dex moved in a flash, making it to me just as I tumbled. I hit his chest with an oomph, the air knocked straight from my lungs.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he barked.

“Shhh, you’ll wake Owen. And what the hell were you doing barging into my room without knocking?”

“I heard sounds of a struggle.”

I glared up at him, annoyed with everything. His helpfulness; his warm, hard body pressed against mine; the fact that he made me want for the first time in almost a decade. “I groaned. That’s hardly a struggle. What if I’d been indulging in some self-care?”

Those hazel eyes lost all darkness and lit with sparks and swirls. “Hellion, you do that when we’re under the same roof, and we’re gonna have problems.”

My jaw went slack. “You aren’t serious.”

“Deadly,” Dex growled. He set me on my feet, his hands fisting and unfisting, making the ink across his chest ripple. His phoenix tattoo was stunning, intricate and delicate but powerful, too. Ash floated all around the creature as it took flight, its wings stretching out and reaching to the tips of Dex’s shoulders.

And then I realized there was text woven through it. Names on feathers. Kol. Wylder. Orion. Maverick. All of them. Dex and his brothers, rising out of the ashes.

“Braedyn,” Dex rasped. “I can’t. I shouldn’t have kissed you last night. Shouldn’t have let myself go there.”

Stinging hurt swept through me at the thought that last night’s stolen moments were a mistake. Not that I hadn’t experienced some flickers of doubt myself, it was just that…I didn’t want those moments to be a mistake.

My gaze lifted to Dex’s face, but his expression stopped me dead because there was pure torture there.

“I’m trying with everything I have not to go there,” he croaked.

“Why?” The question was out of my mouth before I could consider the wisdom of it.

“It’s not because I don’t want to, Hellion. If I let my baser half have its way, I’d pin you to that mattress and not let you up for days.”

My mouth went dry, and I pressed my thighs together as my skin started to tingle.

“Fuck,” Dex muttered. “Don’t do that. I can’t take much more.”

“Sorry?” A war of confusion swept through me.

“I’m looking out for you. My head is a fucked-up place. And you don’t need that in your life. Not in that way. I’ll be your friend. Owen’s friend. I’ll have your back. But that’s all I can give.”

Why did that hurt so badly? Why did it hurt when I knew he was right? The last thing I needed was the risk another relationship brought. Yet I couldn’t handle him closing that door. “Don’t you think I should decide what’s best for me? You might have your demons, but they’ve made you beautiful, just like you said mine have done to me.”