Page 144 of Silent Shadows

“And you can’t go all alpha-protector in front of the group.”

I wince. “Was I doing that?”

“You were one growl away from needing a spray bottle.”

“That bad?”

“Medium bad.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“Good.”

A beat.

“But you should know that I do like it. The possessiveness. It’s never been a thing for me before, but with you…” she pauses. “It just feels different. I like being yours.”

Then she reaches out of the shower, grabbing my glasses, and fixes them on my wet face. Her words, and then this—it’s so intimate that I almost break.

Daisy dries off and gets dressed in the clean clothes she brought while I try not to stare too long. She slips out first.

Which is good.

Because I need approximately forty-five seconds to remember how walking works.

When I finally emerge dressed in dry clothes, everyone is in different spots around the truck stop, grabbing makeshift dinners.

Owen is eating the largest jerky stick I’ve ever seen.

Daisy is at the beverage station making a coffee, face composed. Too composed.

Jax spots me and narrows his eyes. “That was a long shower.”

I walk past him towards the coffee. “There was a lot of mud.”

“Mm-hmm.”

He lets it go, but I spot Owen smiling around his jerky.

I ignore him.

We head back to the RV through the thick, humid haze that lingers after the rain stops. For the rest of the evening, we work. Because that is what we do.

Evidence is cataloged. Footage is backed up twice. The track photos are saved to a secure folder. Owen marks three new coordinates on the map but refuses to explain two of them until he can “verify whether or not they’ll get us arrested,” exactly the kind of sentence that piques Taylor’s interest.

Daisy interviews Maya about the print.

Then Taylor about the terrain.

Then Jax about the drone footage, though that mostly becomes a monologue about mud being “nature’s wet cement of despair.”

She does not interview me. Not yet.

I tell myself that is fine. It is fine. It is normal.

And it’s probably wise.

By ten p.m., everyone starts fading.