Page 17 of Wild Thorns

I felt that hum again, that strange awareness that seemed to live in the space between us. An electric current, a vibration just below the threshold of sound. His hand was warm, callused, impossibly gentle despite its size. I could feel the strength in those fingers, the potential for damage they contained, and instead of fear, what I felt was something else entirely.

The contact lasted less than a second. It felt like longer. It felt like something had passed between us: a current, an understanding, a question neither of us was ready to ask out loud.

I pulled my hand back too fast. He noticed. I saw it in the flicker of his eyes, the way his expression shifted into something I couldn't read.

He held the cup for a full thirty seconds before speaking.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

I turned to leave. I'd made it three steps when his voice stopped me.

"Black." His voice was rougher than usual, like the words cost him something. "One sugar."

I looked back. "What?"

"How you take your coffee." His expression hadn't changed, but something in his eyes had shifted. A crack in that careful control. "Black, one sugar. Sometimes with cinnamon, if they have it."

I stared at him. The morning light caught his face, turned those dark eyes almost amber for a moment. He held my gaze without flinching.

"How do you know that?"

"I notice things."

And then he turned back to the shed, and the conversation was apparently over.

But I saw his hand, the one holding the cup, was shaking slightly. And when I looked back from the top of the stairs, he was watching me go with an expression that looked almost like hunger.

I stood at my door for a long moment, hand on the knob, heart doing something complicated in my chest.

I notice things.

Three words. Simple words. Words that seemed to be spoken more frequently these days. But the way he'd said them, like it was a confession, like it cost him something to admit, made them feel like so much more.

He'd been watching me. Noticing me. Not the polished version I showed the world, not the careful performance of a woman who had everything under control. He'd noticed the small things. The real things. The details that said something true about who I was.

I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know what to do with being seen that clearly by someone I barely knew.

I texted Tara: He knows my coffee order. After barely speaking to me for a week, he knows my coffee order.

Her response came immediately: I told you. Men are simple. Also, you're definitely interested.

I didn't respond.

I wasn't ready to admit she might be right.

But that night, long after I should have been asleep, I heard something that made me sit up in bed. Not howling. Not the normal sounds of the preserve settling into darkness.

Voices.

Low and urgent, coming from somewhere below. I crept to the window and looked down.

All three brothers were in the yard, standing in a tight circle near the magnolia tree. Callum was speaking, his voice too low to hear, but his body language was tense. Jasper had his arms crossed, his usual easy posture gone sharp and serious. And Eli was holding something, a piece of paper maybe, or a photograph, studying it with that focused intensity I was learning to recognize.

As I watched Callum looked up. Directly at my window. As if he'd known I was there all along.

I stepped back into the shadows, heart pounding.