Page 70 of Wild Thorns

"It's possessive."

"It's protective. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"With Callum, yes." Jasper's voice went serious in that way it did sometimes, the easy charm folding back to reveal the person. The one who thought carefully and felt deeply and chose every word.. "He's not doing it because he thinks you can't handle yourself. He's doing it because he can't handle the thought of something happening to you."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"He won't cross a line," Jasper added. "He'll drive himself crazy staying just inside of it, but he won't cross it. That's who he is."

I looked at Jasper, at this man who was telling me, without any apparent resentment, that his brother was in some kind of orbit around me. Who was being generous about it? Who was being good about it, in that specific Jasper way that made everything he did feel like a gift freely given rather than a bargain struck.

I looked at Callum first this morning; I thought. I was thinking about his abs an hour ago. I notice his voice differently than I used to.

I was a terrible person. Doubtful Jasper would be half so generous if he knew my thoughts.

"Are you okay?" Jasper asked.

"Yes." A beat. "No. I don't know."

He shifted on the step, making space. An invitation rather than a demand. I sat down beside him, close enough that our arms almost touched, and looked at the magnolia tree going golden in the last of the light.

I looked at him in the fading light, at the warmth of him, the steadiness, the way he looked back at me like the answer to a question he'd stopped being afraid to ask, and felt something certain move through me alongside the guilt.

Both things true at once. That was the part I couldn't explain. It wasn't that what I felt for Jasper was diluted by what I felt noticing Callum, or what happened to my brain when Eli's careful attention landed on me. It wasn't less. It was the same, and also these other things, and I didn't understand how that was possible in a person with a functioning moral compass.

Maybe my moral compass was broken. Maybe Marcus had broken it along with everything else.

Or maybe, and this was the thought I kept circling and not landing on, there was something about this place, these men, this specific gravity between us, that didn't follow the rules I'd been given.

"He won't cross a line," I said, finally. "That's what you said."

"That's what I said."

"Do you mean it? You're not just—" I stopped. "You're not just telling me what I want to hear?"

Jasper was quiet for a moment. "I don't do that."

"I know." I did know. That was the thing. "I know you don't."

He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear; a small, careful gesture, asking nothing, and I felt it everywhere.

I thought about that for a long time after he left.

I thought about Callum, staying just inside the lines. About protection that wasn't about control. About the difference between being watched by someone who wanted to own you and being watched by someone who wanted to keep you safe.

I wasn't sure I knew the difference anymore. But I was starting to learn.

And I was starting to suspect, quietly, in the part of my mind that worked on things while the rest of me was busy pretending not to, that whatever I was learning here wasn't quite the lesson I'd expected to need.

I was almost asleep when my phone lit up.

Not a text. A photo. Sent from an unknown number that made my blood run cold.

It was a picture of the Thornwood kitchen. The same kitchen I'd stood in this morning, surrounded by three brothers who'd sworn to protect me. The angle was from outside, through the window, and I could see myself in the frame, coffee cup in hand, Callum's shadow beside me.

Beneath the photo, three words: