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Surprise punched from my lungs.

I always freaking wanted to kiss him, and he likely could see the fact written all over my face since my stupid cheeks loved to tell all my dirty secrets.

“Toast, now,” he commanded, eyes dropping to the little ceramic dish decorated with tiny blue flowers that held a piece of toast dripping with butter and apple preserves.

Somehow, amused laughter rolled out, and I barely shook my head as I picked up the toast and nibbled at the edge. “Happy?”

“Very.”

“You’re an easy man to satisfy.”

Crap. Did that come out the way I thought it did?

I thought so with the way his eyes flared.

I dipped my head as I took careful bites of the toast, silence welling around us, like he was waiting on bated breath to see that I ate every last crumb.

Positively riveting, I knew.

When I swallowed the last, he searched my face. “How do you feel?”

“Better, actually.” It was true. “Thank you. I guess you are a miracle deliverer, after all.”

The lightness wasn’t hard to find.

Only heaviness rippled from him. “Only thing I want is for you to feel good, Elena.”

The ways I bet this man could make me feel good.

He stalled before he asked, “Did you have a good time last night?”

My brow arched. “Minus the puking and making a fool of myself.”

“Obviously.” It was purely a tease on his ridiculously handsome face.

The man was so gorgeous it was cruel.

I nodded and tried to gnaw away the lingering hurt on the inside of my cheek. “It was nice. Without all the worry of you guys out on a raid, we were able to have a little fun.”

Regret etched into the sharp contours of his face, and his voice dropped. “Sorry I have to keep dragging you back over there. Do you miss it? Living there?”

I blinked through the wash of emotions. Through everything I felt the couple times we’d ridden back onto the property.

My home was the people who were there.

People I wasn’t necessarily trying to distance myself from but… “Of course, I miss them,” I settled on. “I love them all so much. But…”

“But what?” Trevan urged. He seemed awful desperate to peel back the layers this morning.

My teeth raked my bottom lip before I whispered through a swell of sadness, “Everything changed so much in the last three months. It was the right time for me to go.”

Brinley was my best friend. My sister. And I loved her endlessly. But that house had become hers, not that she was trying to shove me out of it or anything.

It just didn’t feel the same for me anymore.

“You felt like you were in the way?” Trevan’s words were tagged with a question mark, but still, they were riddled with knowing.

This man who could see right through me to the sacred places where nobody else was allowed.