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“So I’m told.” I blew a few rings.

“Bum one?”

I looked over at Colton with a raised brow. “You want to bum a smoke? I take you for a chicken breast, creatine, body-is-my-temple kind of guy.”

He chuckled. The sound was warm, deep. Familiar. “I won’t say I don’t have chicken breasts in my fridge, but I’ve been known to indulge now and then.” His voice sounded different, more relaxed, throatier.

“By all means, then, indulge in death with me.” I held out the pack and my lighter.

It was interesting and somehow pleasant watching Colton light up and take a deep exhale, closing his eyes while resting his head back on the seat.

He didn’t speak, just took long, slow drags with his eyes closed.

It hit me then how taut, tense, and generally stressed Colton looked each time I saw him. I’d assumed that was due to my presence. I hadn’t begun to think about Colton’s life in a broader sense, what he must carry. The weight of duty and responsibility he felt. To the town. To live up to his father’s legacy.

I’d tried my best not to be curious about him. Thinking about him only in the past tense, keeping him shackled there so I could not admit he existed anywhere in my present.

Because Colton wouldn’t exist in my future. Not after I’d done what I came here to do.

And yet I found my gaze tracing the contours of his square jaw, the brushing of stubble on his cheeks, darkening as the night crept into the early hours of the morning.

The creases in his forehead, the fall of his hair drooping into his eye.

“What happened to your hands?”

The question was mild, controlled, but the leveled stare Colton was giving my now bandaged palms was intense, to say the least.

I raised a shoulder. “I tried cooking. Didn’t work out for me.”

Colton sighed. Long and heavy. “Are you ever going to tell me the truth about anything, Hadley?”

The question wasn’t asked with the same aggressive tone he’d used on me earlier—or later, depending on how you viewed time at that point. It was weary. Sad. Hurt.

It speared me someplace I didn’t know was left unguarded. I was hurting Colton. With my lies. My presence.

I thought about all the untruths I’d told him. For his own good, yes. But mostly for mine.

“I miss them.” I stared into the woods. “I’ve never said that out loud. Never even let myself think it. I’ve focused on rage and regret and used this to wash them all away.” I shook my glass. “But there’s a truth for you. I miss them very much. Even though I doubt they’d be proud of the person I turned into.”

It was the biggest and most dangerous truth I could speak to Colton. Maybe others would argue that the truth about otherworldly entities being real and operating under our noses was a bigger one, but I chose to spare him from that horrific knowledge.

I didn’t know what made me say it. The booze? The house? Colton’s unyielding presence, the physical reminder of who I’d been with him?

Colton didn’t reply. With my eyes fixed on the dark woods, I heard only the clink of his glass being put down and the subtle creak of the chair as he pushed out of it.

Then I heard him padding toward me, extending his arms to pull me up.

And I let him. Let him tenderly navigate my injured hands before pulling me up and into his body.

I let him put his arms around me.

Hug me.

Normally, I would rather someone stab me than hug me. Especially with Colton, with whom I shared such an extensive history.

But his torso was warm. His scent was clean, comforting, providing me with an enticing of a whole different life I might’ve had. A fantasy I could linger in for just a second. Where Colton could comfort me. Take care of me. Where I let him in.

Slowly, Colton pulled back, dusting hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear with inconceivable tenderness. He ran a finger along the contours of my face, using a featherlight touch at the bruise on my eye—courtesy of his fiancée, a thought that should’ve had me stepping out of his embrace. But I never did anything I should do.