Page 188 of Hold Me Until Morning

Through this thing that felt so right.

The confession threatened to work its way free of my tongue. Because I knew it, looking at her, that she was it for me.

“I’ll miss you,” I told her instead of admitting it.

Hailey lifted her hand in a small wave. “Be careful.”

“Always.” I turned on my heel and followed the path around the side of the stables and down to the parking lot in front of the maintenance building. My team was already gone for the day, having wrapped up another pour earlier this afternoon.

Pride filled me as I thought of the progress we’d made. The project was coming together nicely, the first group of cabins already to about twenty-five percent completion. We’d be here the whole summer, but we were more than on track, and the work that had been done was fucking gorgeous.

I wasn’t too humble to admit it.

I waved at Tyrek who was locking the front door of the maintenance building before I strode across the dirt lot to where my truck was parked on the far side facing a dense thicket of woods.

My boots clomped on the loose dirt, and I clicked the locks, glancing left and right to make sure there wasn’t anyone lurking about before I pulled open the driver’s side door.

I went to hop inside.

I didn’t know what it was that stopped me.

What made me hesitate a beat.

A tacky awareness slicking over my flesh.

I didn’t have time to process it.

No time to step back or just fucking run.

Not before an explosion so fucking loud and disorienting erupted in a gulf of flames.

A detonation of heat and fire and power that blasted me back.

There was no way to stop it or prepare for it.

No way to even contemplate the pain as I flew.

There was nothing at all as my entire world went black.

FORTY-TWO

HAILEY

I led Starlight to her stall, smiling the whole way, my lips tingling from the meaning I’d felt behind Cody’s kiss.

I opened the gate and removed her bridle, whispered my love to her, before I started back out.

A scream tore out of me when I was suddenly rocked by a thunder so intense that the ground shook violently beneath my feet.

A sonic boom that echoed through the air, rattling the metal of the stalls and tossing the entire world into disorder.

My hands shot out to steady myself against the gate.

My knees weak and my heart hammering as bolts of confusion and anxiety shot through me as the ground tremored and rolled.

An earthquake.

A volcano.

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