Page 48 of A Bloom in Winter

Even though he didn’t, even though he hadn’t. But now that he thought more about it, he supposed that was just because it had hurt so badly.

“You had to take care of yourself.”

Their eyes held—and the sexual undercurrent surged. As it once had, all those years ago.

And it was too fucking weird. After all this time, he’d played this scene out in his head in so many different ways: There had been reunions of chance, like on the streets of downtownCaldwell some night, or in a restaurant, or in a supermarket. There had been the unexpected phone call, the out-of-the-blue contact that opened a random door. And then there had been his favorite, where Callum came and found him at his little bullshit house on the outskirts of town.

Maybe with a white rose in his hand because all those stupid fucking flowers he’d brought the guy had been remembered as the heartfelt gifts they had been.

There had been other fantasies, too. Like Lucan bringing the male over. Or maybe Kane doing the connecting. Both of those former prisoners knew where he lived, after all.

The last scenario he’d fantasized about had been the most impossible . . . and the one that had, on occasion, led him to have to do something to relieve himself: He had pictured himself going up to the summit of Deer Mountain, and walking into that cave, the one where the wolven had lived, the one with the hot spring. He always arrived just as Callum was emerging from the water, naked and dripping, as beautiful and haunting as he had been when he’d been naked in that road.

In that moment the two of them had first met.

“Never here,” he said softly.

“What?”

“When I imagined seeing you again, alone . . . it was never here, in this hellhole.” He glanced around. “I hate this fucking place. I’d burn it to the ground if I could.”

“It’s not a hellhole anymore.” Callum smiled in a flat way. “They’ve got Thermopane windows and lights now.”

“I don’t give a shit if every inch of paint is new and the roof is retiled with gold bars.” Apex shook his head. “It’s always going to be a fucking mausoleum to me.”

As Callum just stared at him, he shifted his weight back and forth on his boots. “What.”

“I didn’t know that . . . it lingered for you.”

“Not it.” Apex’s voice cracked, and he reached out for the male’s hand. Placing that broad palm in the center of his own chest, he said, “You.Youwere with me.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Out in the front acreage of Camp Ghreylke, as a vehicle went by them on the lane, Mahrci’s instinct was to run. But maybe it was just the groundskeeper coming back? The truck had been gone, the plow left behind. It wasn’t necessarily her father. Or, as the humans called them, her fiancé.

Ex-fiancé.

“Who are you afraid of,” Hemmy said into the darkness. “And how can I help you.”

Not a question. A statement of intent.

“Let it go.” She shifted her eyes to him. “Let me . . . go. I’m nothing to you.”

“Who decides that—”

“You don’t even know me.”

The male shook his head slowly. “And you’re out here, humping fifty-pound bags of grain in the snow for animalsyoudon’t know.”

Exhaling a curse, she breathed, “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You should be,” she whispered. “You just don’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Mahrci looked away. Looked back. “I’m sorry . . . I can’t talk about it. And that is the truth. It’s also all I can give anybody right now.”

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