Page 167 of Surfer's Paradise

So instead, she just reached for the soap.

Washed his chest. Gently. Quietly.

His eyes fell closed.

And she held him.

She didn’t know what happened.

But she knew he needed this.

And maybe, right now, so did she.

Chapter 33

They lay in bed, sheets twisted, her small body curled into his like she always belonged there. Her breath was soft against his chest. One of her legs was thrown over his hip. She was warm, skin smooth, bare, trusting.

And he was choking on it.

Isaac stared at the ceiling, his arm locked around her back, fingers resting just beneath the swell of her shoulder blade. He hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. Couldn’t.

He could still feel the weight of his knuckles. The ache in his ribs. The metallic smell of Troy’s blood under his nails, even after three hand washings and a goddamn shower. But none of it compared to the ache behind his sternum.

That fucking alley.

That fucking man.

The things he said.

The things he’d done.

Isaac’s stomach turned again just thinking about it.

Rosie shifted slightly in her sleep, exhaling a little sigh, her hand tightening in the fabric of his T-shirt. She’d thrown it on after the shower. Something about how she liked the smell. Something about how it felt safer.

She had no idea. No idea he now knew… the truth about what she’d survived. What kind of monster had been in her life. And Isaac—

Isaac had known something was wrong all those years ago. The bruises. The way she wouldn’t talk. The way she shut down. He’d felt it in his bones, even as a dumb twelve-year-old kid who didn’t know how to articulate trauma, or speak up, or make any real difference.

But he should’ve done more.

He should’ve done something.

Instead, he’d been her escape. Her friend. The boy cracking jokes at lunch. And then, the boy walking her home when she had no ride home. Then, the boy she leaned on, and he hadn’t even known what she was leaning away from.

Guilt curled deep in his chest, heavy and black.

She’d been right there. Right fucking there. And he hadn’t seen it. Not all of it. Not the worst of it. And now, years later, aftereverything she’d clawed her way through to get here, he was the one lying beside her like he deserved her.

He didn’t.

He didn’t deserve this softness. This safety. Her trust. Her heart.

And still… he tightened his grip on her, curling her even closer to his side. Because if there was one promise left to keep—it was this:

He wasn’t letting anything happen to her again.

Not now. Not ever.

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