Page 47 of Edge of Forever

The sob in her chest bubbled out into outright tears. The same tears he’d heard every night at the hospital.

He held onto her this time. She let him. She actually burrowed into his chest and the sounds she made wrecked him. His Izzy didn’t cry. This was the hiccupping kind of crying that stole breath. It hollowe

d him out with the need to stop it, even though he knew she needed every one of the tears scalding through his shirt.

All he could do was hold on. As the tempest subsided, he knew her busted ribs must be screaming because his back certainly was. But he would’ve ended up in traction before he’d have let her go.

He eased back into the corner of the couch and she sighed before inching up to put her cheek against his chest. She’d cried herself out. Her fingers anchored into his shirt as if he’d leave again.

He understood guilt—he’d been dragging around a bucket of it sloshing near the rim himself—but this was more.

This was the kind of pain he couldn’t take for her.

But he’d stand for her and hold her when she needed it.

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Izzy, mine. I’m not going anywhere.”

Twenty-Three

She woke, her head muzzy. Her mouth tasted like a vodka hangover. Familiar arms held her tight, and the chest that had been her rock for what felt like forever was finally under her once more. The foundation that she’d been eroding with silence each day.

She hadn’t meant to scream and cry all over him.

She’d been doing so well. The days blended together, but they had been tranquil. Reading and quiet with a side of Fiona love.

She’d thought that would be enough.

Until he’d snapped.

Until he’d left.

He’d been there every single day without fail since the accident. Even when she’d hated him and wanted to drown in the pain that threatened to submerge her every day, he’d been there.

Probably watching to see if she’d crack. But she didn’t—at least not on the outside.

When she’d gotten back to the house, the laundry basket had still been upstairs. She went to the recreation lodge and the billiard tables had been occupied by two teenage girls. The weight room had been empty.

The Escalade still in the driveway.

No Logan.

A million things had run through her mind, all of them awful or bloody. But then he’d walked in with that endorphin look she remembered. He loved to run. She knew that, but he’d only used the treadmill since...that day at her store.

Missing Nic and Adam had nothing on the pure panic and fear that had taken hold of her.

And here he was, holding her tight, even in sleep. She was afraid to look up at him, but she knew when he was sleeping. The rhythm and cadence of his breathing evened. He didn’t snore, but his breathing changed.

That sound had lulled her to sleep many nights. She hadn’t realized that she’d missed it so damn much. Sleeping in a bed with him had been torture. Her body’s instinct was to gravitate toward him. To burrow under the arm that always ended up pinning her to the mattress each morning, the weight of him as regular as the sunrise.

She’d been punishing him, punishing herself for needing him.

She shifted against him and he gathered her higher, her name a rumble in his chest. His spicy sandalwood scent was muted with woods and the river’s freshness. Running had always seemed to cleanse him. He always came back looking like he’d taken a swim in his clothes, but there was a light in his eyes.

Like he’d outrun some part of the day that had been sticking to him.

That had been her today.

She’d been the one he’d needed to run away from.

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