“That’s cool about you and Cheyenne,” Beckett said. “So is it serious?”

“Um, yeah, you know.” I took a sip of beer. “I guess it’s serious. I asked her to move in with me. To the new house.”

“Shit, did you really?” Moretti looked surprised.

“Yeah.” I shifted in my chair.

“That is serious,” said Beckett.

“And Mariah’s doing okay with it?” Moretti asked.

I shrugged. “She says she is.”

“You don’t believe her?” Beckett paused with his beer halfway to his mouth.

“I do, it’s just kind of hard to believe she doesn’t have any issue whatsoever with me being in a serious relationship. She’s always been so scared of losing me. At one point she made me promise I’d never get remarried.”

“But this is Cheyenne,” Beckett pointed out. “It’s not some stranger. She’s known Cheyenne her entire life.”

“Right, but that’s exactly why she might not feel like she can be entirely honest about how she feels. She doesn’t want to hurt Cheyenne’s feelings.” It was total bullshit and I knew it, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop talking.

“And wasn’t she really tiny when she made you promise that?” Moretti asked. “I remember it, but it seems like it was a long time ago.”

“Yes, she was only five, but that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t still there—in fact, I worry that it’s moved from her conscious mind into her subconscious and she doesn’t even recognize it. But is it going to blow up later?” My lip was starting to twitch, and I covered it with my beer bottle.

“I don’t know, man.” Moretti frowned and shook his head. “You and Mariah have such a great relationship. I feel like she’d be up front about her feelings with you. And she seemed fine that day at the house.”

“You don’t know her as well as I do,” I shot back, sitting up taller in my chair. “There was this period of time last year where she was writing these letters to me and hiding them in her room. They were full of questions she was too afraid to ask me.”

“Oh.” Moretti’s face was grim. “I didn’t know that.”

“And she’s been having these nightmares.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. My hands started to shake, and I set my beer bottle down and crossed my arms over my chest, hiding them in my armpits.

“What kind of nightmares?” Beckett asked.

“She’s, um, alone in the dark. Trapped. And there’s a monster or something that’s going to attack her and she can’t escape. So she’s just like waiting in there to be attacked.”

“That sucks. You know what my sister did when my nephew was having monster nightmares?” Moretti said. “She had this spray bottle and she put a label on it that said Anti-Monster Spray, and every night she’d spray his room. Worked like a charm.”

I couldn’t even smile. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work in this case.”

“Does she see a therapist?” Beckett asked. “If not, you might consider it.”

“She does.”

“What does the therapist say about the nightmares?”

“Um, I don’t know. Mariah never tells me what they discuss.” I swiped my beer off the table and took another drink in the attempt to disguise my trembling lip. But my hand shook so much I knocked the lip of the bottle against my tooth. I set it down again. “I just need to talk to Cheyenne.”

“That’s a good idea,” Moretti said. “Maybe Cheyenne can help her. She’s good with kids.”

I squirmed in my chair. “No, I mean I need to talk to Cheyenne about us. Maybe we’re moving too fast.”

Beckett and Moretti exchanged a look that pissed me off.

“Didn’t you just say things were going great?” Beckett asked.

“They are,” I said, knowing I was making no sense and getting aggravated about it. “Maybe they’re going too great.”

“Cole, what the hell are you talking about?” Moretti looked totally confused.

“I’m talking about the fact that I’m in love with her, okay?” I snapped. “I’m in love with her, and Mariah’s in love with her, and everything is so perfect, there has to be something wrong.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Beckett shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong, Cole.”

“Except that you don’t trust good things,” Moretti said.

“Why should I?” I demanded, taking another big swallow from my beer. “Huh? Why should I?”

“Because they’re real, Cole.”

“You know what else is real? Bad luck. Tragedy.” I locked my jaw. “Look at what just happened Monday. One second that baby was fine, the next, she couldn’t breathe.”

“But you were there, Cole,” Beckett reminded me. “You saved her. That was a good thing.”

“It could have easily gone the other way.” I was not going to be talked out of this.

Moretti leaned on the table. “We’re not saying bad things don’t happen to good people, because they do—we know it. But you can’t live in fear of them. And you don’t have to go looking for them.”

“I’m not looking for them,” I said defensively. “I’m just not choosing to be blind to them.”

Moretti sighed, lifting his beer. “Look, I’ve never been in love, so I don’t know what it feels like. It sounds scary as fuck.”

“It is,” I confirmed.

“But I do know you. And I think you’ll regret it if you walk away.”

“I do too,” Beckett added.

“I’m not walking away,” I said irritably. “Nothing I’ve said is about walking away.”

“Then what’s it about?” Moretti demanded.

“It’s about being smart. Strong. Tough. It’s about protecting the people you love. It’s about making decisions based on what you know is true, not about how you feel in the moment. You have to—you have to put aside what you feel in the moment and go with what you know.” My body was sweaty beneath my clothes, and my heart was pumping fast inside my ribs. “Maybe I just need to take a step back and make sure I’m doing the right thing.”

“Okay.” Moretti held up both hands, as if offering a truce. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.” I pulled out my wallet and threw down some cash. “But I better go pick up Mariah now. It’s getting late.”

In the car on the way home, I went over the uncomfortable conversation again and again, hating myself for lying to my friends but also irritated that they thought they knew better than I did how to handle the situation. It was easy for them to trust in good things. They weren’t me. They hadn’t been through what I had.

I had to take a few minutes and calm down before I walked over to Cheyenne’s.

She greeted me at the front door with a hug and a smile, flour dusted all over her clothes. “Come on in! We’re just waiting for the second batch to come out of the oven.”