Harlow nodded against my chest, and her body relaxed a little more.

When a couple more minutes passed, I pulled away and sat up, then waited while she did the same—but I studied her every move. “How do you feel?”

“Sore,” she murmured, but her eyes flashed away. I knew she was holding back.

“So how do you really feel?”

Harlow chewed on her lower lip and shrugged—even that movement seemed hard to do—but she wouldn’t hold my eyes. “My head is throbbing all over. The back of my body hurts from where I fell and was dropped, but I don’t feel as weak as I did earlier.”

“Good.” I pressed two fingers to her chin and turned her head until she was looking at me. “Don’t hold back with me. I need to know, or I can’t help you. Okay?”

Instead of answering, her eyes went to something past me and widened.

“Can we help you?” I asked before I turned to find the guys in the room again. One was holding a bottle of water; one was holding a bottle of Tylenol. I leaned over and held an arm out so they could put both bottles in my hand; my glare never left them. “You’re acting like a bunch of old fussing women,” I grumbled, and then sat back up.

“You okay?”

“Deacon,” I hissed, and shook my head.

Harlow didn’t answer him, but I don’t think she knew how to. She was still staring at them like she didn’t understand why they were being so nice.

“Thank you, Graham,” I grumbled when he unnecessarily took the to-go boxes and bag of clothes from my nightstand, and then put them on the bed near Harlow’s legs. “Goodbye, Graham and Deacon,” I hinted, and waited until they were gone to say, “They’ve had a change of heart when it comes to you, and I don’t think they know what to do with themselves now that they know what you went through tonight. They bought you a new outfit, and brought us dinner.”

“Oh,” Harlow whispered, still in shock.

“Are you hungry?”

Her eyes darted down to the boxes, and her face twisted. “Not really. Um, I don’t—I don’t eat . . . much.”

“Low, that’s not hard to figure,” I said, and looked pointedly at her.

“It’s hard to with him . . .” She trailed off.

“You don’t have to explain that right now, or ever, if you don’t want. But I need you to eat if you can. You need to put weight back on. You need to have energy, especially after what happened today. So if you think you can eat, then it’s here for you. Okay?”

She nodded, and slowly picked at the food in her box while I ate mine. I only counted five bites small enough for a toddler before she stopped tearing her food into pieces and pretending to eat it.

After I was done, I pulled her into my arms and leaned back against the headboard. The relieved sigh and way her body seemed to melt into me made me smile, but I didn’t comment on it. Mostly because we hadn’t talked since we’d started eating. I knew if we talked, we’d have to talk about what to do with Collin, and it was obvious she wasn’t ready to figure that out yet. So I would give her the night if that was what she needed.

Not long after, her mouth parted and her breathing evened out, and minutes later, I followed her into sleep.

Chapter 20

Harlow

Present Day—Thatch

I WOKE SLOWLY. Something about the action felt foreign; normally when I woke, I woke with a start. Though warning bells were going off in my head, my body knew differently. Knew whose arms I was in. Knew I wasn’t in any danger from him. Knew that I didn’t need to be on the defensive from the moment I woke to the moment I fell into a fitful sleep.

Even though it was still dark in Knox’s room, my body was reveling from the best sleep I’d gotten in more than two years. I hadn’t felt this alert or energized in . . . I couldn’t remember how long it had been. I hadn’t felt this relaxed since before I’d married Collin—and that was including the tension in my shoulders and back from worrying over my family and deranged husband.

Sometime in the unknown hours we’d been sleeping, I’d twisted in Knox’s arms so I was partially on my side, partially chest to chest with him. And despite the fear that was slowly moving through my body at what we were up against, I felt myself smile. For years I’d wondered what it would be like to wake up next to this man, and though I knew it could be a thousand times better than it was in this moment, this moment still felt something like bliss.

Hoping not to wake him, I traced the line of his jaw with the tips of my fingers and let my eyes follow the movement. I faintly brushed over his cheekbones then back down his jaw, and finally over his lips. When my fingers got there, I glanced up to find his dark eyes piercing mine.

Without a word, and without releasing me from his intense stare, he unwrapped one of his arms from my body and grabbed my hand in his. Before he pulled it away from his mouth, he pressed the tips of my fingers closer to kiss them and then intertwined our fingers.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered. My throat hurt worse than it had last night, but even so, lying like this with Knox, in his bed in the dark, anything above a whisper would have felt wrong.

His head shook once, the movement nearly unnoticeable. “I’ve been checking on you throughout the night. Every move and every noise had me worried something was happening.”

“I’m sorry.”

Knox smirked, and I watched as his eyes drifted to the door. “Your new mother hens woke me a lot more than you did.”

“Oh.” I didn’t understand. There had to be a hidden agenda . . . they had to be playing at something. That possibility had me more wary of them than I ever had been before.

When Knox saw the confusion on my face, his lips curved up in the faintest of smiles. “Let me worry about them. You don’t need that added on top of everything.” He sighed, and gave me a worried look as he said cautiously, “We need to talk about Collin.”

“I know. There’s no way he doesn’t know by now.” I let out a laugh, but there was no humor behind it. “I still don’t know how he didn’t know before . . .” I let the words trail off.

“How did you get away?”

“He must have gone to his parents’ anniversary party. It doesn’t make sense—none of it makes sense. I kept waiting for him to be there, watching me, but he was gone. Collin’s never been so careless in what he’s done. The only way I can make sense of it is that he snapped last night, he wasn’t himself at all; I told you, he wasn’t my monster. He had to have thought he’d actually killed me.” My voice dropped low on the last two words, and Knox’s eyes tightened in pain.