Page 48 of Still Missing You

Hunter hesitates, pride warring with pain. Then his shoulders sag.

“Fine,” he mutters. “One hour.”

I help him shift, this time without protest. I arrange pillows and make sure his knee is supported. He looks younger like this, guard lowered despite his best efforts.

“Wake me if anything happens,” he says.

“I will,” I promise.

He’s asleep within minutes, his breathing growing even. I sit beside him, watching his chest rise and fall, my thoughts racing.

Someone stood over this bed last night. Someone wanted what Matthew left behind, and Hunter almost paid for it with his life.

I brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead, careful not to wake him. This relationship might be an act. But the fear curling in my gut? The way my heart clenches every time I look at him? That part is all too real.

Chapter Eighteen

Hunter

Iwake up slowly, surfacing through layers of sleep as if I’m being dragged up from deep water. For one disorienting second, all I feel is warmth and the steady weight of a body beside me, and I hear the faint rustle of pages turning. Then memory crashes in, hard and merciless.

The shadow in the room.

The sickening sight of it looming over Dylan.

The stairs rushing up at me.

My knee throbs in time with my pulse, a dull reminder that I couldn’t.

I keep my eyes closed, not sure if I want to wake up fully or let sleep drag me back down. The room smells faintly of coffee and old wood. The bed creaks softly when Dylan shifts next to me.

I open my eyes and turn my head just enough to see him. He’s propped against the headboard, one leg bent, a book resting on his knee. His brow is slightly furrowed, his mouth relaxed. There’s a small crease at the corner of his eye that wasn’t there when I knew him before. He’s different from that smart-mouthed kid, but the same, too. I guess we both are.

I think of the shape in the darkness, standing too close to the bed. Too close to him. My stomach squeezes.

What if I hadn’t woken up?

What if stealing Matthew’s camera bag hadn’t been enough?

I clamp down hard on the spiral, but it’s too late. My throat tightens. Heat crawls up the back of my neck. The idea of someone touching Dylan, hurting him, killing him while I slept next to him, useless, turns my blood to ice.

I had been awake. I’d chased after the intruder, and he’d disappeared like a ghost before I tumbled down the stairs because my damned knee gave out.

Anger flares, eclipsing the fear of what could have happened, hot and without direction. At the intruder. At the situation. At myself. I grit my teeth until my jaw aches. I hate feeling weak.

Dylan turns a page, and the soft whisper fills the quiet, strangely soothing and achingly familiar. How many Sunday afternoons had we spent at my house while my mother worked, with Dylan curled up next to me, reading a book while I watched football? Too many to count. I’d never been happier than I was with him.

Then he was gone, and I’d been alone, wondering what the hell went wrong. I’d moved on with my life. I was a kid back then, so of course I did. My mother had enough to worry about. I didn’t want to add to it. So I finished high school, went to the police academy, became a cop, and started building my life again. I dated, got engaged. Did all the things I was supposed to.

Then I got shot and saw firsthand how weak the foundations of my life had really been.

I sigh. There’s no point in pretending anymore. The truth settles in my chest with unexpected calm.

I care about Dylan. I always have. Pretend relationship or not, danger or not, the line between then and now has been eroding since he walked into my office.

I forgot what this feels like. Not that I’d been unhappy before, but with Dylan, everything shifts from black and white to color. It would be so easy to love him again. And that terrifies me. I don’t know how I’ll go back after this.

I shift slightly, stretching my leg. My knee is stiff, but not sore. I’m back to the version of me since the shooting.