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“Then Dr. Rayne will be my first call,” I said with a smile. “Then probably you.”

Lucas looked out one of the windows. “The snow is slowing down. You want to go to the gym and work off some of the excess?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks. Not while Kate is here.”

“Wait,” Lucas said. I saw the wheels click for him. “You don’t have another bedroom.”

“She’s in my bed.”

His eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Okay then.”

“Nothing happened tonight. I know better than that.”

Jude chuckled. “We know. But are you going to be okay with that? When it happens?”

He wasn’t asking about sex, but if my PTSD would rear its head while I was sleeping in the same bed as Kate. It was something he worried about. And was just one of the reasons he hadn’t dated anyone in years. Not even the woman he’d been blatantly in love with since we’d all come here.

“I don’t sleep enough that it would be a problem. If anything, she’ll be the one who decides it was a good idea nothing happened. I... didn’t hold back in that fight. I wouldn’t blame her if she was scared of me now. She said she wasn’t, but—”

“If she said she wasn’t, then you need to believe her,” Lucas said.

“A lot happened. She may not have processed it all yet.”

Jude stood. “That could be true. But what you’re not going to do is process it for her and decide she can’t handle it. That woman is strong and smart. It’s not exactly a huge leap to see what you did tonight isn’t who you are, Noah.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“If you need us,” Lucas said. “You know we’ll be here.”

“I know.”

“We’ll fill in the others about everything while the two of you rest. Tomorrow, maybe we’ll be able to come up with a plan.”

When they left, I locked the door behind them, leaning against it for long moments.

Everything inside was swinging back and forth like a pendulum. One second I was fine and grounded, the next I was spiraling down into panic and darkness.

I was okay, but I wasn’t fine.

Kate might be able to handle what I’d done and how I’d acted, but at the moment, I wasn’t handling it well. This far past retirement, the fact that violence of that kind came so easily to me wasn’t something that made me comfortable.

Nor was the fact that it had felt good. Like I’d stepped into an old skin that fit so well it made me question why I’d left it behind.

One thing was for sure, if I tried to sleep right now I wasn’t going to stay that way for long. Right now, the past was too close.

Returning to the fire, I finished off the tea and stared at the flames once again. I was tired, but it was easy to fade into the haze of gray between awake and sleeping where I let my mind drift and do what it wanted. This was one of the things Dr. Rayne, and others, had taught me.

Just let it pass through. If it was a bad memory or a good one. Whatever thoughts, dark or light, let my mind be a conduit for them instead of a container. Thoughts couldn’t hurt me. They weren’t a physical thing. A thought didn’t have to be acted on. It could just be let go.

Once the thoughts were settled, I could pull back and go to my vault. A single, imaginary place in my mind. For me, it was a rainy forest clearing. Mist drifted along the ground, and the air was so humid it was sticky.

In the center of that clearing, out of place, was a giant safe. It looked like a bank vault. Or an overgrown gun safe. Large, dark, metal, with a slot going in, and a mechanism like a faucet coming out.

And everything that was inside there were things and feelings that were better left alone.

Dr. Rayne had helped me create the vision, and though it felt counterintuitive that a simple visualization could help so much, it did.

In my head, I approached that vault and slid all the thoughts about my past that had managed to slip out back inside the slot. They couldn’t come out without my permission, and most of the time, it worked.