Page 107

“Yes, it’s pink,” she said. “And cozy. And yes, I hid here this whole time, only soft in private.”

Kate looked faintly appalled. “Where else are you supposed to be soft?”

Bethan beckoned for Kate to go sit and followed after her. And then, there they all were. Her four friends, who she never would have met if she hadn’t come here. Who wouldn’t have met her if they hadn’t come here for their own reasons. They would be connected by Alaska Force no matter what, she supposed, but they’d made their own connections, too.

She might have had the bad luck to fall in love with a man who couldn’t handle it, or her, but no life was ever perfect. And looking around at her friends as they sat in her home and prepared to eat her food, laugh and tell stories, and share this life no matter what it looked like, she knew that no matter how imperfect it was, it would be okay.

She was going to be okay.

“Welcome to my soft, pink underbelly,” she said, lifting her glass. “Which, yes, I’ve deliberately concealed from you since I got here.”

Her friends lifted their glasses, then clicked them together.

“To not dying at the hands of assorted madmen, criminal malcontents, and your average homicidal dirtbags,” Caradine said, and maybe it was the candlelight that made her smirk look almost friendly. But Bethan thought it was probably the same thing that had her grinning so wide herself.

“I’ll drink to that,” Mariah said with a laugh. “Long and deep.”

“Here’s to the Alaska Force Survivors’ Club,” Everly said, and they drank to that, too.

Bethan knew what Kate was going to say even before she lifted her glass, her eyes gleaming.

“And to Bethan’s favorite thing,” Kate said merrily.

“Don’t say it,” Bethan warned, though she knew it would do no good.

And it didn’t. “Intimate friend time,” Kate intoned, and that sent them all laughing.

It was a theme that continued throughout the evening.

Hours later, when Bethan was full of sugar, pasta, wine, and friends, the cabin felt right again. Not a secret anymore, but a safe space all the same. Because she could be herself with her friends, within and without these four walls, and that made all the difference.

She finished straightening up so she wouldn’t have to face it when she got up before dawn the next morning, then settled down onto her couch while the fire crackled happily.

“Home sweet home,” she said to herself, sighing.

And then, somehow, managed not to jump out of her skin when the door to the cabin was slammed open.

Jonas stood there, grim and dark.

It was raining out there, and he looked as damp as he did furious. She was fairly certain she could see the steam coming off him.

He didn’t wait for an invitation.

Jonas stormed inside, slamming the door behind him and heading toward her with a look on his face so starkly ferocious that if she hadn’t already been sitting down, she thought she might have lost the use of her knees.

Her heart, always excitable when he was around, began to pound. Hard and dangerously slow.

“Hi, Jonas,” she said, pleased that she managed to sound perfectly calm when she wasn’t. “How nice to see you when neither one of us is being poisoned to death.”

But that only seemed to enrage him.

“Three days,” he belted out at her.

And as he came closer, she could see that there wasn’t a trace of the usual stark, austere chill that she associated with him. His gaze was a black fire. His expression was... something she couldn’t identify. Something she’d never seen before.

Her stomach twisted, and then, below, she could feel the pulse of it—of him—between her legs.

“What?” was all she could manage to get out.