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Hew couldn’t sleep.

He blamed the lumpy mattress on the trundle he’d pulled from beneath the daybed. Springs poked through the foam to stab into his backbone, and his feet hung over the edge.

Also, he was cold. He’d drawn the short straw when it came to the shower line. By the time it was his turn to wash off the dust from the road, there hadn’t remained one single drop of hot water. He’d been chilled to the bone by the time he toweled off, and he hadn’t managed to warm up since. The paper-thin quilt he pulled up to his chin might as well be a sheet of air for all the good it did him.

As if the lumpy, too-short mattress and the brewing bout of hypothermia weren’t enough, Knox Rollins snored. Not a subtle sawing of logs. Oh, no. It was a full-on lumberjack’s chainsaw of sound.

Hew wasn’t sure how Sabrina was sleeping through it.

Is she sleeping through it? he wondered, cocking his ear toward the bed above him.

No whisper of breath. No rustle of sheets. No squeak of the bedframe.

Hopefully, that meant she was getting some rest. Because by the time she’d emerged from the bathroom, her hair freshly washed and her face freshly scrubbed, she’d epitomized the phrase the walking dead .

If exhaustion were a person, it would be Sabrina Greenlee.

Holding his breath, he listened harder. But it was impossible to hear anything over the roar of Knox’s obstructed airway.

Seriously, the man needed to see a specialist. Maybe get a mouthguard or one of those fancy-dancy CPAP machines that made a person look like they’d been attacked by a facehugger from the Alien movies.

Hew tried to drown out the noise by shoving his pillow over his head. It helped. Sort of. Not enough.

Sighing heavily, he slipped the pillow back beneath his skull, gritted his teeth, and considered marching into the living room and yanking Britt up by his short hairs. After all, it had been Britt who’d assigned them all their sleeping arrangements.

Sabrina, Knox, and Hew had all been told to bunk out in the bedroom, with Sabrina in the queen bed, Knox on the daybed shoved into the back corner, and Hew on the trundle. Julia and Britt were in the living room, with Julia on the sofa and Britt on a pallet on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Initially, Hew had thought Britt was taking one for the team, sacrificing himself to the floor's uncompromising hardness while the rest of them had soft spots to sleep in. Now, he realized the rat bastard had played them all and had saved the best piece of real estate for himself.

A warm, roaring fire? An entire wall away from Knox who had to be rattling the shingles on the roof?

Yeah. That sounds like heaven.

Hew was about to throw back the thin quilt and remedy the situation, but Sabrina’s soft words cut through the darkness. “You’re quiet. But you have an unquiet mind.”

He blinked in surprise. “What makes you say that?” he whispered.

She was silent for a moment as if contemplating her answer. Then, “It’s the way your eyes take in every detail of everything happening around you even when you’re pretending to be bored to death.”

Huh. Well, how about that?

Most people thought just because he preferred to sit in a corner and watch a conversation rather than join in, or just because he liked finding a quiet spot to read, that meant he was a Zen master. That he had a still mind to match his still mouth and body. But, in reality, the opposite was true.

If he was awake, his brain raced a mile a minute…cataloging, calculating . The only time he got a break was when he was asleep. And even then, he would come awake at the slightest noise, the subtlest movement.

Of course, that is probably a consequence of my upbringing.

“Plus,” she continued to whisper. “I can hear the wheels turning in your head. They’re spinning so fast they’re emitting a low hum.”

He chuckled. “Not sure how you can hear anything above Sir Snores A Lot.”

He couldn’t see her smile, but he could hear it in her voice. “And just think, this is your first night with him. Imagine if you were me, and this was night number three.”

I’d rather someone put my balls in a vice , he thought uncharitably.

Aloud, he said, “No wonder you look like you’ve been through the Crusades and back.” He realized his mistake as soon as he made it. No woman liked to be told she looked like hammered shit. “I mean, you’re beautiful, of course. It’s just that your exhaustion is palpable. You can hear my mind spinning, and I can feel your fatigue. We make quite a pair.”

“Yeah.” She released a sleepy sigh. “I want to sleep. I just can’t.”

“Who could with all this racket?”

“No.” He could hear a subtle rustle and knew it was the sound of her hair shushing against the pillow as she shook her head. “It’s not that. Or…it’s not just that. Every time I close my eyes, I see…him.”

His heart softened. “Your brother?”

“No,” she countered immediately. “I refuse to let my mind go there. I’m not ready for that. Not yet.”

He’d never had a family, so he didn’t know what it was to lose someone who shared his blood. But he’d flown enough missions with good men who hadn’t returned from their assignment. He could sympathize with the need to push away the horror. To shove it all into a little box covered in razor blades that threatened to slice his fingers to ribbons if he ever tried to open it.

He hated even uttering the words. They sat on his tongue like poison pills. But it was clear she wanted to talk about it, and he felt honored she’d decided to talk about it with him . “So, then, you see the face of the man who…” He trailed off, unable to speak the rest of the thought aloud.

He marveled at women—their softness and grace, the sound of their laughter, the way they moved. Nothing in the whole world was as wonderful, mysterious, frustrating, and fascinating as a woman. And he could not understand how any man could countenance the thought of defiling something so beautiful.

“The one who attacked me,” she whispered, and the thickness in her voice had him curling the quilt into his fists. “When I close my eyes, I see the look on his face when he grabbed the back of my head and told me he was going to enjoy making me scream and making Cooper watch. I taste the marijuana on his lips when he shoved his tongue down my throat. I smell his cheap cologne and his filthy body odor when he unbuttoned his fly and?—”

Her voice cracked like it’d been slammed against a sharp edge. He wanted to climb into bed with her. Hold her tight so he could help keep her demons at bay. But the last thing she needed—indeed, the last thing she likely wanted—was for another hairy, heavy-handed man to touch her.

Instead, he reached his hand over the side of the mattress, palm-up. A silent offering.

For the span of a dozen heartbeats, she didn’t speak, didn’t move. He wondered if she’d seen his gesture. And then he wondered if she’d seen his gesture and had chosen to ignore it.

He was about to drop his hand when it happened.

Her cool, slender fingers threaded through his. So slowly. So softly. So tentatively that he dared not move. Barely dared to breathe.

When her palm kissed his, his first thought was relief that she’d accepted what little comfort he could offer. His second thought was that her hand felt tiny and fragile inside his own. His third thought?

Well, it wasn’t really a thought. It was more of a physical response.

He shivered. And it had nothing to do with the cold shower or the paper-thin quilt.

Carefully, looking for any indication that she might disapprove, he slowly smoothed his thumb along the soft skin on the side of her hand. One. Twice. Three times. And then on methodical repeat when she didn’t snatch her hand away.

“Thank you,” she breathed, and he felt her strength as clearly as he felt her brittleness. She was holding herself together by sheer force of will.

He knew how much that hurt. It was painful to shore up the broken pieces of one’s heart with nothing but the glue of grit and guts because the alternative was to fall apart. And once that happened, once the fragments were allowed to split and splinter, they might never be back together again.

“What that man did to you—” He was cut off when Knox let loose with a series of machine gun snores. He was about to punch the sonofabitch in the face with his free hand. But Knox rolled onto his side, and his snoring was suddenly reduced to deep, sonorous breaths.

Thank Christ for small miracles , Hew thought irritably before returning his attention to the feel of Sabrina’s hand inside his own. To the subtle sound of her ragged breaths that told him she was once more fighting back tears.

“What that man did to you doesn’t define you, Sabrina,” he assured her. “No more than the sexual assault I suffered in foster care defines me. Those things happened to us. But they aren’t us .”

“Y-you were in foster care?” He could hear the interest in her tone despite the sogginess of her voice.

“My whole life,” he told her. “I never knew my parents.”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed.

“I’m not.” His response was instantaneous. “It’s impossible to miss something you never had.”

A small silence followed that pronouncement, and he wondered if he’d been too blunt. Britt had once accused him of being as subtle as a sledgehammer.

“I knew both of my parents,” she admitted quietly. “But sometimes I wish I hadn’t. If I’d never known them, I’d never have had to admit they loved their friends and their drugs and their booze more than they ever loved me or Cooper. I’d never have known what it was to wait for them to walk through the front door because they’d been gone for five days and we were down to our last can of corn and our last sleeve of saltines.”

He heard the old hurt in her voice. What Fat Eddy had done to her was a fresh cut that openly bled. But what she’d experienced at the hands of her parents was a bone-deep wound that would never fully heal. It would continue to ache and fester for the rest of her life.

He knew all about both kinds of wounds.

“You talk about them in the past tense. Are they?—”

“Dead,” she finished for him. “Drowned. It was the summer after I graduated high school. They were with their usual group of deadbeats down by the bay. They were all drunk and high and when my mom jumped off the dock, she didn’t come back up. My dad jumped in after her and had to be pulled out of the water by his friends. Come to find out, a big, waterlogged tree had washed under the dock’s pilings. Mom impaled herself on a branch. Dad sucked water into his lungs trying to save her. He lived for nearly twenty-four hours, but eventually succumbed.”

“Dry drowning?”

Her hesitation told him she was shocked he knew what had happened. “Yeah. Although the doctors in the emergency room called it pulmonary edema.”

He opened his mouth to express his condolences, but she rushed ahead. “What about your folks? You said you never knew them?”

“Gunned down by a mass shooter at a concert when they were both just eighteen. Dead before they’d really been given the chance to live.”

He didn’t tell her the rest of the story. Didn’t want to burden her with the horror of it. People tended to get weird around him when they knew.

“So we’re both orphans,” she whispered, her tone heavy with sadness.

“Like I said,” he gently squeezed her hand, “we’re a pair.”

Her only response was a subtle tightening of her grip. And then…silence.

One heartbeat became two. Two heartbeats became ten. Until, finally, he stopped counting.

Has she fallen asleep , he wondered?

A part of him hoped so. He could lie there and hold her hand all night if she'd fallen asleep. The thought of that filled him with…something.

Something he couldn’t name.

Then her soft voice reached through the darkness once again. “Will you come lie beside me?”

He was sure he’d misheard her. “Huh?” Wow, Hew. Spoken like a true scholar. “I mean, what did you say?”

Her response came quickly then. Each word was edged with uncertainty. “I know it’s a weird request. We’re strangers. And I’ll understand if you don’t feel comfortable. But every time I’m about to doze off, I have that falling sensation, and I jerk myself awake. It’s been happening over and over since… Well, since it happened. And I feel like maybe if someone is next to me, someone who can ground me, then I might be able to get some sleep.” Her voice hitched on a repressed sob. “I’m so tired. I didn’t know it was possible to be this tired. No one tells you that at some point exhaustion becomes physical pain and I?—”

She stopped midsentence when he stood.

“You want me to stay on top of the covers?” he asked.

The room was dim, but it wasn’t completely dark. He saw when she threw back the coverlet in silent welcome. There was relief in her voice when she said, “Under them as long as you’re comfortable? I’m cold and I?—”

Again, she stopped midsentence when he slid between the sheets, hastily pulling up the coverlet before spreading the thin quilt he’d brought with him atop the bed for added warmth.

His weight depressed the mattress, forcing her to slide in his direction. Her hip touched his as soon as he lay back against the pillow.

He wanted to take her hand. He wanted?—

It didn’t matter what he wanted.

All that mattered was what she wanted.

“Sh-should we stay like this?” His voice sounded like his hot chocolate had been laced with glass shards. “Or do you want me to hold your hand again? Or maybe?—”

“Can I…hold you?” she interrupted.

He blinked in surprise.

“I feel like if I can hold onto something solid, maybe I won’t feel like I’m falling anymore. You’re the most solid thing I’ve ever seen.”

And she’ll be in charge , he thought. Any physical touch will be her choice. It’s a way for her to reclaim some of the power Fat Eddy that fucking fuckhead took from her.

He lifted his arm, welcoming her to curl against his side. But she shook her head. “Will you face away from me? I want to be the big spoon.”

He wasn’t sure why a smile of delight curved his mouth. Maybe it was because he dwarfed her and the idea of her being a big anything compared to him was laughable. But he suspected the real reason he was grinning as he turned onto his side was he’d never gotten to be the little spoon before. No woman had ever even suggested it. And the idea of being held instead of always having to do the holding was oddly appealing.

She moved her pillow close to his. Then, carefully, tentatively, she fitted herself against his back. Her hips tucked close around his butt. Her legs curled tightly along the backs of his. And she slid her hand under his top arm so she could press her palm flat against his chest.

He felt the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck and expected his body to respond in its usual way to the touch of a beautiful woman. But to his surprise, he didn’t experience that same punch of lust that had accosted him when she’d been on his lap in the pantry. Instead, all he felt was…comfort.

Her body heat seeped into him. With her hand over his heart, he could count the beats and they were slow and steady and sure. It felt like…what Black Knights Inc. felt like. It felt safe and sort of like… home .

Or maybe that was only his imagination.

He’d never had a home. How could he possibly know what one felt like?

For long moments, neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. Then, her whispered words fell hot upon his neck. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. In foster care, I mean.”

He swallowed convulsively. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, too, Sabrina.”

She squeezed him. Just a little. Then she relaxed, and within seconds, her breaths evened out.

He lay there in the darkness. No longer cold. No longer wanting to change places with Britt.

He lay there in the darkness and thought…

This is what it’s supposed to feel like.

He wasn’t sure what this was, exactly. All he knew was that it felt right.