Page 42 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)
Chapter forty-two
Theo
T he night air is cool and sharp, the kind that smells of damp earth and pine sap.
I walk the perimeter slow, boots whispering over fallen needles, scanning for anything out of place—broken branches, tracks, the glint of eyes in the dark.
Every rustle makes me pause, head tilted, listening past the thud of my own heartbeat, but it’s just the forest settling in around us.
Somewhere out there, an owl calls, low and deliberate, and the quiet folds around me like a blanket.
Out here in the shadows, I feel more like myself.
Still, my pulse doesn’t let up until I’ve completed the full circle.
When the safehouse comes back into view, the moonlight glints off its weathered shingles and the porch light throws long, crooked shapes across the clearing.
I push the door open and step inside. That’s when it hits me—her scent, warmer than before, sweet with a bite of cinnamon heat curling at the edges.
My chest tightens in recognition. It’s stronger now.
Harder to ignore. My mind wants to label it stress—hell, maybe exhaustion—but my gut already knows better.
The main room is lit with the dim glow of the old kerosene lamp on the table. Jamie’s on one of the bunks, a blanket drawn up over his legs, looking like he’s trying to convince the world he’s comfortable. His eyes lift as I cross the space to him.
“How’s the leg?” I ask, stopping at the foot of the bunk.
“Hurts like hell,” he says, mouth twitching in a wry half-smile. “But I’ve had worse.”
I sit on the bunk across from his. “You scared the shit out of us today.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he murmurs.
His gaze flicks toward the side bedroom, where Cam’s moving around, the muffled scrape of her boots across the old wood floors mixing with the clink of mugs on the pine table.
She’s humming faintly, some tune I can’t quite place.
Jamie lowers his voice. “You smell that?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly, no hesitation.
“She’s going into heat, isn’t she?”
“Probably.” The word feels heavier than it should.
The front door closes behind us with a muted thud, and Dane steps inside, his eyes sweeping the room before settling on me. He crosses over, drops into the chair near Jamie’s bunk, and leans forward on his elbows. “You smell it too,” he says flatly.
“Yeah.”
We lapse into silence. Not the comfortable kind. It’s the heavy sort that sits in the chest, waiting to be named. We don’t have to speak the implications—they hang in the air already, curling around us like that scent we can’t ignore.
Cam’s still moving in the next room, tidying up, her humming slipping in and out between the sounds of mugs stacking.
The cinnamon heat of her scent drifts through again, thicker now, settling into the wood like smoke.
I’m not immune to the pull of it, but my worry runs deeper than that.
She’s vulnerable right now, and the situation is far from ideal.
Dane leans back, watching the doorway to the side room like he’s expecting her to appear any second. “We’ll figure it out,” he says, but it sounds like he’s reassuring himself as much as us.
Jamie’s voice is quiet but certain. “We’ll deal with it. Same as we always do.”
I glance between them both, feeling the weight of what we’re not saying. Yeah, we’ll deal with it. Together. But I’m not entirely sure any of us are ready for what that might mean.