Page 77 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)
Chapter seventy-seven
Cam
N ight presses soft against the clearing, the fire down to a low, breathing glow. I wake all at once, the way you do when your body decides it’s time. The blanket is still warm where the alphas slept beside me, but the space at my right is empty.
“Dane?” I whisper.
The woods answer with crickets and a far-off drip of water. Then—there—a shape beyond the last reach of firelight, shoulders squared, head tipped back like he’s trying to memorize the constellations.
I ease free, tucking the blanket around Jamie and Theo, and cross the clearing. Dew has gathered on the grass; it kisses my ankles cold and clean. When I’m close enough, Dane’s scent finds me—smoke and cedar and that grounded, steady note that unknots places in me I didn’t know were tight.
He doesn’t turn, not at first. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“You were gone,” I say, and the truth under it: I missed you the second you moved away.
He huffs a quiet breath. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
I come to stand beside him. The stars look printed on the dark, pin-sharp and impossibly many. For a while we just breathe together, our shoulders almost touching, the night pouring cool silver down our faces.
“What will you do?” I ask at last. “About the offer.”
He closes his eyes like the words sting a little. “The city?” A pause. “I thought it was everything. New contracts, new buildings, new maps to draw a life on. Clean edges. No… mess.” He swallows. “But lately, clean feels like empty.”
He finally looks at me, and whatever he’s been holding behind his eyes is right there—hope, and fear of it.
“I didn’t belong anywhere,” he says softly, “until you.” His voice roughens. “Until this. ”
The forest seems to hush around the words. Wind lifts through the pines, carrying their resin-bright smell. My chest does that ache-swell thing it’s been doing since I met him—pain like a door opening.
“Stay,” I hear myself say, quiet but certain. “Or go and come back. Or make the city wait. I don’t know the right answer. I just know you belong with us. With me.”
The last two words land between us and glow.
He steps in, not all at once—like the tide taking back the shore—and cups my face as if I’m something breakable and precious. “Tell me to kiss you,” he says.
“Kiss me,” I answer.
The first touch is a slow eclipse: warmth sliding into warmth, the certainty of his mouth finding mine and fitting there.
He kisses like steadiness turning molten, patient at first, then deeper when I rise on my toes to meet him, hands fisting in his shirt.
The night tilts; the stars blur; breath tangles.
The kiss goes on until my bones feel honey-soft and the world narrows to the span of his hands at my waist and the way he exhales into me like he’s been holding that breath for months.
When we part, my forehead rests against his chest. His heart is a sure drum under my cheek.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs.
“Happy,” I say, and hear how surprised I sound.
He laughs—quiet, unbelieving—and gathers me closer. “Me too.”
Footsteps, soft on pine needles. I don’t have to turn to know who it is; their scents braid into the air—Theo’s cool tea and paper, Jamie’s warm spice, both edged with the salt of sleep.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” Jamie says, voice low and a little amused.
“You didn’t,” I answer, not moving away. I hold out a hand, and Theo takes it at once, fingers threading through mine like it’s always been that easy. Jamie comes to my other side and bumps his shoulder to mine, his smile small and a little shy in the starlight.
“Are you cold?” Theo asks.
“Not anymore.”
We stand there together, four shadows stitched by breath and touch. The heat in my blood wakes, slow and bright; it isn’t a rush this time but a tide, and I let it rise. The air thins with it; the stars feel closer; my skin turns to a field of open doors.
“I want you,” I tell Dane, clear as a bell. “All of you.”
His answer is a sound more felt than heard, his palm bracing at the small of my back. “We’ll follow you,” Theo says, promise laid down careful and firm. Jamie presses a kiss to my temple, a spark skittering down my spine.
“Come with me,” I whisper, knowing it’s no longer heat. It’s just wanting. Needing. We drift back toward the shelter of the blankets and the low, banked glow of coals.
What happens next belongs to touch and breath and the language we’ve learned by heart.
It’s the slow unspooling of fear and the tightening of trust; the way a name sounds when it’s spoken like a vow; the way three different heartbeats can stack into a single, steady rhythm under my ear.
It’s mouths that ask and hands that answer; it’s heat that builds and crests and leaves the night ringing.
It’s being held, then gathered closer, then held again, until belonging is not a thought but a fact my body understands.
When the stars have wheeled a little and the coals sigh, the world settles.
We lie in a tangle of limbs and blankets and satisfied breath. Dane’s chest is a warm wall at my back; Jamie’s fingers draw idle circles over the inside of my wrist; Theo’s palm spans my hip, anchoring, protective, his mouth pressed to my hair. The night smells like smoke and pine and us.
“Still happy?” Dane murmurs, voice threadbare with feeling.
“More than,” I say.
Jamie’s laugh is a breath against my neck. “Next year, then. All of us.”
“Next year,” Theo echoes, and I hear the map unrolling in his mind, not lines on paper but the path of a life.
I tilt my head and kiss Dane’s knuckles, then reach for Jamie and Theo in turn, pressing soft thanks where skin is closest. The three answering hums are different notes in the same chord.
“Stay,” I whisper, to the night, to the moment, to the men whose warmth has become my own. “Stay.”
They do. And the stars look like they approve.