“Yes.” She couldn’t deny it. Although, all their kisses had been amazing. “But then after, when I was here getting ready and then walking to your place—” She hesitated, forcing herself to look at him through the darkness. “I was back to jumping at shadows. Feeling like someone was watching me. Like I was right back at the beginning.”
Bear was silent for a long moment. “Healing isn’t a straight line, Bug. It’s not linear.”
The quiet certainty in his voice made something tremble deep in her chest.
“You’re allowed to have bad days,” he continued. “Doesn’t mean you’re back at the beginning.”
She scoffed, looking away. “Sure as hell feels like it.”
Bear shifted, turning toward her fully. The cot groaned beneath them. “So, what, then? You give up? Stay out here in this playhouse forever?”
His tone wasn’t mocking, wasn’t judging. It was genuine.
Joy let out a hollow laugh, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
“You do.”
She swallowed. “I don’t know how to go back.”
Bear nodded slowly, as if that made sense to him. Maybe it did.
She expected him to tell her what she should do. That she needed to push through, keep fighting, force herself to face her house. Face her fears. But he didn’t.
Instead, he leaned back against the wall, stretched out his legs as best he could in the cramped space. “Guess I’m staying, then.”
Her head snapped toward him. “What?”
Bear let out a slow breath, eyes closing briefly as if he was already settling in. “You can’t sleep. I’m not leaving you alone out here.” He cracked one eye open. “Unless you want me to go.”
She should say yes. She should tell him to go back to his apartment, to stop hovering over her like she was something fragile. But the words wouldn’t come. Because the truth was…she didn’t want to be alone.
And she was fragile.
She pressed her lips together, hating the vulnerability clawing up her throat. “You don’t have to?—”
“I know,” he interrupted gently. “It’s not about having to. It’s about wanting to.”
The words came low, steady, washing over her like a balm.
And just like that, her fight drained away.
Silence stretched between them, thick but not uncomfortable. Bear had always been like that—never in a rush to fill the quiet. It was one of the things she loved about him.
Loved.
God. She was so screwed.
She shifted, lowering her legs, pressing her bare feet against the cool wood floor. “You’re going to break this cot,” she muttered.
Bear snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve broken.”
Something about the casual way he said it made her smile—small, but real. The first genuine smile she’d felt since leaving the storage garage hours ago.
His eyes flicked to her mouth in the darkness, and her stomach flipped. The tension between them shifted, became something warm and slow and dangerous.
And then, before she could second-guess herself, she leaned in. She barely had to move before Bear met her halfway, his hand sliding up to cup her cheek.
Unlike their kiss at the garage that afternoon, this one was soft. No urgency, no desperation—just the slow, careful press of lips, the kind of kiss that told a thousand unspoken things.
