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CHAPTER EIGHT — Paper Shields and Pulse Points
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2025-12-24 09:00:49Morning found us the way night had left us, unfinished.
Dawson’s arm was still draped around my waist, heavy with sleep, as if his body had decided I was a shoreline and it was done drowning.I lay very still, staring at the faint light leaking through the curtains. The room smelled like clean cotton and that subtle, indefinable scent that was simply him, soap, skin, something darker underneath, like smoke trapped in fabric.I should have moved.I should have untangled myself, slipped out, rebuilt the careful distance between us like a fence.But my body did not want fences.My body wanted this quiet, this warmth, this strange tenderness that felt both accidental and ancient.His breathing was deep, deeper than I’d heard it in the ICU. A rare, hard won surrender. Every exhale sounded like a small truce. I let myself have one selfish thought: If I stay still long enough, maybe this can last.<
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Storm-Worn Hearts CHAPTER THIRTEEN — Ghosts Don’t Knock
Morning came with the taste of metal in my mouth and the dull ache of vigilance behind my eyes.The kind of ache you get when you’ve been holding your breath for hours, forgetting that oxygen is not a luxury, it’s a requirement.Dawson slept late, which felt like a small miracle and a quiet cruelty. Miracle, because his body had finally accepted rest. Cruelty, because I knew it was borrowed, paid for with my presence and the careful way I’d kept my own fear silent.I lay awake beside him, listening to the soft rhythm of his breathing, watching the line of his jaw in the half-light. He looked younger in sleep, as if exhaustion stripped away the years and left the boy I’d known underneath. But the scars didn’t disappear. Neither did the tension that lived in him like a second skeleton.I thought of Trent on the porch. The wave. The way he’d spoken my name like he was tasting it. Somewhere out there, he was awake too, planning, rehearsing, enjoying t
Storm-Worn Hearts CHAPTER TWELVE — When the Night Learns Your Name
Trent’s voice came through the tiny speaker like a finger sliding down the inside of my spine. “Hi, Mia.” The words were casual, almost cheerful, like he was greeting a neighbor. Like he hadn’t been carving fear into our days one message at a time. Like he hadn’t turned Liberty’s bakery into a stage and my hospital into a hunting ground. On the phone screen, he stood on Dawson’s porch under the harsh wash of the motion light, hands in his pockets, head tilted toward the camera with the lazy confidence of a man who had never been told no and made to respect it. And beside me, Dawson’s entire body turned to stone. The warmth that had been wrapped around my waist a moment ago vanished. His arm lifted away, his muscles going tight and corded as if his body had decided it was back in a place where mercy got you killed. His breathing changed, shorter, sharper. His gaze didn’t blink. A
Storm-Worn Hearts CHAPTER ELEVEN — Blueprints for Safety
The ride back to Dawson’s house felt like traveling through a world that had shifted half an inch off its axis. Same streets. Same stoplights. Same dull winter trees lifting bare branches toward a sky that looked tired of being gray. But everything carried an aftertaste now, like fear had touched each familiar thing and left fingerprints behind. Dawson drove with both hands on the wheel, knuckles pale with restraint. He didn’t speed. He didn’t run lights. He was calm in the way a storm is calm when it’s still deciding where to break. I sat in the passenger seat and watched the rearview mirror too often, my pulse jumping at every car that lingered behind us for more than a few seconds. My body felt like it belonged to someone else, someone hunted, someone newly aware that safety was not a guarantee but a negotiation. “I should’ve walked out there,” I said quietly, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “I should’ve see
Storm-Worn Hearts CHAPTER TEN — Eyes at the Window
Morning didn’t arrive like a blessing.It arrived like an interrogation light, thin, pale, and unforgiving, sliding through Dawson’s curtains and laying its questions across my skin.I hadn’t slept.Not really.I had lain there while Dawson breathed into the first real rest he’d had in what felt like a lifetime, his arm warm around my waist, his face softened by sleep the way stone softens under water over years. I’d listened to the quiet rhythm of him and tried to pretend the world outside the bed wasn’t sharpening knives.My phone sat face down on the nightstand like a poisonous thing.I saw you go in.The message kept repeating in my head, each time tightening the wire around my ribs.Someone had been outside.Someone had watched me walk into this house.Someone had watched me become close to Dawson in a way I hadn’t even admitted to myself yet.I stared at the ceiling until my eyes
Storm-Worn Hearts CHAPTER NINE — The Night Watch
Liberty chose a baking show the way she chose men: loudly, impulsively, with unearned confidence.“This one,” she declared, remote pointed like a wand. “It’s the holiday episode. People cry over ganache. It’s art.”Dawson sat in the armchair, posture straight, hands clasped, watching the TV like it might attack him if he blinked. He’d changed into sweatpants and a dark T shirt, but the softness of the clothing didn’t soften the vigilance in his bones.I sat on the couch beside Liberty, close enough to feel her warmth, but far enough that I could pretend my life wasn’t shifting under my feet.The house held three of us now, three heartbeats, three sets of breath, and it felt… different. Not safe, exactly, not yet. But less hollow. Less like a place that only knew how to wait.Liberty shoved a bowl of popcorn into my lap. “Eat.”“I ate dinner,” I protested weakly.“You ate trauma,” she corrected. “Now eat salt.”D
Storm-Worn Hearts CHAPTER EIGHT — Paper Shields and Pulse Points
Morning found us the way night had left us, unfinished.Dawson’s arm was still draped around my waist, heavy with sleep, as if his body had decided I was a shoreline and it was done drowning.I lay very still, staring at the faint light leaking through the curtains. The room smelled like clean cotton and that subtle, indefinable scent that was simply him, soap, skin, something darker underneath, like smoke trapped in fabric.I should have moved.I should have untangled myself, slipped out, rebuilt the careful distance between us like a fence.But my body did not want fences.My body wanted this quiet, this warmth, this strange tenderness that felt both accidental and ancient.His breathing was deep, deeper than I’d heard it in the ICU. A rare, hard won surrender. Every exhale sounded like a small truce. I let myself have one selfish thought: If I stay still long enough, maybe this can last.
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