Page 59 of Rune’s Solace

“Amy.” His voice changed. Dropped the bit. “I’m not trying to catch you. I’ve known something was going on since your biker shadow started parking across the street. I just figured you’d tell me when you were ready, so I’ve been over here being extremely patient, which is not my natural state, and I’d like some credit for it.” He tilted his head to get in my eyeline. “Talk to me. What is it. Who is he?”

“He’s the one.”

“The one what?”

“The one I told you about.”

Sawyer went very still. “No.”

“Yeah.”

“No, Ames.”

“Sawyer.”

He looked out the window at Rune across the street, then back at me. “That biker?”

“How many bikers do you think I have?”

“The man who sits outside my classes every day looking like he’d personally fight weather for inconveniencing you is that guy?”

So I told him enough. The garden. The kiss. The club woman and the lie Rune built because he’d decided hurting me was safer than wanting me. I told him Rune had finally admitted the truth, and then, with my face getting hotter by the word, I told him about the cabin. The floor. The bed. The fact that somewhere along the way I’d started sleeping wrapped around the same man I’d spent months swearing I hated, while Rune apparently planned to die of restraint before he’d be the one to cross the last few inches between us.

Sawyer listened to all of it without one single joke, which is how I knew he understood it was real.

“Okay,” he said when I finished. “I have several thoughts and at least one of them is violent.”

“Sawyer.”

“I’m processing.” He held up a finger. “First: the club-woman stunt was garbage. Cinematic garbage, but garbage. I reserve the right to hate him for that until one of us dies.”

“Fine.”

“Second.” Another finger. “You sleep in his bed.”

I stared at him.

“Every night.”

“That’s not—”

“And you cuddle him.”

“I do not cuddle Rune.”

“Ames, you just told me you sleep with your face in his neck.”

“Because I can’t sleep.”

“Yes. I’m aware. Apparently your central nervous system has a boyfriend.” He looked back out the window at Rune. “You know what’s weird?”

“Everything about this conversation?”

“Before.” He leaned forward. “When you talk about him before he pulled that stupid club-woman stunt, you weren’t scared.”

I looked down.

“You weren’t, Ames. You kissed him back. You wanted him. You let yourself want him, which, knowing you, is basically running through fire.”