“Friends?” she asked, her voice soft against his chest.
“Always.” He kissed her hair, his lips lingering several seconds.
She left him and headed back to her bedroom, her head and stomach churning over what Jamie had forced her to admit. She wasn’t over Cody. She never had been, and she feared she never would be. Should she let this thing play out between them and see where it stood? How could she ever move on and not second-guess her feelings if she didn’t know for sure?
“That took long enough,” Cody said, without looking up as she walked in. “What’d you do? Tuck him in like a bloody baby?”
She started to say something rude, but he glanced up, and she saw the hurt in his eyes, quickly disguised. She pushed the door closed so Jamie, Nina, and Matilda wouldn’t find out Cody was in her room. “You shouldn’t be so hard on him.” Shay settled in awkwardly and stared at the ceiling, wondering how she would ever sleep. She felt guilty over Jamie, confused over Cody, and angry at herself.
“Do you love him?” Cody asked softly.
“I thought I did.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s a good guy. I cared for him. I still do, but something wasn’t… there.”
Cody started to say something, hesitated, then started again. “He took advantage of you.”
“You did worse. You stole something from me.”
He looked confused for a moment. “Your father, you mean?”
“My father, my mother, my life. I never even saw a picture of the woman who gave birth to me until I Googled her name and read her obituary. I believed some stranger named Nancy was my mother. Do you have any idea how it feels to find out the people you thought loved you were imposters sent to do a job?”
She heard the sofa creak as Cody rose and moved to the bed. “It was more than a job,” he said, sitting next to her. “We did it because we loved you. We still do. How do you think we felt—how
His voice sounded hollow, and Shay remembered a younger Cody pleading with her to understand, to stop and listen. Like the starved fool she was, she leaned against him, seeking comfort, as she had so many times before. He put his arms around her. Shay’s cheek tingled where it pressed against his chest. That sensation had never happened when she was with Jamie. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just confused. I didn’t know how to face you.”
“What was in those letters that made you so angry when I didn’t answer?”
“That I was sorry for shutting you out.”
In the second letter she begged. Her heart had broken, and it hurt to breathe. She had needed him more than she needed air, but she couldn’t tell him that now. If he got distracted and didn’t focus on this threat, he could die. Oh God. She was doing exactly what the clan had done to her, hiding things to protect him.
“I wasn’t at college. I was training in Scotland. I could see one letter getting lost, but two? It doesn’t make sense. Coira made sure we got our mail.”
“I called too, before I sent the letters. A woman answered.”
“One of the female warriors probably. I didn’t get your message.”
“I didn’t leave one. I thought…”
Cody leaned back and stared at her. “So all these years you thought I ignored you because I had a girlfriend?”
“What else could I think, after what happened? I didn’t know you tried to see me.”
“A lot more than that. You know me. You were my lif… my best friend.” He put an arm around her, pulling her close again. She leaned against his shoulder, her cheek next to his battle marks. She heard a whisper; the sound ancient, familiar, as if the marks called to her. In a matter of hours her life had become as intertwined with his as it had been before. Whether she craved him or wanted to kill him, her very soul seemed connected to his. He covered her hand with his, holding it tight against his heart as sleep slipped over her like a soft blanket.
***
Cody tried to distract himself from Shay’s scent by thinking about the letters—what she could have written that would have made her so angry when he didn’t answer—and he thought about the rose on her dresser. It was a sad indication of how rattled he was, that at the moment the rose concerned him more. Who sent it? Jamie? Shay didn’t belong with Jamie. He couldn’t know her the way Cody did, know that underneath the tough-girl exterior she was sensitive, that she cried when she laughed too hard. That she loved bubble baths, but was clumsy around water. How she felt wrapped around… he ground his teeth and moved his arm so he could slip back to the safety of the sofa, but she murmured something—he hoped it wasn’t Jamie’s name—and her hand dropped, curling around the waistband of his underwear. He talked himself out of nudging her hand lower. He managed to scoot both of them down in bed, so they didn’t get cricks in their necks, but he couldn’t sleep with that damned rose taunting him and Shay’s hand on his underwear.
He tried counting sheep. He was at 123 when her ankle slid over his. He caught his breath, torn between leaping from the bed and hoping she was awake. A sleepy sigh killed that thought. He counted at least two hundred more sheep, naming several of them, when her calf eased over his, then her thigh. He groaned, and the hand clutching the band of his underwear tensed, and she quickly removed her thigh from his lap.
“Sorry,” she said, sleepily. “I thought you…”
Thought what? That he was Jamie. Did she think it was Jamie’s bloody underwear she was holding? Well,
