Uncle Jim didn’t talk shit about the firebreak anymore.

  That ring of bare earth had been comforting to me whenever I’d come up here. Between horrific images on the news and the stories my dad told, I took wildfires seriously, and without the firebreak, I wasn’t sure I could stay here without some wicked anxiety.

  Today, for the first time in my life, I got a prickle of unease as I drove across the break and into the wide-open landscape surrounding the cabin. The cabin itself had always seemed safe and protected from fires, but now it looked vulnerable and exposed. Maybe fire couldn’t touch it, but people could. Vehicles could.

  Bullets could.

  I shifted in the driver seat, hoping Brandon didn’t notice. I believed him when he said he was traumatized but not in danger. Still, it was unnerving.

  I shook that off as best I could and eased into the carport beside the cabin. After I’d shut off the engine, we both exhaled, then got out of the car.

  It was late afternoon, but even with the sun still up and hitting the cabin fully without the tree canopy to block it out, it felt like damn near midnight. The drive seemed like it had taken three times as long, and I was already dreading the trip back to Idaho.

  We should’ve just stayed closer to home.

  I had friends with a cabin on Priest Lake, which wasn’t far from Coeur d’Alene. Should’ve just gone there. Ugh.

  But we were here, and I’d committed to giving us a week to figure out what we were doing. It would probably be the longest week of my life, but it would end.

  As we unpacked our groceries in the kitchen, Brandon looked around like he was taking it all in for the first time. He wasn’t—he’d been here at least half a dozen times—but he looked as out of place as he seemed to feel. Like someone who’d never set foot on this property before.

  Admittedly, I was regarding him the same way. No, he didn’t look like the man I’d slept beside for so long. At the same time, though, he did. He was both the most familiar person in my world and a complete stranger, and somehow, this week, I was supposed to figure out where on that spectrum he really was.

  Brandon glanced at our bags, which we’d left on the couch. “How, um…” He gulped. “How do you want to handle sleeping arrangements?”

  Oh. Damn. That was a good question.

  The touch-starved side of me that had been missing Andrew for all these months wanted him in my bed. The rest of me… Well. There was still that complete stranger thing. And while I had never been above hookups with random guys, Brandon felt even more like a stranger than some guy I’d just met on a dancefloor and whose last name I didn’t know.

  Before I could answer, Brandon’s shoulders fell minutely. “We can do separate rooms. It’s… I get it. Honestly.”

  I felt like an asshole, but what could I do? I’d never be able to sleep with him next to me, and I’d hate myself if we did what we would inevitably do once we were in the same bed. If we ended up in bed later on, fine, but we had to take things slow for now.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably best. For, um… For the moment.”

  Avoiding my gaze, he nodded. Then he gestured down the hall. “Which one should I take?”

  I thought about it. “Second door on the left. I’ll take the one across the hall.”

  Brandon gave another nod and left, probably to settle in.

  Alone in the kitchen, I closed my eyes and slumped against the counter. Why was this so hard? He was Andrew. A different name and backstory, yes, but still the same man. Was I overthinking this?

  Probably, yeah. He’d left because of circumstances beyond his control. He’d been there in the first place because of circumstances beyond his control. It wasn’t like he’d lied out of malice or to manipulate me. He couldn’t tell me the truth before. Would I have wanted him to risk his own safety—his own life—to tell me who he really was? Of course not.

  A thought surfaced in my mind: was this whole witsec thing the reason he’d been hesitant to move in together? I mean, we’d both been cautious about it, but after three years together, what were we waiting for? I’d wanted to drop the hammer. He’d kept making excuses and kicking the can farther down the road. What was he waiting for?

  I guess now I knew. Brandon hadn’t been deceitful. He’d been protecting himself from things that had nothing to do with me.

  “Fuck my life,” I muttered into the stillness of the kitchen. I was so torn because I kind of wanted this week to be a failure so I could walk away, but I also wanted it to work so we could be together again. I’d loved Andrew. The more I saw Andrew in Brandon—not to mention the more I saw how much this whole ordeal had taken out of him—the more I wanted to give us another try. I was just scared. Of what, I didn’t even know anymore.

  Right then, my phone chirped, and I took it out of my pocket.

  Marcus: Hey, did you guys make it safely?

  Relieved for something else to hold my attention, I wrote back.

  Seth: Yeah, just got here. Long drive but good. Did a lot of talking.

  Marcus: That’s great, man. Where did you end up going? You guys got big plans for the week? Or just talking things out?

  I peered at my phone. Since when was Marcus this interested in where I was or what I was doing with Andrew-slash-Brandon? He’d encouraged us to work things out, but he usually didn’t want details. And hell, he’d been thrilled that we were leaving so he and Lisa could have some total privacy for a week.

  Eh. He was probably just glad I wasn’t moping around the house like I’d been for the last few months. And he might’ve just been making conversation while he took a rare breather from his insatiable new girlfriend. Or he was waiting for some of my colleagues to leave after yet another noise complaint.

  That thought made me chuckle as I wrote out my reply.

  Seth: We’ll see how it goes.

  It was about as noncommittal as I could get, but it was also the truth. For all I knew, Brandon and I would be back on the rails in two days, and we’d go do some whitewater rafting or something to blow off steam. Or we’d last a day or so, give up, and make the long haul back to Idaho.

  I couldn’t even tell him what outcome I was hoping for.

  Two Christmases ago

  * * *

  My dad and stepmom’s taillights disappeared into the shadowy forest, following the driveway away from the cabin. Christmas lights still twinkled around the living room window as I watched the snow falling outside. The railing on the deck had a puffy white layer about four inches deep all the way around, and the weather report said there’d be another few inches today. By New Year’s, when Andrew and I left the cabin to head back to Idaho, it was supposed to be mostly gone.

  And if we get snowed in by a surprise blizzard… oh well. Guess we’ll get back when we get back.

  I smiled to myself as I brought up my coffee for a sip. Andrew and I were both scrupulous about being on time to work, and neither of us were prone to taking much PTO. That had earned us a fair degree of flexibility at both of our jobs, so if the weather gods decided we should be “stuck” up here for a few extra days of sex and laziness? Eh, everyone would get over it.

  Soft footsteps behind me pulled my attention away from the landscape outside, and a second later, strong arms wrapped around me. Andrew’s chest was warm against my bare back, and his beard and lips tickled the side of my neck. “So. Now we have the whole place to ourselves. What do you think we should do with it?”

  I laughed, leaning back against him. “Stop worrying about being quiet, that’s what.”

  His soft chuckle was a warm breath across my neck. “You don’t want to build snowmen and have snowball fights?”

  I snorted and turned around in his arms. “Are you honestly telling me you’d rather do…” I flailed a hand toward the snow. “All of that when you could be naked with me instead?”

  He quirked his lips. “Okay, when you put it like that…” Reeling me in closer, he murmured, “I do like the part about not being quiet anymore.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I grinned against his lips. “So you don’t have to worry about screaming like a little girl when I hit you with a snowball?”

  Andrew tsked, then nudged me back a step. As soon as my shoulders met the cold glass, I yelped, and he cackled. “Now who’s screaming like a little girl?”

  “Ugh, you’re such a brat.”

  “You like it.”

  “Shut up.”

  We were both still laughing when we came together in a kiss, but we quickly left the banter behind and concentrated on something much, much more interesting.

  Right then, I hoped the weather forecasters were completely wrong. I hoped an unexpected blizzard dumped three feet of snow on us, and we were stuck here until sometime in mid-January. Everything about this past week had been perfect. Spending the holidays with my family as a couple of the first time. Andrew had met everyone before, but this was the first time he’d been around my parents or brothers for longer than a meal or a party. All week long, he’d easily gotten along with my brothers. He and my stepmom had found their stride together in the kitchen, and he’d impressed her with his cooking abilities.

  He’d even won over my dad, who was guarded about men I dated thanks to the string of absolute douchebags I’d brought home. I’d never forget Christmas Eve when I’d been helping Dad with the dishes, and we’d watched Andrew in the living room with my oldest brother and my two nieces. Both girls had received play makeup sets for Christmas and were eager to try them out, and they’d both zeroed in on their dad. When they’d started fighting over who could “make Daddy pretty,” Andrew had swooped in and offered to let one of the girls try out her makeup on him. While Dad and I washed up, Andrew had patiently let my younger niece decorate his face with gaudy, clashing colors before painting his nails—and part of his fingers—bright pink.

  As Dad put a serving platter on the drying rack, he’d quietly said to me, “I never thought I’d say this about any of your boyfriends, kid, but…” He’d clapped my shoulder and nodded toward Andrew. “Hang on to that one.”

  Oh, I fully intended to do exactly that.

  Holding him now in the silent, still cabin, gently indulging in a taste of everything we’d be doing at full volume for the next several days, I was happier than I’d ever been in my life.

  Hang on to this sweet, perfect, charming man who was still cleaning glitter out of his beard and eyebrows two days after Christmas?

  Talk about a no brainer.

  Lying in my familiar bed in the cabin, I should’ve been out cold. I’d spent the whole goddamned day driving, and that was on top of walking through the absolute minefield that was Brandon and me.

  But I couldn’t sleep.

  My mind was going in too many directions. For the last… Hell, I didn’t know how long. The last hour, maybe? I’d been hung up on that first Christmas with my family. On how amazing it had been. How perfect. How utterly content and blissed out I’d been, sure I’d finally found the love of my life.

  I’d had exes who’d charmed the shit out of me and my family, only to eventually show their dickhead card. Right now, the emotions rolling through me were similar to what I’d felt in the aftermath of those shitshows, but… not quite the same. No matter how many times I replayed today’s conversations and mentally picked apart his body language or tried to find holes in his story, it was all airtight. Brandon was the real deal.

  And he was Andrew. He was still the man I’d loved, and on some level, the man I still loved. Logically, rationally, I should’ve said, “It’s all good, baby—let’s pick up where we left off.”

  But emotions weren’t logical or rational, and I couldn’t put names on the ones keeping me away from him right now.

  All I knew was that I didn’t feel right sleeping in the same room with him. I didn't even feel right being in the same cabin. The same mountains. The same goddamned state.

  But it also felt wrong as hell to be this far away from him.

  I wiped my hand over my face as I tried not to fall apart. What the fuck was I supposed to do? What the fuck was I supposed to feel?

  And when the fuck would this all make sense?

  Chapter 10

  Brandon

  I couldn’t sleep.

  The woods at night were just quiet enough to make me nervous. Just noisy enough to have me startling every few minutes like a terrified character in a horror movie. I’d been up here enough times to know the nights were never completely silent, and that the forest was full of activity after the sun went down, but it was unnerving now. More than it had been when we’d come up here in the past. Everything was unnerving.

  I wished I had Seth beside me, but he was across the hall. Probably sound asleep, too. And I didn’t blame him for suggesting we sleep in separate rooms. He had every right to be on edge and uncertain and to lay down some boundaries while we figured things out. If putting some space between us at night helped him cope with all this, then… fine.

  But God, I missed having him next to me. When we’d been together, I’d had more sleepless nights than he knew, but curling up against him and listening to him breathe had been so damned soothing. I missed that comfort now. I missed his warmth. His arm slung over my side and his face buried against my neck. Or his head on my chest and my arm around his shoulders. Or just the soft sound of him breathing on the next pillow. He couldn’t begin to know how good all that had been for me, or how much I ached for some of it—any of it—now.

  We hadn’t slept together every night during our relationship. Sometimes he put in overtime and did night shifts, or he was stuck at work dealing with something until the wee hours of the night. Sometimes one or both of us just weren’t feeling it. And hell, we were as human as anyone else—sometimes we were fighting.

  But there’d always been another night on the horizon. There’d never been this looming certainty that we’d never share a bed again. Even that one time two years ago when we’d been dangerously close to splitting up—when we’d just hit one of those rough patches that seemed insurmountable—I’d believed deep down that we’d get it right again. We had, too, and we’d more than made up for lost time once we’d tumbled into bed again.

  This time…

  Hell, after five months, I should’ve been used to it, but I wasn’t. Every night since I’d been yanked out of Andrew Keller’s life, I’d tossed and turned, both reliving my past and wishing I could hold Seth again. When I’d managed to sleep, there’d been nightmares. Horrible ones. The worst had me gasping awake and then reaching for him, sweaty and panicking and desperate to make sure he was still there and still okay.

  He’d been okay, but he’d been gone, and I… still didn’t know how to deal with that. I’d had too many nightmares about losing him for real to be able to cope with his side of the bed being empty.

  How do I make sure it was just a dream and you’re really still alive when you’re not even there?

  Tonight, he was okay, but he was across the hall, and I couldn’t help thinking he was further out of my reach than he’d been for the last few months. All that time, there’d been a glimmer of hope, no matter how faint, that I could see him again and fix things.

  Now I’d seen him again. That other part, though? It was getting harder and harder to believe there was any salvaging what we had and who we’d been. Why were we even trying? It was like doing CPR on someone who had zero hope of coming back—in the end, they’d still be dead, but they’d have a few broken ribs and we’d be exhausted.

  “But at least we tried…”

  Cold comfort was better than no comfort, I guess.

  I was too restless to stay in bed, so I finally decided… fuck it. I got up and pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. As stealthily as possible, I slipped out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out onto the familiar wraparound deck on the cabin’s second story.

  The mountain air was clean and crisp out here; cool but not unpleasantly cold. Folding my arms on the railing, I stared out into the darkness and listened to the quiet rustles and calls of nocturnal animals moving around in the distant woods. The firebreak felt too much like wide open and vulnerable space—no cover in sight from unseen assailants—but whatever. Much like when I'd been out on the Floating Boardwalk, I was almost apathetic about some unseen sniper’s crosshairs finding me.

  Just make it quick, pal.

  And being wildly exposed like this was easier to stomach than being tucked in amongst the dense trees. I wasn’t so sure I could cope with that tonight.

  Shivering against the memories, I took in deep breaths through my nose, concentrating on the smells of pine and cedar, not to mention the absence of copper and gunpowder.

  This was not that remote house Rhys and I had been called out to. It was even farther out into the wilderness, and Seth and I were alone out here in the peaceful mountains, not waiting to be ambushed. Eventually, I’d go back to the bedroom and sleep comfortably in that warm bed, rather than passing out on a hillside twenty minutes from town while Rhys begged me to keep my eyes open as he tried like hell to stop me from bleeding out. I’d wake up in the cabin tomorrow morning in my own familiar clothes with sunlight pouring in through the thin curtains. No hospital gown. No cold, sterile ICU. No wires, monitors, tubes, or some irritating alarm that kept going off.

  I closed my eyes and pushed out a breath as I tried not to shudder. That was all in the past. It was the past that predated Andrew’s existence, not to mention my relationship with Seth. So why did it feel so recent and vivid now? Why had I had more nightmares about it in the last few weeks than I had in years?

  Because I’m a fucking mess, that’s why.

  That was the God’s honest truth. I’d thought I had a handle on my PTSD—as much as anyone could without the professional help I desperately needed—but lately, I’d been spiraling. Unraveling. It was like I’d managed to compartmentalize most of my past while I’d been living in this new identity, but now that I’d gone back to my old life, I’d ripped open all my old wounds. All the ghosts were back with a vengeance, bringing with them fresh nightmares (when I could sleep, anyway) and turning every innocuous sound or intrusive thought into a trauma-fueled crisis.