Page 243 of Wild Card 13

My father pushed away from the desk, crossed his office in four long strides and engulfed me in a hug. “I love you, too.”

We held each other as a few pieces of my heart stitched themselves back together. I forced myself to pull away from his warm embrace to head back downstairs.

My office looked exactly as he had described it.

The overhead light was too harsh. The walls were too bare. The desk was too clean in the places that did not count and too cluttered in the places that did. Dottie’s bed, which I had considered perfectly acceptable thirty minutes ago, did look a little like I had chosen it while fleeing a natural disaster.

Dottie lifted her head when I came in. She blinked.

I sat behind my desk and set the Paper Lantern cup beside my keyboard. It was empty now, but I had not thrown it away. I told myself that was because there had not been a convenient trash can upstairs.

Charlotte’s folder sat on the corner of my desk. I picked it up, opened the drawer, and placed it inside. Closed. Handled. For the first time all morning, a small pocket of relief opened beneath my ribs.

I opened my browser. For a moment, my fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Then I searched for office lamps. Warm light. Brass base. Adjustable shade. Then bookshelves. Then washable dog beds that did not look like dog beds but mini couches.

Dottie came over and rested her chin on my knee, apparently sensing the possibility of personal benefit. Her tail thumped once against the floor.

“Yes, but apparently we are becoming women with fancy things.”

I clicked on a chair I did not need. Then a lamp that looked like it belonged in a room where a person might stay awhile.

On my desk, the empty Paper Lantern cup sat beside my mouse, its little gold logo turned toward me.

I looked at it for half a second too long.

Tomorrow morning was not a promise.

Not yet.

But for the first time in eight years, the thought of Ty Burns showing up again did not feel only like danger.

It felt like a question.

And despite every careful, guarded, exhausted part of me, I had already started making room for the answer.

CHAPTER 31

BUZZ

NOW

By four in the morning, the lake looked like something the world had forgotten. The sky was still black at the edges, softening only slightly where the far tree line cut against it. Snow packed beneath my shoes with a dry, familiar crunch, and every breath I dragged in burned clean all the way down my throat. The cold made everything honest. Lungs. Legs. Thoughts. There was no room for performance out here. No crowd noise. No locker room chirping. No camera waiting for the grin everyone expected from Buzz Burns.

Just me, the frozen lake, and the rhythm of my feet moving over the same road I had run almost every morning since I bought the house.

Four miles when my body felt good.

Six when my head did not.

Today, I had told myself four.

My head, unfortunately, had other plans.

Lucy Thomas had been in it since the second I woke up. Not in the wrecked, midnight way she used to come to me after I saw her in the arena and pretended I was fine. Not like punishment. Not like guilt dragging its teeth through the inside of my chest.

This was worse. This was hope. Careful, stupid, badly behaved hope that had no respect for a man trying to keep his expectations in check.