Mated to My Step-brother and His Best Friend novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Door Between

Deacon and Dovie fight across the connecting door until they nearly kiss, and in the morning Bowie lets slip that the ring was gone at dawn, after she left.

I lay on top of the quilt in my borrowed dress for two hours.

Through the wall I could hear him.

Pacing. Stopping. Pacing again.

Every time he stopped, the thing inside me that had sat up at dinner turned its head toward the door.

At one in the morning I got up and opened it myself.

He was standing in the middle of his room in sweatpants and nothing else.

His chest was bare.

I knew that chest.

Twelve little white scars ran across his ribs in a spray, like somebody had thrown a handful of gravel at him.

I'd made those scars.

Every one of them was a hole I'd closed.

"Put a bolt on my side," I said.

"No."

"I'm not asking."

"You're under guard," he said. "Guards don't give prisoners locks."

"I'm not your prisoner. I'm your stepsister."

He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.

"Don't call yourself that."

"Why not? It's true."

"Because I can smell you through that door," he said. "And I don't feel like your brother."

The room got smaller.

I stayed in the doorway.

My hand was still on the knob.

"You held my wrist," I said.

He went very still.

"Halfway through you, I couldn't do it anymore," I said. "I was going to black out. I told you to stop."

"I know."

"You put my hand back on the hole and held it there."

"I know what I did." His voice was low and rough. "I remember all of it."

I hadn't expected that.

I'd expected him to say he didn't remember.

"You said wait," he said. "You said please. You said you couldn't."

He took one step toward me and stopped.

"I've heard it every night for eight months. I wake up with your voice in the room."

"Good," I said.

It came out harder than I meant.

He took it.

He didn't argue.

"I thought you were a rogue with a knife," he said. "I thought you were cutting me. I was half shifted and full of silver and I thought you were killing me slow."

"So you told me to finish."

"I'm telling you I'm sorry I did."

The heat from the bond came up off my skin.

He was close now.

I didn't remember him crossing the floor.

He put one hand flat on the doorframe beside my head.

He didn't touch me.

He was very careful not to touch me.

I could see the pulse going hard in his throat.

"Dovie," he said.

It was the first time he'd said my name.

It went through me low and slow.

I put my hand on his chest.

Right over the scars.

His breath went out of him.

His skin was hot, and his heart was slamming under my palm, and I could feel every little ridge I'd stitched.

"I closed these," I said.

"I know."

"With my hands."

"I know."

He bent his head.

His mouth was an inch from mine.

I could taste the wine from dinner on his breath.

I wanted it.

I wanted his mouth and his weight and the door at my back, and I wanted it so badly my knees shook.

His fingers curled against the doorframe until the wood creaked.

He was waiting.

He was waiting for me.

"No," I said.

He stopped.

"Not like this," I said. "Not because a bond says so. Not with your father's ring between us."

I took my hand off his chest.

Then I shut the door in his face.

I stood with my back against it, breathing hard.

On the other side, I heard his forehead hit the wood, very softly.

The bolt never slid.

He didn't lock me in.

I slept, eventually.

At seven there was a knock on the hall door.

Bowie came in sideways with a tray, a mug of coffee balanced on a stack of pancakes.

"Room service," he said. "I can't cook, so I bribed the kitchen."

"You didn't have to."

"I owe you." He set the tray on the bed. "I owe you, what, a life? Plus five grand I never actually handed over?"

"I paid myself."

"Out of Deacon's wallet." He grinned. "Best part of my year, honestly. The look on his face."

I laughed before I could stop it.

He sat on the end of the bed while I ate.

"I'm sorry," he said, quieter. "For never coming back. I told Abner a rogue doctor patched us up. I didn't want them going looking for you."

"They went looking anyway."

"Deacon did. Eight months." He rubbed the back of his white head. "He thought you took the ring. Everybody did."

"I didn't."

"I know. I mean, I believe you." He hesitated. "But it was gone at dawn."

I put my fork down.

"Say that again."

"I woke up when the light came in the window," Bowie said. "First thing I did was check on him. His hand was bare. And I heard a truck pulling out of the lot behind the diner."

"What time does the light come in that window in February?"

"Seven? Little after?"

I stared at him.

"I left at four," I said. "I checked his pulse before I went. His ring was cold against my palm."

Bowie's grin went away.

"Then somebody came into my diner after I left."

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